Inside the Mind of a Killer
by Jean-François Abgrall with Samuel Luret
translated by Ros Schwartz
Profile Books
Like many books written "from the inside" about the hunt for a serial killer, Jean-François Abgrall's memoir of the capture and conviction of Francis Heaulme, one of France's most infamous serial killers, is sold on the basis of providing special insight not merely into the investigation but into the mind of the killer. The book opens in May 1989, when an urgent telex reaches the Rennes gendarmerie's criminal investigation unit. There has been a murder on Moulin Blanc beach, near Brest. Thus we are catapulted into Abgrall's involvement in the case that, one suspects, will define his life.
The action begins at a cracking pace. Abgrall's account of the initial case — the murder at Moulin Beach, Heaulme's initial presentation to the police, his apparently cast-iron alibi (he was recorded as having his temperature taken in a distant hospital at exactly the time the murder was committed) — is a compelling read. After it becomes apparent that Heaulme is the perpetrator, the book becomes routine. The strange dance between Abgrall and Heaulme is slower, more drawn out.
It may be the translation, but there's a bare quality to the prose that, while perhaps preferable to the more lurid tactics used by other true crime books to lure the reader in, begins to drag. The events become reduced to a series of interrogations in institutional rooms and to trips around France for further inconclusive meetings with Heaulme. But, what should a reader expect? Dazzling Nabokovian prose stylings? Blood-drenched grand guignol? Bare prose may be the only appropriate approach to the story of a serial killer, a murderer at the opposite of the aesthetic scale of Geroge Orwell's "Decline of the English Murder" and Thomas de Quincey's "Murder Considered One of the Fine Arts." A serial killing lacks the glamorous impedimenta of the society murder or the drunken passion of the fatal pub brawl. It is killing at its nakedest — sordid, unjust, banal.
As with many memoirs, there are scores to be settled. Abgrall uses nicknames — "J.R.," "Pedro" — rather than identifying individuals by name when discussing fellow policemen who felt the Heaulme connection was a waste of time, yet his bitterness at the marginalizing of his investigation is obvious. One would need to read an account of the case from a non-participant to gather a more nuanced view. There's a little too much of the heroic one-man-against-the-system air about the book. (Abgrall has now left the official police force and is a private detective. If you care to hire him, you can visit his site at www.abgrall-jf.com.)
Abgrall's work is more sober, more serious and more subtle than the usual true crime fare, yet it fails to bring us, as the title promises, inside Heaulme's mind. Abgrall tells us much about Heaulme's simultaneous need to talk, manipulate and obfuscate, his transposition of details of "foul-ups," and his tendency to tantalize interrogators with details of other crimes that hadn't even been mentioned to him. But why? Psychiatrists and psychologists testify in court to a possible diagnosis of Klinefelter Syndrome (the possession of an extra Y chromosome), invoked only for the idea that it absolved Heaulme of criminal responsibility to be dismissed. We read conflicting accounts of Heaulme's background, yet none rises above the usual chatter of contemporary press coverage of a murder trial. We learn that Abgrall established a rapport with Heaulme, possibly simply because their first names are similar, yet we don't get much of a look into that relationship.
The epilogue is largely unexceptional stuff about the need for a multidisciplinary approach to serial murder cases, but the final paragraph belies the thrust of most of the book: "Today, I have moved on. And yet there is a question I still ask myself: is prison really the right place for Francis Heaulme?" Throughout the book Abgrall's emphasis has been against the various defense counsel's attempts to cast doubt on Heaulme's responsibility. The tantalizing final sentence is left hanging. What does Abgrall think? We're not told. More to the point, from the preceding 260 pages, we can't answer that question ourselves, either.
— Seamus Sweeney (seamus.sweeney@campus.ie)
