Marc Paul Alain Dutroux is a Belgian convicted serial killer, serial rapist, and child molester. Initially convicted for the abduction and rape of five young girls in 1989, Dutroux was released on parole after just three years' imprisonment. He was arrested again in 1996 on suspicion of having abducted, tortured, and sexually abused six girls aged between 8 and 19, four of whom were killed. Dutroux's widely publicized trial ended with his conviction on all charges in 2004; he was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.
Michel Paul Fourniret was a French serial killer who confessed to killing 12 people in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003. After he was arrested in June 2003 for the attempted kidnapping of a teenage girl in Ciney, Fourniret confessed in 2004 to killing nine people — eight females and one male — having been informed on by his then-wife, Monique Pierrette Olivier. Fourniret was convicted of seven of these murders on 28 May 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, while Olivier was given life with a minimum term of 28 years for complicity.
Christian Ranucci was a French man convicted for the abduction and killing of an eight-year-old girl on Whit Monday 1974. Sentenced to death by beheading on 10 March 1976, Ranucci was the third-to-last person executed in France, and frequently cited as the last due to the notoriety and media frenzy over the case.
Pierre Chanal was a French soldier and suspected serial killer. He was convicted of the rape and kidnapping of a young man, Balázs Falvay, whom he picked up hitchhiking in 1988. He received a ten-year sentence for the attack and was released in 1995 on probation. He was accused of murdering three of eight young men who disappeared in northeastern France between 1980 and 1987. One of his alleged victims was Trevor O'Keeffe. Chanal killed himself in prison in 2003 while on trial.
The Gang des postiches was a team of bank robbers that operated in Paris between 1981 and 1986, robbing around thirty banks.
Simone Ehivet Gbagbo is an Ivorian politician. She is the President of the Parliamentary Group of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) and is a Vice-President of the FPI. As the wife of Laurent Gbagbo, the President of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 to 2011, she was also First Lady of Ivory Coast prior to their arrest by pro-Ouattara forces.
Nadia Fezzani is a Canadian journalist/author who has conducted extensive research about and interviews with many notorious American serial killers. She is known in Europe as having interviewed American serial killer Richard Cottingham for a French documentary that first aired on TF1, Enquêtes et révélations. The first person to interview Cottingham in 30 years, Fezzani got him to admit his culpability for the first time, as well as many more murders. She is also part of November 84, a documentary about the disappearance of children. More recently, she was interviewed in a Netflix documentary, Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer where she briefly talks about her interview with serial killer Richard Cottingham.
The camp de Châlons, also known as camp de Mourmelon, is a military camp of about 10,000 hectares at Mourmelon-le-Grand, near Châlons-en-Champagne. It was created at the behest of Napoleon III and opened August 30, 1857 during the Second French Empire.
Joanna Marie Parrish was a British tutor and language student from Newnham on Severn, Gloucestershire, England, who was murdered in the Burgundy region of France while working at a local school as part of her degree course in 1990. Parrish, a University of Leeds undergraduate who was studying French, disappeared on the night of 16–17 May after placing an advertisement in a local Burgundy newspaper offering private English lessons, and arranging to meet a man who it is believed contacted her with details of a potential student. Her naked body was found in the Yonne River in Monéteau a small town next to Auxerre the following day. She had been raped, beaten and strangled.
Martin Dumollard was a French serial killer condemned to the guillotine after having been arrested and charged with the deaths of maids from 1855 to 1861. His victims were approached in Lyon by Dumollard, who offered them a nice house in Côtière. Convinced, they would eventually follow him and, during their wanderings on foot, he attacked them. All twelve assaults or attempted assaults occurred in the late 1850s and early 1860s until that of Marie Pichon on May 28, 1861. He was quickly arrested, along with his wife and accomplice, Marie-Anne Martinet, who stole the personal belongings and used them for resale. Their trial took place from January 29 to February 1, 1862: Dumollard was sentenced to death and his wife, twenty years of penal labour. This affair, which preceded that of Joseph Vacher by about thirty years, had a great repercussion in France; it is often considered one of the first cases of a serial killer in France. Dumollard is notably mentioned in Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.
The Gare de Perpignan murders is a French criminal case. Between 1995 and 2001, four girls disappeared, and three were found dead in similar conditions. Authorities initially thought it was the work of a serial killer. In June 2015, three of the four disappearances were cleared up and involved two different murderers.
The Godard family disappearance, involved the disappearance of French doctor Yves Godard, his second wife and their two children in September 1999. Clues to the mystery were gradually discovered: traces of blood were found in the family home near Juvigny-sur-Seulles in Calvados, Lower Normandy. It was established that Godard and his two children departed on a sailing boat rented in Saint-Malo, Brittany, a few days before the discovery of the blood. During the course of the next few years, various objects were found on the north coast of Brittany or at sea: a lifeboat, identity papers, credit cards, the skull of one of the Godard children, and finally the bones of Godard himself. The case was closed on 14 September 2012.
Maëlys de Araujo was a French child who was last seen alive in the early morning of 27 August 2017 at a wedding in the Chambéry region of south-eastern France. Her remains were found on 14 February 2018 when Nordahl Lelandais, who admitted to killing her, led investigators to the area where he had disposed of the body. On 17 February 2022, Lelandais was sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnapping and murder of De Araujo.
Lucas Tronche was a French teenager who, at the age of 15, disappeared from his hometown of Bagnols-sur-Cèze in the Gard département of southern France. His skeletal remains were found in June 2021 near his home, in an area where he often went to collect rocks for his hobby in geology. The cause of death remains unknown.
Louis Poirson, nicknamed "Rambo", is a French rapist and serial killer.
Patrice Alègre (born 20 June 1968) is a French serial killer who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002 with a minimum term of 22 years for five murders, an attempted murder, and six rapes. He, subsequently, was acquitted of four additional murder charges on 3 July 2008.
The murder of Jonathan Coulom, also referred to as the Jonathan Affair, is a French criminal case in which the 10-year-old Coulom was abducted on the night of 7 April 2004 in Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, Loire-Atlantique. His body was found, bound with a cinderblock, in a pond in Guérande on 19 May 2004. German Martin Ney, a convicted serial killer of children in Germany has been charged with the crime as of 26 January 2021. He was transferred to the French city of Nantes from his high security prison cell in Germany to stand trial for the murder of Coulom.
Patrick Salameh, known as The Marseille Ripper, is a French criminal and serial killer.
