ONCE UPON A TIME: THEIR GREATEST CASES – EPISODE 5 | TF1 | Reportages

The collection “Once upon a time: Their greatest cases – episode 5” invites “Top Cops”, legends of the Detective Squad, to relate the investigation that turned their lives upside down, marked a turning point in their career. The one that still haunts their mind and troubles their nights. In this 5^th episode, Inspector Bizeul, Commander Murat and Inspector Mazzieri, three former members of the mythic Crime Squad, recall a case they conducted exactly forty years ago: the “Baron Empain Kidnap” case: one of the most bizarre and news-grabbing case of the 1970s. In January 1978, Baron Edouard-Jean Empain, an extremely wealthy businessman and close friend of President Giscard d’Estaing, is kidnapped outside his Paris residence. The Press goes wild; the incident becomes an “affair of State”. As Commander Murat remembers, the entire Crime Squad is immediately mobilized. “Even our colleagues on leave were recalled back on duty. And, obviously, there was no clock after that: no more Saturday or Sundays, no more leave.” Very quickly, the police receive an unprecedentedly high ransom demand, accompanied by a small jar containing a phalanx of the Baron’s left little finger. The kidnappers are not joking! However, the police stick to its strategy: no ransom will be paid! But Inspector Bizeul and his men set a trap for the kidnappers by taking them a fake ransom. And to play the role of ransom bearer, the head of the Crime Squad calls upon one of his men, a martial arts expert: Jean Mazzieri, the man his colleagues call “the Chinaman”. The other story told in this 5^th episode begins in the Bois de Boulogne one evening in June 1981: a stroller discovers two suitcases containing the body of a young woman cut into pieces. Very quickly, Inspectors Olivier Foll and Jacques Poinas of the Paris Crime Squad are put in charge of the case. They tell us how they succeeded in arresting the author of this heinous crime and how they discovered that the puny, young Japanese student, Issei Sagawa, had cut more than seven kilograms of flesh off his victim and eaten part of it, some cooked, some raw. Even for a “top cop” such as Olivier Foll, Issei Sagawa’s confession is hard to listen to… or to forget: “I’ve seen lots of criminal cases, violent deaths, I’ve seen children killed, I’ve seen multiple crimes, a madman who murdered his family… You have to create a shell for yourself! But I have to say that whenever I talk about the “Issei Sagawa” case, I still get cold shivers, almost forty years later, because, shell or not, it’s terrible.”.