Lara Marlowe reports from Reims, where an accused serial killer attempted suicide.
For seven French families and two Irish women who waited here yesterday, the attempted suicide of the accused serial killer, Pierre Chanal, on the eve of his trial seemed yet another cruel trick in an unending denial of justice.
"We've been robbed - again," said Mrs Eroline O'Keeffe, whose son, Mr Trevor O'Keeffe, was found strangled to death and buried in a shallow grave in north-eastern France on August 8th, 1987. He was hitch-hiking home after a summer holiday.
Mrs O'Keeffe, who owns a driving school in Naas, and her sister Mrs Noeleen Slattery, a retired specialist in Chinese medicine, have done more than anyone to prevent the French justice system from burying the case of the former French army warrant officer whose trial will begin in the Marne Assize Court, in his absence, this morning.
Mr Chanal (56) is charged with murdering Mr O'Keeffe and Frenchmen Patrice Denis and Patrick Gache, neither of whose bodies were found. In January 1999, DNA tests identified some of the 457 hairs found in the foam rubber mattress in the back of Mr Chanal's van as belonging to the three men. If convicted, Mr Chanal could be sentenced to life imprisonment. He is also suspected in the disappearance of five French conscripts in the early 1980s. But he changed vehicles and there was no trace of their DNA in the new van.
Mr Chanal took an overdose of sleeping pills early yesterday and is in hospital at St-Étienne, where he lived with his sister. Mr Chanal always swore he would commit suicide if convicted of the murders, which he denies. A psychiatrist's report, written in 1995, noted that he "gives signs of a constant plan to put an end to himself."
The trial will resume once Mr Chanal is able to appear in court - probably next week - and is scheduled to last three weeks. "His condition is apparently not all that dramatic," the prosecutor, Mr Yves Charpenel, said late yesterday. "He is out of danger".
At the opening session this morning, lawyers for the civil plaintiffs will demand that Mr Chanal be placed in detention and kept under surveillance to preclude another suicide attempt.
Mrs O'Keeffe and Mrs Slattery attended Mr Chanal's trial for the kidnapping and rape in 1988 of Mr Palasz Falvay, a Hungarian student who was hitch-hiking in the "Mourmelon Triangle" from which all of Mr Chanal's alleged victims disappeared. Mr Falvay was chained to a mattress in the back of Mr Chanal's van and sodomised for 20 hours. He was saved when gendarmes happened on to the van in an isolated area. Mr Chanal videotaped his crime.
He served 6½ years of his 10 year sentence for raping Mr Falvay.
On the eve of an appeal in the early 1990s, he slashed his wrists with a disposable razor, and Mrs O'Keeffe and Mrs Slattery saw him stagger into an Amiens courtroom, under sedation, with his wrists bandaged.
Mrs O'Keeffe said she'd thought Mr Chanal was "too much of a coward" to harm himself again. Though she described the postponement as "mental torture", she added: "I've been waiting for 16 years; I am going to wait and wait and wait."
Mr Gérard Chemla is the lawyer for the other seven families who believe Mr Chanal killed their loved ones. "They're very sad at the thought the trial might not take place, Mr Chemla said when the attempted suicide was announced. "They want to face Chanal in court. They have this feeling there will never be a trial, that justice is not for them."
All of Mr Chanal's alleged victims were aged around 20. Six of the seven dead Frenchmen were doing military service at the base where Mr Chanal had been posted. They were from poor backgrounds, and their families believe there was a conspiracy to protect Mr Chanal because he was in the army.
The Chanal saga is known throughout France as a textbook case of judicial ineptitude. French authorities did nothing for 7½ years after young men started disappearing in 1980. In the 16 years since Mr O'Keeffe was murdered, seven judges have been assigned to the investigation. The hair samples which eventually made DNA identification possible were abandoned for years in a storeroom. Evidence found in Mr Chanal's van was ignored. It included a jacket belonging to a missing conscript, underwear that Mrs O'Keeffe recognised as her son's and a forensic report concluding that soil on Chanal's spade was identical to that in Mr O'Keeffe's grave.
Mrs O'Keeffe and Mrs Slattery attended Mass in Reims Cathedral last night. "I wouldn't be very religious, but I think there's power in prayer," Mrs O'Keeffe said. "We're going to pray and burn candles for the recovery of Chanal," Mrs Slattery added bitterly, but not without humour.