Serial killer and rapist found in France after 35 years

It turned out to be a former police officer. He committed suicide and left a note confessing to the crimes.

A serial killer and rapist nicknamed Pockmarked has been found in France, who had not been caught since 1986. It was one of the oldest unsolved cases of the Paris police. Francois Verov, a 59-year-old former policeman who committed suicide, confessed to the crimes.

Ryaboy operated in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s. He came to light when 11-year-old Cecile Bloch was found dead in a basement in 1986. It was assumed that the criminal had entered the elevator with the girl, forced her down to the basement, where he raped and killed her.

Cecile's parents and older brother encountered the suspect before he attacked the girl. They described him as a tall, dark-haired young man with skin marked with what appeared to be smallpox or acne, hence the nickname Pockmarked. "He seemed very confident. He spoke to me very boldly and politely. He said something like, 'Have a very, very nice day,'" the victim's brother, Luc Richard, recalled .

Ryaboy was later linked to the murders of three more people: 38-year-old Parisian Gilles Politi and his housekeeper, 20-year-old German Imrhard Muller in 1987, and 19-year-old Karine Leroy from a Paris suburb in 1994. Ryaboy is also believed to have committed at least six rapes in which the victims survived, including girls aged 11 and 14. Some of the victims said the rapist pretended to be a police officer.

After 1994, no further crimes by Ryaboy were known. But law enforcement agencies continued to search for him and decided to check 750 police officers who worked in Paris during the years when Ryaboy was active there. François Verov, who served in the Republican Guard and then transferred to the police unit responsible for working with minors, was also checked. After retiring, Verov moved to the south of France.

On September 29, Verov was supposed to appear at the police station to compare his DNA with that of the serial killer. That same day, the man's body was found in the resort of Le Grau-du-Roi in the south of France. He had committed suicide by taking a lethal dose of medication. Two days before his suicide, Verov withdrew all his money from his accounts and rented a place in Le Grau-du-Roi through Airbnb. They began looking for him at the request of his relatives, who raised the alarm when the man left home and stopped communicating.

Verov left a suicide note. In it, he said he was "the great villain who committed unforgivable acts until the late 1990s." Verov attributed the murders and rapes to "impulses" from his childhood. At the time of the crimes, he had "everything bad in life," but he managed to "pacify his demons" when he got married and had children, the note said. Verov concluded by writing that he had decided to commit suicide to make life easier for his family members.

In the note, Verov did not admit to being Ryaboy or name his victims. However, the Paris prosecutor's office said that his DNA testing matched DNA found at Ryaboy's crime scenes.

Lawyer Didier Seban, who represents the family of Cecile Bloch and several other victims of the serial killer, said they felt both relief and grief when they learned of his suicide. "We will not know everything that Ryaboy did, and many families are probably waiting for an explanation. We know of a number of murders and rapes, but we think there are others," Seban said.

Olga Korelina