A French serial killer appeared on a TV quiz show while police hunted him for the rape and murder of children and adults.
Francois Verove participated in the French quiz show Tout le monde veut pendre sa place (Everyone will take their place) in 2019, laughing and joking with the host while answering general knowledge questions, Times reports.
During his appearance on the quiz show, Verove appeared relaxed as he spoke to host Nagui Fam and received applause from the studio audience.
But the retired police officer was not just an ordinary citizen – Verove had been on the run from the police for more than 30 years at that point, hiding in plain sight.
Verove, 59, was described as an upstanding member of society in La Grande-Motte in southern France, where he lived with his wife and children.
His grisly past only came to light after he killed himself in 2021, and French police linked him to 31 rapes and murders in Paris.
Francois Verove (pictured) took part in French quiz show Tout le monde veut pendre sa place (Everyone wants to take their place) in 2019, laughing and joking with the host as he answered trivia questions
Back in 1986, the police had published a police sketch based on witness statements that showed a man of about 25 years of age, six meters tall with light brown hair and with visible traces of acne on his face
Among his other victims were aerospace engineer Gilles Politi, 38, and German au pair Irmgard Müller (pictured), 20, who were both killed in Paris in 1987
His TV appearance, revealed in the French news magazine Marianne, is seen as an indication that Verove did not try to hide his identity – despite police having a suspect sketch that looks like him, as well as a suspicion that the perpetrator is a police officer.
Verove was nicknamed ‘Le Grele’ or ‘The Pockmarked Man’ after a string of rapes and murders from the 1980s to 1994.
In his most infamous case, he was suspected of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl named Cecile Bloch, who was found dead in the basement of the Paris building where she lived in 1986. He is known to have raped at least two other children.
Among his other victims were aerospace engineer Gilles Politi, 38, and German au pair Irmgard Müller, 20, who were both killed in Paris in 1987.
He is also believed to have strangled a couple to death in the central Marais district of the capital in 1987.
Over the years, investigators came to believe that the suspect may have been part of the Gendarmerie – armed forces responsible for internal security – at the time of the crimes after victims said he had shown them his police badge.
Verove was a former gendarme who later became a police officer and then retired. He later became a municipal council member in the South of France.
Investigators established a DNA profile of the suspect, and in the months before his death in September 2021, an investigating judge had begun questioning about 750 gendarmes who had been deployed in the Paris region at the time.
One of them was Verove, who was sent a summons on 24 September to appear for questioning on 29 September, but was then reported missing by his wife three days after the summons.
He killed himself in a rented flat in Grau-du-Roi, a fishing village on the Mediterranean coast, leaving a written confession in which he told his wife he had ‘carried on a mad rage that turned me into a criminal’.
The note continued: ‘There were times when I couldn’t stand it and I had to destroy, defraud, kill an innocent.’
Verove also mentioned ‘past impulses’ in the letter, but added that he had since brought them ‘under control’.
In his most infamous case, Verove was suspected of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl named Cecile (pictured in an old photograph hugging a dog), who was found dead in the basement of the Paris building where she lived
Cecile Bloch (pictured above), 11, was found dead in the basement of the Paris building where she lived in 1986
Aviation technician Gilles Politi (pictured), 38, was killed by Francois Verove in Paris in 1987
He admitted to the murders without specifying the victims or the circumstances and said he had committed no crimes after 1997. The murder confession contained no details, prosecutors said.
Police took a DNA sample from his body and found it matched the genetic profile found at several of the crime scenes.
Back in 1986, the police had published a police sketch based on witness statements that showed a man of around 25 years of age, six meters tall with light brown hair and with visible traces of acne on his face.
A lawyer for Cecile’s family, Didier Seban, thanked the police for their work but also said it was ‘painful to know that the criminal took his secrets with him’.
His nickname ‘The Pockmarked Man’ dates back to the murder of Cecile. Her half-brother, Luc Richard, was among the residents who remembered seeing a man with an acne-scarred face on the day of the crime in their Paris apartment building.
The youth at the time, who helped police draw up a sketch of the suspect, said he shared a lift with the man who seemed ‘very confident’.
He recalled during an interview in 2015: ‘He said something to me like, “Have a very, very good day”.’
According to the newspaper Le Parisien, Verove is also suspected of another murder near Paris, of 19-year-old Karine Leroy, in 1994 in the city of Meaux.
His widow, who has not been named, said she never suspected her husband was leading a double life and had raped and murdered dozens of children and adults.
He told the host and studio audience about his career as a police officer, including how he patrolled the Bois de Boulogne park in Paris on horseback in the 1980s
In the recordings of his quiz show in 2019, Verove is introduced as ‘François from La Grande-Motte’
He was tasked with asking two general knowledge questions. The first was about which new sport would be included in the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Verove said it was squash, but the correct answer was breakdancing
She said that even after he was told to give a DNA sample along with the other hundreds of officers stationed in Paris in the 1980s when the attacks took place, his behavior remained unchanged.
On the day he killed himself, Verove made lunch, took his usual afternoon nap and told his wife he was going for a bike ride before his body was found in the rented apartment in a neighboring town.
In the recordings of his quiz show in 2019, Verove is presented as ‘François of La Grande-Motte’.
He told the host and the studio audience about his career as a police officer, including how he patrolled the Bois de Boulogne park in Paris on horseback in the 1980s.
He was tasked with asking two general knowledge questions. The first was about which new sport would be included in the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Verove said it was squash, but the correct answer was breakdancing.
He was then asked about tuberculosis vaccinations but failed to give BCG in response and was eliminated from the show.