French Serial Killer Pierre Chanal: The Military Superman

This case echoes that of Private Edward Leonski, the "Brownout Murderer", although here the victims were male instead of female. One major point of similarity between Chanal and Leonski, however, is that both of these killers were soldiers at the time they perpetrated their crimes. Career soldier and commanding officer Pierre Chanal was stationed in his native France, though, while Leonski, an American, terrorized Melbourne, Australia. They also operated in different eras as Chanal's killing spree occurred during the years 1980 through 1988 while Leonski was active during World War II. But perhaps it was the fact that they were both in uniform and in positions of authority that deluded them into thinking that they could do anything they wanted to.

Chanal's bloody escapades created the so-called Triangle of Death in the Ardennes region close to Mourmelon, the French military base at which he was stationed as an adjutant during the years he abducted, raped and murdered his victims. Similar to the Bermuda Triangle in which people would disappear without trace, young men would enter the Triangle of Death and, in at least eight cases, they were never seen again.

Chanal's modus operandi was to lure young men to take a ride with him in his VW Combi Van and then to overpower them, sodomize them and strangle them. He also enjoyed video taping his victims in the throws of their agony. Chanel's plans went awry in 1988, however, when he was stopped at a routine checkpoint near Macon and the bound and tortured Hungarian hitchhiker Palazs Falvay was discovered in the back of the van.

Chanal was tried and convicted for the kidnapping and rape of Falvay and received a ten year jail sentence. He was released on probation during 1995, but, as the police had since linked him to the string of disappearances that had taken place in Mourmelon almost a decade earlier, he was then accused of the murder of Irishman Trevor O'Keefe and two young Frenchmen. During the investigation the local police found the military superman a hard nut to crack and commissioned the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit to analyze their suspect. The FBI's findings were that Chanel was "both obsessive and sadistic" and "characterized by aberrant sexual conduct which leads him to seek pleasure by inflicting humiliation and suffering on others", in other words, exactly the kind of person the police was looking for.

Justice was never to be served, however, as sometime in the night following the first day of his trial, which commenced in 2003, Chanal committed suicide in prison by severing an artery with a razor blade. It is interesting to note the length of time it took before Chanal was finally put on trial for the three murders - about eight years - and some say that the delay was due to the police and the military trying to protect one of its own. Whatever the reason, on January 26^th 2005, in a surprise move and setting a somewhat dangerous precedent as Chanal was charged with only three murders, the Court of Bankruptcy of Paris awarded 36,000 Euros to each of the eight families as compensation for the loss of their loved ones.

The money was, no doubt, appreciated but everyone knew that it could never bring the boys back.

Sources:
Pierre Chanal Wikipedia
Elisabeth Wetsch Chanal Pierre Serial Killer Crime Index CrimeZZZ.net
Tim Finian Mother Wins Legal Battle To Bring Rapist To Court Over Son's Kidnap BNET
Yvonne Roberts Interview Eroline O'Keeffe The Guardian
Disparus De Mourmelon Disparus De Mourmelon
Patrick Gache The Doe Network