Hi everyone ! Today, we are going to visit the whole beautiful country of France on a road trip punctuated by murder and mayhem.How can I introduce today's subjects ? Let's say they are a couple who flourished in crime, only to know a tragic end. Kinda like Caril Fugate and Charles Starkweather, but without the youth and the family murder. And let's be honest, without the decent looks.
Beware of classified ads
Our case begins on December 27th, 1985, at the train station of Barbezieux, in the Charente region. 25-year-old Martine Rénéric is waiting for the couple who posted a classified ad in the newspaper looking for an ambulance driver. She's sure that everything is going to be okay, since she has the skills required and her father is with her as backup.She's right for a while. The couple arrives, and they all go eat dinner in a nice restaurant. The couple doesn't look or sound shady at all, so Martine's dad goes home. Big mistake.
Martine goes back with the couple to their place to negotiate a contract, and once in the place, everything goes to shit. The husband threatens her with a gun, forces her to undress, jams a cloth in her mouth, binds her and rapes her all night long. He also tortures her, beating her and torturing her with cigarettes, while his wife shouts "Come on, she's obviously a slut". At dawn, the wife steals Martine's credit card and goes to an ATM to withdraw everything she can.Once she gets back, Martine is allowed to put her clothes back on. Adding absurdity to injury, the couple eats breakfast with their victim before making her pose nude for pictures.Once they're done, they pack their shit in their Renault 25, apologize to Martine for everything (yeah, thanks, assholes), give her money for a train ticket and drop her off at the train station.
Martine barely waits for the train to stop before getting out and running to the nearest police station and telling everything. Thanks to her and her father's testimony, the cops manage to get a description of the couple and their car, which they transform into a composite sketch soon sent to all nearby precincts.They quickly get images of suspects, and Martine immediately recognizes Jocelyne Bourdin and Marc Fasquel, who become wanted criminals. But who are they ?
Nobody saw them coming
Marc Fasquel was born on March 15th, 1947 in La Chaussée-Tirancourt, a little village in the North where it's always cold and even the cows are bored. Little Marc grows up in an upper middle class family, he's getting good grades at school, everything is going well in his little rural life. That is until Janet Marshall, an English teacher, is found dead in a bog behind Marc's house. All the kids assume that the killer is still in the bog, because kids have wild imaginations, and Marc's underwear is harder to wash for a while. Further adding to the Silent Hill general mood, the autopsy is performed in the playground of Marc's school, for a reason which will elude us far better than Marc in this case.Despite all that, Marc seems to be doing okay, and grows up just fine. However, once he reaches adulthood, he suddenly starts stealing and scamming like he's the puppy of Wall Street.
Regarding Jocelyne Bourdin, she was born on Paril 8th, 1956 in the town of Montbéliard. Her family was clearly not as rich as Marc's, and when she's 17 years old her dad dies and she has to start working. At no point so far has she expressed any weird ideas, she's simply a woman set on feeding her family, but apparently there was a storm brewing.
The two meet in Besançon in 1976, and sparks fly immediately. Jocelyne doesn't mind at all Marc's criminal habits, and leaves everything to become the Bonnie to his Clyde. The new couple goes on a road trip paid for by all the stealing and scamming imaginable. Their first and only child is born in 1977, and things get more complicated, which leads to the two criminals' arrest in 1978. Marc is incarcerated, while Jocelyne and her baby are placed in a refuge. Things could end there, but then the world would be a better place, and this isn't what life is about. Marc escapes from prison, and the road trip resumes, without the baby this time. Don't worry, the couple has the spirit, but they lack the brain capacity. That's why they get arrested again in 1982. Marc is sentenced to 7 years in prison, and Jocelyne gets 5, and they somehow both get paroled in 1985, because everything is broken in this world. Free as the wind inside their skulls, the couple decides to take the road trip to another level.
Jocelyne Bourdin and Marc Fasquel
An evil mess
Marc et Jocelyne have barely put distance between them and Martine, their first victim, when they decide to strike again. They rent another house, and lure in 18-year-old Christine Jouan with another job proposition. The rape and torture lasts for 3 hours, before they decide to share a meal with their victim. After that, they give her money to buy a train ticket and disappear again. It's important to add that throughout this case, the investigators will come close to arresting the couple, but the police cars at the time weren't made for high-speed chases, which resulted in terrible humiliations each time. Having several hundreds of police officers looking for them doesn't scare our two French devils who, soon after leaving the Charente region, abduct Bernadette Bloriot as she is about to enter her home, in broad daylight. She is freed the next day, but the next victim won't be so lucky. On February 3rd, 1986, the couple abducts Geneviève Godart, a 38-year-old widow, as she was loading her groceries into her car in a supermarket parking lot near the city of Amiens. Her body is found the next day a few miles away. Not only does it have the usual traces of torture (I fucking hate this), but the torso also has a female shoe print. Amiens' gendarmes joins the chase, but the couple has already vanished. A few days later, Jocelyne and Marc are in Gensac, a little town in the Tarn-et-Garonne region. They sadly come across Christine Morros, who is getting out of a cigarette shop. Her body is found not long after. A national arrest warrant is emitted after this murder, which allows any army or police officer to track and arrest the couple. The end is near.
Four is a crowd
As if to prove that they are really really stupid, Jocelyne and Marc decide to wait until they are in a very dangerous position to bite more than they can chew.On February 11th, 1986, they kidnap Josette Fourneau, a 40-year-old nurse, and torture her for a whole afternoon in the forest. Josette manages to save her life by making small talk with her torturers (she is so brave, I'm not even kidding), and as the sun comes down she is allowed to call her family to tell them she's okay. The trio goes to Vic-en-Bigorre to find a phone booth. Sadly, the plans change completely when they find one. As they get close to it, Marc sees 27-year-old Geneviève Tujague, and can't help himself. He gets out of the car and kidnaps her immediately. Now the couple has two hostages, and they quickly realize that it's hard to handle. As a result, they free Josette in a field. Sadly, this means that they are now free to torture Geneviève, which they do all night long. At dawn, they take breakfast with her in a hotel before dropping her off at the train station with money for a train ticket. Luckily, she gets to tell her story to the gendarmes before the couple gets too far, which allows the net to come down.
The end of the road
Everybody in France knows the faces of Jocelyne and Marc, and everywhere they go, the cops get a phone call.That's how, on February 14th, 1986, the couple are trapped on a road with police barrages all around. Marc tries to get away by going Fast&Furious on the cops, but this time it doesn't work. The police officers immediately start shooting and he's hit 7 times. Jocelyne gets out of the car screaming "It's not fair, it's not fair", and if you just rolled your eyes, prepare yourself because we still have the trial to go through.Anyway, she is arrested and Marc dies before arriving to the hospital.
The trial and the fuckery
Jocelyne
Jocelyne is indicted for absolutely everything, and she tries to pull the old "I'm just a fragile and scared woman, it was all Marc's fault". Yeah, that might have worked if she didn't spend the whole reconstitution of the crimes knitting in the police car, probably thinking about all the fucks she can't bring herself to give. Between that and the testimonies of the surviving victims, she's done for. Or is she ?On May 20th, 1989, she is sentenced to 20 years in prison, with no parole for 13 years. And in 1999, she...well...she's granted parole. Yeah, she gets out. And she's still out right now. No one knows where she is, or what she's doing, we just know that she is out there. Great...
That's it for today ! Tell me what you think about this case (especially about Jocelyne being free, I can't be the only one bothered by that) on Twitter (@ElsaEtc) or Reddit (r/Murder_Wine_Cheese). I hope you have a nice Christmas !
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