|
'I
want justice for Joanna'
By Andrew Alderson in Auxerre and Kim Willsher
(Filed: 11/04/2004)
With its magnificent 13th-century cathedral, tree-lined boulevards
and broad river snaking through the town centre, Auxerre appears to be the
epitome of French rural tranquillity.
Surrounded by the vineyards and pastures of northern
Burgundy and nestling on the banks of the River Yonne, it has long been a
stop-off point for travellers journeying from Paris to the south of the
country.
|
|
|
Auxerre, where
Joanna was murdered 14 years ago
|
Yet it was in Auxerre, 14 years ago next month, that Joanna
Parrish, 20, a Leeds University language student, was raped and murdered a
week before she completed an eight-month stint as an assistant school
teacher.
And it is in this town of 40,000 residents today that a
scandal is unfolding that French lawyers predict could dwarf the alleged
cover-up that protected Marc Dutroux, the child torturer and killer, in
Belgium.
The unsolved murder case of Miss Parrish, a bright,
vivacious linguist, and the deaths and disappearance of 20 other young
women in the Auxerre area took a dramatic twist last weekend when the
French judiciary launched a murder inquiry into the death of a retired
police officer who had spent two decades trying to solve the crimes.
|
|
|
|
Joanna Parrish
|
Adjutant Christian Jambert was found dead at his home in
Auxerre in August 1997; he had been shot in the head. His death came two
weeks before he was due to make public his investigative findings.
Soon afterwards, Auxerre police announced that Mr Jambert,
56, had killed himself and pointed to a "suicide note" and his
history of depression. A local doctor concluded that he had died from a
single bullet to the head which had entered and left his skull in almost a
straight line.
At the time, Mr Jambert's son, Philippe, and daughter,
Isabelle, accepted the findings as they mourned the death of their father.
One woman, however, had deep concerns. Corinne Herrmann, a
French lawyer who had been representing some of the families of murder
victims since 1995, thought the timing of the death highly suspicious. Yet
without an autopsy and lacking the support of Mr Jambert's family or former
colleagues, there was little that she could do.
Last week, Mrs Herrmann sat in a Paris cafe on Boulevard St
Germain, and told how, four years ago, as part of her research into a book,
The Disappeared of the Yonne, she had finally obtained access to the police
file on Mr Jambert's death.
"I knew as soon as I read the file and saw the
photographs of the scene that he had been murdered," she said.
Eventually she persuaded Mr Jambert's children to have their father's body
exhumed.
The subsequent autopsy revealed that Mr Jambert had been
shot in the head not once but twice, thereby all but ruling out suicide.
Two days later, in the face of overwhelming evidence, French investigating
magistrates launched a murder inquiry: now it appears that Mr Jambert was
forced at gunpoint to write the "suicide note".
Philippe Jambert, 40, a decorator from Auxerre, said
yesterday: "I now believe my father was murdered and I am certain it
was linked to his investigation into 'the disappeared' and paedophiles
operating in the area."
Next month, Joanna's divorced parents, Roger Parrish and
Pauline Sewell, will make their annual journey back to Auxerre with renewed
hope of solving the murder of their daughter, who was known in the town as
la Belle Anglaise.
Mr Parrish, 60, a retired civil servant from
Newnham-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, said yesterday: "News of Christian
Jambert's murder was a bolt from the blue. Our visits have never been
pilgrimages: they have been fact-finding missions. We have never wanted
vengeance but we are seeking justice."
Joanna was abducted and killed on May 16, 1990. She was
saving to get married so had placed an advertisement in a local newspaper
in Auxerre offering English lessons. She told friends that she was meeting
a man who wanted her to give English lessons to his teenage son. Joanna's
naked and bound body was found by a fisherman the next morning in the River
Yonne in Moneteau, a village three miles north of Auxerre. She had been
raped, beaten and strangled.
When Mr Parrish and his then wife travelled to Auxerre, they
were struck by the lackadaisical nature of the police investigation. There
had been no appeal for witnesses, no release of a Photofit picture of the
suspect and, even after two "foreign" samples of DNA - semen and
hair - were found on the victim's body, no attempt to match it with local
men. Inquiries established that Joanna's murder was not isolated: a series
of unsolved abductions, sex attacks and murders dated back to the late
1970s.
It was Mr Jambert who, in 1979, first investigated the
disappearance of seven young mentally handicapped women from 1975 to 1979
whom he suspected had been sexually abused and killed by a local bus
driver, Emile Louis. Yet his evidence was rejected by senior officers, who
said that the young women had simply moved or run away.
The gendarme, however, refused to be deterred and pursued
his inquiries, eventually beyond his retirement. His suspicions that a
sadistic sex ring was operating were given credence when, in 1984, a girl
in her early twenties escaped after three months from a torture chamber in
a house at Appoigny, five miles from Auxerre.
A list of 50 clients, rumoured to include several French
"notables" who had paid various rates to torture and abuse two
naked, bound and masked women, was discovered by police, but this later
went missing from a court room in Auxerre. Only Claude Dunand, a factory
worker, his wife, Monique Michaud, who both lived in the house, and one
client were jailed. DNA tests showed that Dunand was not directly
implicated in Joanna's death.
In December 2000, Emile Louis was arrested on suspicion of
abduction and murder after three bodies were found near his home in
Rouvray, 10 miles from Auxerre. He initially confessed to seven murders but
later retracted the admissions. Louis, who will appear in court over the
murders later this year, was, however, sentenced to 20 years last month for
torturing and raping his second wife and her foster daughter. Louis was in
prison at the time of Joanna's death but the families of the victims
suspect that he and Dunand were two of many local sex criminals who
procured girls for their important "clients".
Last week, the police refused to discuss Mr Jambert's death
or the "Disappeared of the Yonne". But Monique Ollivier, the
acting prosecutor in Auxerres, said: "All the unsolved crimes,
including Joanna Parrish's murder, are being investigated."
On Thursday, Dominique Perben, the French justice minister,
launched an inquiry into the handling of Mr Jambert's death after meeting
his daughter and lawyers for the murder victims' families. Afterwards, Mrs
Herrmann said, "This really could be worse than the Dutroux
case," while another of the lawyers, Didier Seban, described the
episode as a "legal disaster".
Ludovic Berger, a crime reporter with Yonne Republicaine
newspaper for 12 years, said: "Claude Dunand [the convicted torturer]
has always said that politicians, industrialists and magistrates were
involved but he has refused to name them. There have been so many strange
events and so many questions. Now it is finally time to provide some
answers."
For publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this
page please phone 44 (0) 207 538 7505 or email syndicat@telegraph.co.uk
Previous story: Freeze-dried and then turned to powder: the new way to be buried
Next story: Text, lies and audiotapes
|
Search
For
