On October 16, 2024, it will be 40 years since the lifeless body of Grégory Villemin, 4 years old, was found in Vologne. One of France’s most famous unsolved criminal cases is inseparable from the infamous crow who harassed the victim’s family by mail and telephone for years.
Beyond this famous story, cases of anonymous letters are numerous in French judicial history and not only in criminal cases. France Bleu has identified emblematic cases and tried to understand what is going on in the head of a crow, with the help of a psycho-criminologist, Florent Gatheriaswhich created the Psycho-criminological Behavioral Analysis Unit of the Judicial Police.
Satisfy a frustration
Letters in capitals, counterfeit writing, words cut out from the press, use of a normograph ruler… there are many ways to conceal one’s identity in writing, but there is generally, behind the crow’s approach, a frustration. “Whether it is a love frustration, a financial frustration or a frustration about the social position that the individual can hope for”lists Florent Gathérias. The author, male or female, may want “reestablish a truth” or repair “a feeling of personal injustice”.
It is also a way “to gain power, to have importance by posing a threat”. Because the victim(s), even in cases where no crime is committed, feel a feeling of harassment, fear for themselves and their loved ones, especially if there is a repetition. Targets sometimes also experience “social shame” when the crow claims reveal hidden truths or delights in obscene insults and innuendos.
Sometimes the raven is completely external to a criminal case, but grafts itself onto it, in order to “to attract attention” on him. We will see it further in the disappearance of Lucas Tronche.
In most cases, notes Florent Gathérias, we are not dealing with people suffering from mental disorders, rather with generally introverted personalities who cannot express their difficulties, their frustrations or their aggressiveness socially and who find this means a safety valve. Likewise, the passage to criminal action is rather rare, the aggressiveness emitted through the anonymous letter sufficient for its author.
Look for motivations to unmask the culprit
Pour discover the authors anonymous letters or calls, forensic services have developed analysis methods, software and obviously use DNA. THE psycho-criminologist will endeavor to find the crow’s motivations by analyzing the content of the missives.
If he hides by concealing his identity, the crow must necessarily “direct” the reader. “There must still be a message within the letter for it to be useful”analyzes Florent Gatherias. “By definition”specifies the psychologist, the crow “denounces something in his letter, or accuses” and his accusation concerns something that concerns him, touches him. “Why does he feel touched? If we can say why, we can almost say who wrote” he concludes.
Crow stories: the origins of the expression, the Tulle crow
The Tulle crow affair dates back to immediately after the First World War. From 1917 to 1922, around a hundred anonymous, aggressive and filthy letters were addressed to residents of the Corrèze prefecture. The writer calls his victims “whores”, “thieves”denounces adultery and multiplies obscene insults. Psychosis reigns, the affair also makes the headlines of the national press. A prefectural official succumbs even after seeing his wife accused of being at the origin of the missives.
Originally, however, no volatile: the letters are signed “The Tiger’s Eye”. Their author, Angèle Laval, will be confused by the Lyon graphologist, Edmond Locard, inventor of the scientific police, who subjected the main suspects to dictation. The young woman, aged around thirty, rather self-effacing and not very expressive during her trial, had acted out of romantic spite. She was sentenced in December 1922 to a one-month suspended prison sentence and a hundred franc fine for defamation and public insults.
The case inspired the film The Raven by Henri-Georges Clouzot, released in 1944. Previously, we spoke of “anonymograph”. The feature film popularizes the term “crow”. But you should know that the origin of the expression dates back to Greek mythology : the nymph Coronis deceives Apollo who learns it from a white crow. The god has Coronis murdered. As for the bird of ill omen, it turns him black for eternity.
An extract from the legal file of the Raven of Tulle. © Maxppp – PHOTOPQR/LA MONTAGNE
Crows at the heart of criminal cases
The raven is at the heart of theGregory affairthis child drowned in the Vosges in 1984. One of the particularities is that there was probably not a single crow and that the threats were expressed by telephone and by mail to several members of the Villemin family. A thousand phone calls received between 1981 and 1984. Only a handful of letters, but one, posted on the day of the crime, claims responsibility for the murder of the little boy. All those who were accused in this investigation were suspected of having written letters. But Bernard Laroche is dead, killed by Jean-Marie Villemin, Christine Villemin was exonerated and the indictments of the couple Jacob, great-aunt and great-uncle canceled. The hope remains to unmask the crow based on new analyzes and progress in science.
One of the raven’s letters from the Grégory affair. © Maxppp
Also read
The 18/09/2024
Raven, family story, “little judge”: 40 years after the death of little Grégory, the affair and its twists and turns
A raven also appeared in the dark Godard affairthe story of this doctor from Tilly-sur-Seules (Calvados), who disappeared in September 1999 with his two children. In October 1999, a few weeks after the disappearance, the gendarmerie received two anonymous letters, the author of which was a woman, according to DNA. The raven claims that Doctor Godard is on the Isle of Man, between the United Kingdom and Ireland, then mentions another island in the north of Scotland. On site, a shopkeeper indicates that she saw the father and the two children. But the research of the French investigators came to nothing, because they did not have the authorization of their British colleagues.
Personal effects and human remains of Yves Godard and his daughter Camille have since been recovered at sea, without knowing what happened to the family. And the raven was never identified.
Also read
The 04/09/2024
Bones, crow, traces of blood: 25 years after the disappearance of Doctor Godard’s family, the mystery remains
In the Ardennes, in theAnaïs Guillaume affairthe letter from a so-called raven served as an unexpected revealer. Philippe Gillet, farmer, was convicted in 2019 for the death of his former apprentice and girlfriend whose body was not found at the time. He maintains his innocence. Before the appeal trial, a mysterious missive indicates where the victim’s remains are located, while exonerating the farmer. But we discover that it was Philippe Gillet’s daughter who wrote the letter under her father’s dictation. He then claims that the letter was given to him in prison and that he simply asked his daughter to rephrase it. However, the handwriting of the first letter is that of the accused.
Philippe Gillet still says he is innocent. He was sentenced on appeal to 30 years in prison for the death of Anaïs Guillaume, whose body was found thanks to his mail.
Also read
The 09/04/2021
Anaïs Guillaume affair: a new anonymous letter revealed at the trial, Victoria Gillet’s doubts
Opportunistic crows
In theLucas Tronche affairthis 16-year-old teenager who disappeared in 2015 in Gard, a crow sent eleven letters to the young boy’s parents, after hearing them on a radio show. Arrested in July 2016 and sentenced the following year to two years in prison, one of which was closed, the fifty-year-old claimed during his trial that he thought “do a service” by delivering reassuring messages: “Lucas is fine”, “he still loves you”. But little by little, the tone had changed, with the author of the letters questioning the quality of the investigation, even suggesting that Lucas refused to see his parents again.
Ultimately, the man was arrested after being filmed by video surveillance cameras at the postal sorting center. A judicial source, interviewed by the newspaper 20 Minutesbelieves that this episode “wasted investigators’ time”. In 2021, bones, debris and a cell phone found in the town of Bagnols-sur-Cèze established that Lucas had died.
In theGregory affair still, the twists and turns from 2017 have freed other crows: the couple Jacob, great-uncle and great-aunt of the little boy murdered in 1984, received two phone calls from a resident of Côtes-d’Armor who questioned them on the matter. Their indictments had just been canceled by the courts. A sixty-year-old who followed “the affair from its beginning”wanted “an explanation and more information on this file.” The same year, the attorney general of Dijon received threatening letters from a mysterious correspondent.
Also read
The 03/09/2019
Grégory affair: he called the Jacob couple to have “an explanation”
When the crow writes to the mayor, the firefighters, the President of the Republic…
There are many cases where crows have sent letters to multiple people over months, years, or even decades. Representatives of authority are the targets main sources of these malicious messages. This was the case, for example, in the years 2010 to Montreuil-Bonnina village of 700 inhabitants in Vienne, where a farmer harassed elected officials, while passing himself off as the mayor or former mayor. HAS Ortaffain the Pyrénées-Orientales, in 2023, anonymous letters have worsened an already difficult situation of financial debt.
In 2018, the “crow of Mayenne” was sentenced – at first instance – to 18 months of suspended prison time and probation for having sent 65 insulting and threatening letters. For nearly 20 years, this man, aged 66 at the time of the trial, targeted around fifty gendarmes, police officers, magistrates, but also individuals, particularly women. The defendant denied being the author of the anonymous letters, but he recognized certain letters addressed to personalities, including Nicolas Sarkozy. To a magazine journalist Special correspondent who questioned him about his motivations, he replied that he was “angry”but that writing was “better than using a gun.”.
Special envoy. Ravens, letters of shame – May 24, 2018 (France 2)
In the 2000s, the “crow of Guingamp” sent “thousands of letters considered “defamatory, outrageous and even pornographic” écrit The Parisianto residents of Côtes-d’Armor, but also to deputies, doctors, and to President Jacques Chirac. Who was he? A former psychiatrist from the Breton city, suffering from “paranoid delirium” according to Liberation. She was interned.
