Crime and Media in Contemporary France

Chapter Two: Mediating Crime

21 Chapter Two Mediating Crime As an account of a serial killer, the Paulin affaire represents a relatively new addition to contemporary French criminality. The term “serial killer” first appeared in France in 1980, and although the term “tueur en série” is now part of the French language, its entrance into French printed discourse as an English word makes its origins unmistakable. Current articles on serial killing in French interchange the two terms, and while this shift reflects the French government’s stricter regulations on the use of English terms, I believe that this change also points to an integration of the concept into French culture at a more fundamental level. Until very recently, serial killing has been referred to as an “American crime” (see Levin and Fox), a correlation that seems to be confirmed by the relatively small number of serial killers in France in comparison to the United States. According to Hickey’s 1990 research of serial killers worldwide, there were only three French serial killers in the twentieth century: Henri Landru (who killed over ten women between 1915 and 1922), Marcel Petiot (who committed over twenty-seven murders in the early 1940s), and Thierry Paulin (who murdered at least twenty women between 1984 and 1987) (259). Jenkins has attributed these differences to more relaxed libel laws and a greater awareness of serial killing in the United States (41). The French National Police’s resident psychoanalyst and criminologist, Pierre Leclair, concurs with Jenkins, stating that “Germs existed before the invention of the microscope . Serial killers have always existed. Americans have the merit of having been the first to define and quantify the phenomenon” (“Les microbes existaient avant l’invention du microscope. Les tueurs en série ont toujours existé. Les Américains ont le mérite d’avoir été les premiers à définir et à quantifier le phénomène”) (Vézard 13). In fact, there has been a string of serial killers recently uncovered in France. Some of the most mediated figures include Francis Heaulme (who killed ten people between 1984 and 1992), Patrice Alègre (son of a policeman who killed at least seven women between 1989 and 1997), Guy George (“le tueur de l’est parisien,” who murdered seven women between 1991 and 1998), and Emile Louis (who killed between seven and seventeen young women between 1975 and 1999). 22 Chapter Two The relative jump in the percentage of this kind of murder has prompted a series of books that question the American nature of the crimes. Most point to France’s outdated system of tracking criminals, which actually contributed to the delayed capture of Thierry Paulin. Despite the increased interest in serial killers, much of the information known about them is uncertain. As Hickey confirms in Serial Murderers and Their Victims, “much of what we ‘know’ about serial murder is based on misinformation and myth construction” (1). The serial killer is defined primarily by his keen intelligence and sheer disregard for human life; this indifferent attitude is particularly disconcerting for a public accustomed to assigning meaning to crime. In the Paulin affaire, for instance, the murderer’s ability to dodge the police allowed the media to feed the public’s growing alarm for over four years, turning this fait divers into an indicator of larger social problems, such as insécurité and racial tension. In this chapter, I analyze the media’s response to the Paulin affaire, reviewing the characteristics of this fait divers and how it was read and interpreted by the press, cultural critics, politicians, and law enforcement. Although this chapter explores a variety of media response to the events, I focus primarily on the daily newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro, whose distinct and often opposing accounts of the affaire best illustrate how crime is manipulated to achieve specific political outcomes. By illustrating how Paulin is employed as a social signifier for racial and immigration issues, I show that Jean Baudrillard’s reading of the affaire as “une banalit é absolue” represents a shallow determination that mirrors the media’s cursory examination of crime. From Fait Divers to Affaire In October of 1984, Germaine Petitot opened the door of her apartment in the 18th arrondissement to two young men, who bound, gagged, and beat her until she told them where her meager stash of money was hidden. Although Petitot survived the assault, she was too traumatized to remember the faces of her aggressors. Just...