Hi guys, I hope you’re doing well, considering how the world is going to shit. Seriously, I hope you’re okay.
With that being said, let’s jump into the case. Today, I’m going to tell you about the horrific life and crimes of Jacquy Haddouche.
An unstable child in a violent family
Jacquy Haddouche’s parents, Djouber and Ahmed, are Algerian. His father was a soldier in the French army during the Algerian war. We don’t know the details of his feats of arm, but we do know that he got evacuated to France, along with his family, in 1962, and ended up in northern city of Beauvais. The whole family settled down, and Ahmed started working in a Lockheed factory.
If you think that these are the only hardships the Haddouche family will go through, you’re sadly wrong.
Ahmed is a very angry and violent man, to the point where he eventually loses his job.
Jacquy pops into this excellent situation on February 19th, 1964. He’s the third out of twelve children. He quickly grows up and becomes an intelligent, sensitive…unstable, aggressive, impulsive, intolerant, manipulative, impatient child.
He causes so much trouble that authorities place him in a reformatory in 1979. That doesn’t help much, since he regularly runs back to his family, which is about to explode in a particularly violent manner.
Ahmed, faced with divorce proceedings started by Djouber, shoots himself in front of Jacquy in 1980. He is splattered with his father’s blood, and the violent man’s dead body falls into the unstable teenager’s arms. Everything is forever broken.
Traumatized, Jacquy falls into drugs and violence.
The first crimes
A year later, Jacquy goes from petty crimes to full-on evil. He participates in a gang rape, and is sentenced to 5 years in detention. He says about this horrible act : “It was a hookup, that’s all. An orgy that went sideways.” Sure, after all the words “Yes” and “No” are so confusing. They even sound the same, am I right ?
As soon as he gets released, he gets arrested again for a series of assaults, some with a deadly weapon, and armed robbery.
Despite this long rap sheet and the fact that he is incarcerated, he manages to charm a woman long enough to get married, and thus get his sentenced reduced. The marriage lasts 8 months, and his now ex-wife has nothing but regrets regarding this relationship. I can’t blame her, can you ?
When Jacquy gets out of prison, he goes right back to his criminal ways. Did he know at the time that he was about to do the unthinkable ?
Gilles
On November 30th, 1992, as the evening begins in Beauvais, Jacquy meets Gilles Canette in an elevator. Gilles, a divorced and depressed 45-year-old teacher, takes a shine to Jacquy and ends up inviting him back to his apartment, where they continue their conversation. Around 7pm, two of Gilles’ students come by to say hi, and they notice that Jacquy is looking everywhere in the apartment, like he is casing it. The two teenagers leave after an hour, leaving Gilles alone with Jacquy. However, Jacquy doesn’t plan on staying for long.
He poisons Gilles using Tercian, an antipsychotic drug, and suffocates him. At midnight, he uses his credit card at an ATM (which will become suspicious for investigators since Gilles always withdraws money inside the bank). On December 1st, he finds the two students, who have now become witnesses, and threatens them to keep them silent.
On the same day, Gilles’ body is found on his bed by his cleaning lady.
The police is obviously called, and investigators quickly find Jacquy’s fingerprint on a bottle. He is brought to the police station and interrogated, and recognizes that he indeed visited Gilles’ place, but not on November 30th. According to him, he was near Paris with his girlfriend on that day. Speak of the devil…His girlfriend, Cloé, walks into the station at this very moment. She confirms Jacquy’s alibi, but she categorically refuses to answer any of the investigators’ questions, and quickly leaves the police station.
Later in the day, once he is back in his cell, Jacquy attempts suicide by slicing his wrists, and is hospitalized. That buys him time, and at the end of the authorized custody period, he is released without charges because of the lack of evidence.
The case is closed without Gilles’ family ever knowing that Jacquy was put in custody. They thus end up believing that the teacher’s death was an accident, and Jacquy is free to go back to his criminal ways, which he immediately does.
In 1993, he is sentenced to six months in prison for burglary. But he doesn’t plan on stopping there. Now, stealing isn’t enough.
Francine
In May 1995, Jacquy engages a conversation and gets acquainted with a group of friends in a bar in Beauvais. Among these friends, there is Francine, an academic director who works in a medicoeducational institute.
The next month, Jacquy appears on Francine’s doorstep and demands a coffee. However, Francine doesn’t submit to his entitlement at first and closes the door on him. Instead of giving up like a normal person, Jacquy starts loudly banging his fist against the door until Francine gives up and lets him in.
Now in the apartment, Jacquy starts complaining about his day, which he spent working at the Méru hospital according to him. Probably already annoyed, Francine offers him the coffee he wanted, and tells him to leave as soon as he is done drinking it. However, Jacquy doesn’t leave, and starts complaining again. This time, it’s about Colette, his former girlfriend, who went back to her ex. The conversation is basically a monologue, but sadly Jacquy still doesn’t leave after he is done talking.
He brings Francine to her room, and rapes her before finally leaving. Horrified, Francine immediately throws the bed sheets away and cleans the whole apartment with bleach, but it isn’t enough to make Jacquy disappear from her life. He calls and stalks her relentlessly for weeks, sometimes waiting for her in front of her door. Francine, terrified, doesn’t press charges and falls into a deep depression.
All of that suffering isn’t enough for Jacquy, who doesn’t wait long before going after other people.
In 1996, he is sentenced to three, four and six months in prison for theft, aggravated theft and forgery.
In 1997, he is sent back to prison for two years for fraud and aggravated theft.
In 1998, he goes down again for six years for a violent robbery case in which he tried to poison his victim with medication.
Isabelle
In June 2002, Jacquy is out of prison and back in Beauvais. He reconnects with Isabelle, a woman he had met in 1991. They begin a relationship, which is far from idyllic. One evening, Jacquy is drunk and hits Isabelle in front of her daughter. The next day, he calls her and asks her to bring him some heart medication, claiming that he is on death’s door. Isabelle accepts, and when she arrives at his place, he rapes her.
Once again, this horrible act isn’t enough, and Jacquy commits his second murder the same month.
Léo
On June 20th, 2002, around 7pm, Jacquy enters the SONACOTRA hostel in Beauvais’ Argentine neighborhood. That’s where Léo Capon, a 73-year-old grandmother who left Amiens to be closer to her daughter and her grandchildren, lives.
Jacquy forcibly enters her studio, beats her to the point where she is unrecognizable, and slits her throat. After that, he goes through the apartment and steals worthless items and some food.
Not long after Jacquy left, Léo’s daughter starts being worried about not being able to contact her mother and goes to the hostel. She goes up to Léo’s studio, and is surprised to find the door unlocked. She enters, and finds the apartment ransacked. There is blood on the floor, and trash bags near the door. It sadly doesn’t take long for her to find her mother’s body in the bathroom, her face covered with cardboard. The building custodian, immediately alerted, calls the police.
The investigators quickly arrive on the scene, and find a hunting knife. However, they can’t recover any fingerprint or DNA trace. The building’s surveillance cameras are also examined, and they show a balding man entering without a hat and leaving with one, as well as with several bags. However, the man can’t be identified because of the quality of the images.
After further searches, a male DNA is finally found in Léo’s studio and entered into the police database, but no match is found in the FNAEG (Automated National File of Genetic Prints)
Jacquy remains free, free to continue his spree.
Liliane D.
On July 4th, 2002, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Jacquy breaks into Liliane D.’s apartment. He violently beats the bar owner, and tries to rape her before leaving with the bar’s proceeds from the night.
Sylvain
On July 15th, Jacquy is down in Saint-Etienne. He goes into a bar and starts a conversation with another client. During this chat, he pretends to be an computer scientist, but later he tells the bartender that he is a physiotherapist. And as he is enjoying his drink, Jacquy starts talking to Sylvain Rome, 32-year-old cameraman. Sylvain talks to Jacquy about his professional goals, and Jacquy tells him that he has contacts that could help him.
The two men leave the bar together around 4pm. Sylvain buys a couple of drinks from a store near his place, where he ends up taking Jacquy.
About an hour later, Sylvain’s friend David rings the doorbell, but Sylvain makes him understand that he is not welcome right now, so he leaves.
Now nothing stands in Jacquy’s way, and he poisons Sylvain with Bromazepam, a tranquilizer, before stabbing him to death. He then cleans the apartment and leaves with his victim’s checkbook, cellphone, ID, and keys.
Sylvain’s father finds his body on July 27th. Investigators soon find that Sylvain didn’t take any tranquilizers in his daily life, so the case is considered a homicide, and a composite sketch is done according to the testimonies of the bartender and the clients of the bar who saw Jacquy and Sylvain.
The investigators also explore the possibility of the killer being present at the local sport competition that Sylvain filmed before his death. Indeed, some of the witnesses said that the suspect claimed to be a physiotherapist, so investigators think that there’s a chance that he was in the staff for this competition. However, nobody in the participating clubs recognize the person depicted on the sketch.
Finally, the muder zone’s phone records are examined, in vain. Once again, Jacquy remains free.
Nathalie
At the end of August 2002, Jacquy is back in Beauvais and seduces a woman named Nathalie by pretending to be a local doctor. She agrees to take him into her place (so he’s a doctor who can’t afford a hotel ?) and after a week, as they are having a drink, Jacquy drugs her. Nathalie ends up in the hospital, and Jacquy disappears with her credit card and her income support check.
The month after that, he contacts Francine again. This time, she has the courage to press charges against him for the 1995 rape (who cares about the time it took, I’m glad she did it and I’m proud of her).
Liliane M.
On September 13th, in the Argentine neighborhood, 82-year-old Liliane Michaud is slowly coming back from the supermarket, helped by her walker. As she is about to arrive in front of her house, Jacquy appears and violently assaults her before running away with her wallet.
The police is called, and Liliane manages to describe the culprit to the investigators. When they give this description to the supermarket’s security officers, they immediately recognize Jacquy, who is known as the neighborhood menace.
Police officers start looking for him, but they don’t have any address on file, so they look for him in the streets of Beauvais. They end up finding and following him, thus obtaining his address.
On September 30th, a convocation letter is sent to his house, but Jacquy doesn’t show up. He’s on the run.
The arrest
On October 2nd, around 3am, Jacquy tries to break into the Nîmes train station by breaking a window, but he is spotted by a security guard and runs. The police starts looking for him and soon find him. He is drunk and resists his arrest. When asked about his identity, he claims to be a physiotherapist named Saïd. (What’s up with him and physiotherapy ? Seriously I haven’t found anything related to physiotherapists in his history.) This lie doesn’t help him much, since the investigators quickly find out his real identity when they run his fingerprints through the FNAEG. They also discover that he is wanted in Beauvais, and send him back to his hometown.
Once he is back in Beauvais, his apartment is searched and investigators find some of Léo Capon’s belongings. Jacquy accuses his neighbor of breaking into his place to place the objects there. This accusation is actually a confession, because his neighbor tells investigators that he believes Jacquy broke into his apartment on the day of Léo’s murder, and that he saw come home drunk with blood on the back of his raincoat. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to believe the neighbor.
On December 3rd, Jacquy is indicted for Léo’s murder, which he continues to deny.
Soon after that, he is convicted of the assault on Liliane Michaud and is sentenced to 8 years in prison.
As the investigation progresses, the Gilles Canette case is reopened. In 2003, his former girlfriend Cloé admits that she lied about Jacquy’s alibi in 1992. Now the prime suspect again, Jacquy is indicted for theft and assault resulting in death.
On October 31st, 2006, Jacquy sends a letter to the judge in charge of his case. In that letter, he claims that the two students that came to Gilles’ apartment on the night of his murder are the culprits. These students, now adults, are found and they immediately tell investigators what really happened.
At this case is unfolding, almost all of the other cases in which Jacquy is implicated are revealed. Faced with the scale of Jacquy’s evil, the judge decides to broadcast a notice in the whole country to find out if there are other cases to attribute to him. That’s how the investigators in Saint-Etienne finally get a lead regarding the murder of Sylvain Rome. They examine Jacquy’s history, and they find his name in the phone records that they had previously examined.
Jacquy is brought back to Saint-Etienne, where the witnesses from the bar identify him. He is placed in custody there, and explains that he came to Saint-Etienne to see family members and that he doesn’t know anything about Sylvain Rome. Despite these claims, he is indicted. He later admits that he met Sylvain, but still denies going to his apartment.
When it comes to Francine, Jacquy admits meeting her, but denies going to her home. According to him, she is accusing him because he didn’t give her the drugs she asked him for. Suuuuuuuuure…..
The trial
On March 26th, 2007, the trial for the murder of Sylvain Rome begins at the Saint-Etienne criminal court. During this trial, Jacquy denies everything. He is on anti-anxiety medication, so he has trouble paying attention. He ends up being sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison. Jacquy immediately files an appeal, but he eventually gives up on it.
The same year, the trial for the murders of Gilles Canette and Léo Capon and the rape of Francine is postponed because of the Beauvais bar’s strike and Jacquy’s lawyers disagreement against the choice of Senlis as the trial location.
The trial finally begins in spring 2008. Jacquy continues to deny everything, and doesn’t answer any of the victims’ families’ questions. Regarding Léo Capon, he claims that he found the old lady already dead when he broke into her studio : “I might have committed theft, but I didn’t kill her !”
Léo’s daughter testifies : “This gaping wound that my mother has in her neck, my children and I have it in the heart. For me, it won’t stop bleeding before a long time.”
Jacquy isn’t moved by this declaration. In fact, according to the experts who examined him, he is a cold and narcissistic psychopath. He is a calculating megalomaniac with a strong desire for power.
At the end of trial, Jacquy is sentenced to 22 years to life, with 20 years of social and legal supervision as well as an order to undergo treatment. He appeals his sentence, but he loses in March 2009. He then files an appeal with the French Supreme Court, but this appeal is dismissed.
It’s the end of Jacquy Haddouche, in more ways than one. Indeed, on October 23th, 2010, he dies from a cerebral hemorrhage in the Fresnes prison. Maybe his brain was tired of carrying all this deviance…
Anyways, that’s the end of this case ! If you would like to find out about other French cases or discuss this one, you can do so in the Facebook group, on the Facebook page, or on Instagram, Reddit, and Tumblr.
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