As always, let us review France’s legal system; France runs on the Civil Law system which is unlike the American law system that run on common law. The basis of French law is off of the Napoleon Code originally drawn up in 1804. There are two branches of law in the France droit prive (Private Law) and droit public (Public Law). French courts are headed by a Juges (judges or magistrates). Criminal court proceedings can have a juge d’instuction (judge of inquiry) who is in charge of conducting investigative hearings the precede a criminal trial. A juge d’instuction can decide if a criminal trial will even take place.
Our crime story takes place in Lépanges-sur-Vologne which is a small town in the east of France with a population in 2017 of 805. It is kind of between Strasbourg and Dijon, France. In reality, the French only know of this town because of this case. Located in the Vologne Valley, Lépanges-sur-Vologne is vast with hill and just a quintessential small French town where everyone knew everyone and their business.
In 1984, Gregory Villemin was a four-year-old little boy and the son of Jean-Marie and Christine Villemin. Gregory Villemin had a vast extended family that all lived in his small town some of which were jealous of Jean-Marie’s new position as a foreman at his job, he was the boss or in French “le chef”. Jean-Marie and Christine had built a nice new house on the outskirts of town. Jean-Marie supposedly rubbed people the wrong way by bragging about his job, how much money he made, his new house and hot wife. Jean-Marie had made some enemies in and outside of his family. There was definite tension and jealousy for Christine and Jean-Marie by the rest of the Villemin family.
An odd fact to note since 1981 Christine and Jean-Marie along with other family members started receiving threatening phone calls and letters from a man with a hoarse voice. The phone calls were not the best quality and you could not even tell if the caller was male or female. The letters and calls were threatening vengeance against Jean-Marie. They eventually started calling the caller “the Raven”. The calls were silent at first then became malicious and threatening, the Raven made verbal threats. Whoever was writing these letters knew personal details about Jean-Marie and his family. The main target if the Raven though seemed to be Jean-Marie’s parents, Monique, and Albert who the Raven knew very personal details about their life. It was unsettling. The identity of the Raven is still unknown to this day, but there is speculation that it is someone inside the Villemin family and possibly a woman and a number of people. There also started to be physical threats, one evening the window of Jean-Marie’s house was broken while Christine and Gregory were inside and the tires of his car were punctured. On May 17, 1983, the letters started the threat Gregory specifically.
On Tuesday, October 16, 1984, around 4:55 pm Christine, leaves work a pickup Gregory from his nanny. Once they returned home Christine said she put on a cap on Gregory’s head because he was cold and allowed him to play outside on a dirt mound in front of their house. She goes inside to iron and turns up the radio to a loud volume, the shutters of the house are closed. At 5:20 pm she goes outside to check on Gregory, but he not in their front yard and panics, she gets in car thinking Gregory wandered off, as she drives she asks her neighbors if they had seen Gregory which they state that they had not. She also goes back to the nanny’s house to see if she had Gregory which she did not. Meanwhile, a letter was posted at the post office that demanded Gregory to be killed at 5:15 pm, the letter was received by the Villemin’s the next day.
While Christine is panicking looking for her son, around 5:27 pm or 5:32 pm Jean-Marie’s brother Michel Villemin received a phone call from the Raven who says “I have taken the boy of the chef, I have thrown him into the Vologne (which is a river)”. There has been debate if this phone call even happened but anyway Michel alerted the rest of the Villemin family about the call around 5:30 pm. Around 5:50 pm the police are alerted about the missing boy. The police and family search the woods behind the house, as well as the river to look for Gregory.
At 9:15 pm Gregory was found pressed against a dam in the Vologne river in the town of Docelles which is seven kilometers downstream from Lépanges-sur-Vologne. There was rope the bond his hands on his stomach as well as the rope on his neck and feet. The autopsy showed no signs of violence, no bruising (even by the cords). His mouth and nose are covered with foaming saliva, and his lungs only had a small amount of water in them. But the medical examiner determined that Gregory’s cause of death was drowning (which makes no sense from what was found in the autopsy) and the manner of death was a homicide. There is a famous, heartbreaking photo of them pulling Gregory out of the river by a freelance journalist, it was published in newspapers the next day and upset the French public, understandably. The media attached on to this case immediately and hundreds of reporters ascended upon Lépanges-sur-Vologne.
The letter that the Raven posted the day of Gregory’s murder arrived to Jean-Marie the next day and read “I hope that you will die of grief the chief. It is not your money that can give you back your son. This is my revenge. Poor asshole.” On Wednesday 17th, October 1984 a juge d’instuction was named. Remember a juge d’instuction is someone who is in charge of conducting investigative hearings the precede a criminal trial. A juge d’instuction can decide if a criminal trial will even take place. The juge d’instuction was Jean-Michel Lambert. Jean-Michel was young, only 32 years old at the time, not very well experienced and naïve. The media even called Judge Lambert, Le Petit Juge or the small Judge. The crazy thing about Judge Lambert, he could not keep his mouth shut, he told everything he knew to the media in press conferences. There is a reason why details of a case should be kept secret, whether for the family or not to hurt the prosecution in a case, it should be kept secret but Lambert wanted his 15 minutes of fame. From the start the case was not handled in the best manner, first, the cause of death I don’t think was determined correctly, it has been quoted that the autopsy was “incomplete and sloppy” and you have a young judge in charge of an investigation that took France by storm.
The first days of the investigation saw traces of tire marks and the imprint of a women’s shoe on the edge in the Vologne river. Members of the Villemin family were subjected handwriting and voice tests to determine who the Raven was. A composite sketch was created of the man who mailed the letter the night of the murder. He is described as being 40 years old, heavy build, wearing glasses with long brown hair, this is later determined to be a man who owned the café next door. Christine and Jean-Marie hire a top-notch lawyer and take legal action to have access to the file about the investigation. There is a reconstruction on the crime with a mannequin and they determine where Gregory was thrown into the river, which was probably behind the fire station in Docelles. A writing expert from Paris determines the Raven is Bernard Laroche, who is a cousin of Jean-Marie’s but grew up with his more like a brother because they lived in the same house. Bernard along with his wife Marie-Ange was arrested but then released the next day after and alibi was provided but I found Marie-Ange did not show up to her job the day of the murder and the day after. Marie-Ange started to show an unhealthy obsession with the case and investigation. Also, by the river, an empty vile on insulin was found and a hypodermic needle was found. Now keep this in mind because a character who I am going to talk about in a minute Murielle. Her mother was diabetic. An insulin overdose who leaves a young child unconscious and would not show up on the autopsy, but we know the autopsy was a sham anyway.
Murielle Bolle was Marie-Ange’s 15-year-old sister who lived with her, Bernard, and their child, Sebastian who was only 10 days younger than Gregory but had to be constantly cared for because he had a permanent drain due to a cyst on his brain. Murielle was a redhead who is noted as having low intelligence and craved attention. Murielle told the police that on the day of Gregory’s murder Bernard picked her up from school a bit early, then drove to Jean-Marie’s house where Bernard picked up Gregory then drove to the Vologne River. Gregory was a very shy and timid child, so the theory was that Gregory was taken by someone he knew. After Murielle told this story to Judge Lambert, Bernard is arrested and Lambert says that the case is solved! Note: the arrest of Bernard was filmed which is a big no here in France. It is even against the law to take pictures of a suspect in handcuffs because you do not want to already suede the public’s opinion. But that did not stop the media and “LaRoche, Murderer” was all over the newspapers. The motive for Bernard, jealousy for Jean-Marie.
But then Murielle goes back on her statement, stating the police coerced and pushed the statement out of her, but Judge Lambert dismissed this claim and stuck with that Bernard had killed Gregory. Murielle went back that Bernard did not even pick her up from school, she took the bus home. But when she described the bus driver, she described the wrong one and the driver insisted Murielle was not on the bus that afternoon. Something crazy that happened was after Murielle’s questioning, she was returned home with her sister. Yeah, the wife of the man she just accused of murder. No wonder she went back on her statement. The judge took no precaution of isolating her from her family. But then Murielle flip-flopped again and stuck to her first version of the story. But then she took back her statement again telling the media "My brother-in-law, he is innocent ... it was a trap and I fell into it ... five hours, I was on the bus ... I was afraid of the gendarmes ... they took advantage of being alone ... My brother-in-law, he is innocent ... The gendarmes told me that Bernard had said that and that if I didn't say that they would put me in a reformatory”.
But then the case took a 180 turn, three different people reported to the police that Christine was seen driving into the town the day of the murder around 5 pm and even went to the post office. Christine became a new suspect, the writing experts even determined that the Raven’s handwriting had an 80% match to Christine. Christine is interrogated by police for nine hours, and she discovers a few months after the murder she is pregnant with her second child. She becomes so stressed from the investigation that she collapses then spends weeks in the hospital after.
Not listening to advice from the prosecutor Judge Lambert releases Bernard from prison though the charges were not dropped. Now the media was nuts about this case and even hid in the Laroche, Bolle’s, and Villeman’s house to record conversations. A journalist somehow manages to get ahold of Murielle’s confession and plays the tapes to Gregory’s father Jean-Marie. On February 4th, 1985 Jean-Marie loses it and decides to by judge, jury, and executioner and grabs his hunting rifle and confronts Bernard as he leaves works and shots him in the chest and kills him. Bernard’s last words were “I didn’t kill your kid”. Jean-Marie is shortly arrested. He was later sentenced to five years in prison with one year suspended due to time served he was released only 2 weeks after the verdict was given.
Shortly after, the tire marks and shoe prints were “matched” to Christine so the police decide to do a thorough search of the Villemin house and in the search, they find the same rope that bonded Gregory when he was found in the river. It is not looking good for Christine; the rumor was she was the Raven and the murderer and she was charged. While in prison and six months pregnant and she and Jean-Marie went on a hunger strike. On September 30th, 1985 Christine gave birth to their son Julien and after a nine-hour integration, she was freed after the appeals court cited flimsy evidence. In 1986, President Francois Holland released Jean-Michel Lambert from the case due to various violations of the procedural rules and hired Maurice Simon.
Judge Maurice Simon later reconstructed Christine’s timeline of the day of Gregory’s murder and determined there was no way she could have murdered her son. Christine was later fully exonerated in 1993 and awarded compensation for unlawful arrest. Judge Maurice Simon feel into a coma and died making many believe the case is cursed because of this death and Judge Jean-Michel Lambert later committed suicide in 2017.
In November 1999, Jean Marie and Christine ask for a reopening of the investigation to conduct DNA analyses. An in 2000, the case was reopened. They tested a stamp the Raven would have licked, but it was unsuccessful. In 2002, a court in Versailles ordered the state to pay damages to Marie-Ange Laroche and Murielle Bolle. Also, compensation was given to Jean-Marie and Christine for gross negligence in the case. In 2009, more DNA was tested to no avail. In 2017, three people were arrested based on new evidence. It was Gregory’s great uncle and aunt and another aunt. The other aunt was released and the great aunt and uncle choose to remain silent. Murielle Bolle was also arrested and held for 36 days before being released. In 2018, Murielle Bolle released a book where she maintains here and Bernard’s innocence.
Today, what exactly happened to Gregory is unknown. Jean-Marie and Christine have for the most part stayed out of the public eye. They live in a suburb of Paris and had 3 more children, Julien, Emelyne, and Simon. They still remain hopeful about finding Gregory’s killer. In fact, they have urged for the case to be reopened numerous times. Murielle Bolle still lives in the valley of Vologne.
So, what happened to little Gregory that night? The French police recently admitted that Bernard Laroche was probably guilty, and he is not the only one. It was obviously someone in the family who killed Gregory, but no one wants to talk even 36 years later. This case has haunted France and turned a sleepy little town into the international spotlight. People think Bernard is guilty or possibly his wife and even Jean-Michel’s brother Michel name has been called into question. Honestly, I do not know what to believe. Normally I have a fairly good theory of what happens in murder cases but this one has me stumped. I think someone in the family had something to do with it but who? I want to hear your thoughts! What do you think happened to Petit Gregory? Who do you think killed him? What do you think of that insulin bottle? Please share your thoughts!
That concludes the fifth episode of A Crime Story. I would love to hear your thoughts about today’s case. You can comment on a crime story’s Instagram @acrimestorypod, where I will be posting images from today’s story. Or you can comment on A Crime Story Podcast on Facebook or @acrimestorypod on Twitter. Or even comment and see additional photos on A Crime Story Podcast on YouTube. I have also started a website, where you can listen to the podcast as well as read a transcript of today’s story under the blog tab. Thank you so much for listening. If you could please leave a review of the podcast, it helps others find it. Also, if you could tell a friend about A Crime Story, I would greatly appreciate it. I hope to see you next time where I will be covering a case from Vatican City. You will not want to miss it.
A Crime Story is hosted and written by me, Kailin Lois. Sources for today’s episode can be found in the show’s notes. Theme Music is from Ross Bugden. Additional story editing is brought to you by my father, Mike. Thank you for listening to A Crime Story! Stay safe and be kind.
Sources: The Netflix Documentary, Who killed Little Gregory?, Georgia Marie, L’Affaire Villemin, Le Point, Le Monde, Le Parisian, Le Figaro, Paris Match
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