ONCE UPON A TIME: THEIR BIGGEST CASES – EPISODE 2 | TF1 | Reportages

They are the stars of the famous 36 Quai des Orfèvres. Claude Cances headed the anti-gang brigade before becoming chief of the Paris Detective Division. Bernard Pasqualini is a former crim’ inspector. During their careers they hunted the most formidable of gangsters and arrested many a murderer. They delve into their memories to tell us of the major cases that marked their careers. The Pesquet case for Claude Cances. The hairpiece gang for Bernard Pasqualini.Pesquet, the Landru of the Val d’Oise. July 1976. Claude Cances is called to investigate a case of triple murder in Neuilly. A seventy-year-old couple and their maid were shot to death at their home. Their jewels and gold bars were stolen. It looks like a burglary that went wrong. However, Inspector Claude Cances feels there’s something odd about his crime scene. And he finds an important clue. The letter from a house painter, one Bernard Pesquet. The latter confirms a meeting on the very day and the presumed hour of the murders. When Claude Cances comes face to face with this suspect, his blood is chilled. Forty years later he can still remember it: I looked into the eyes of a born killer”. Pesquet’s past record is a long one. Thirty-five years earlier he was convicted of murder. Discoveries made during the search of his house will put him in the catalogue of the worst of serial killers. He will be nicknamed the “Landru of the Val d’Oise”.The Hairpiece Gang. Between 1981 and 1986 a bunch of friends from Belleville hold up one bank after another in the chic neighborhoods of the capital. Their trademark: they operate disguised as rabbis, Russian generals, wearing a Mitterrand mask, or made up in wigs and mustaches. The press dubs them the “Hairpiece gang”. They attack strong rooms armed with hammers and chisels. 27 banks in 5 years, 1,300 strongboxes looted… without being arrested. They become the nightmare of the officers of 36 Quai des Orfèvres, who are unable to identify them. Until January 14 1986. On this occasion officers spot them in a bank on the rue du docteur Blanche in the 16^th arrondissement. Anti-gang and BRI investigative squads are waiting when they emerge. But things turn badly. Shooting, hostage taking. Several deaths, some wounded and three gangsters on the run. A fiasco. Inspector Bernard Pasqualini is at the crim’. He takes over the case. He investigates for a year. Working back up the trail of clues to identify and arrest the guilty. Thirty years later he takes us back to this hunt that he conducted right up to the final assault of their hideout in the Paris region.Reconstruction, interviews, archive images and witness contribution bring the great moments of 36 Quai des Orfèvres back to life.”