French serial killer appeared on TV quiz show while police hunted him for the rape and murder of children: Murderer laughed and joked with host while evading justice for decades

A French serial killer appeared on a TV quiz show as police hunted him for the rape and murder of children and adults.

Francois Verove took part in the French quiz Tout le monde veut pendre sa place (Everyone wants to take their place) in 2019, laughing and joking with the host while answering general knowledge questions, the Time reports.

During his appearance on the quiz show, Verove appeared relaxed as he spoke to host Nagui Fam and received applause from the studio audience.

But the retired police officer was not just any ordinary citizen: Verove had been on the run from the police for more than thirty years at that point, hiding in plain sight.

Verove, 59, was described as a leading member of the community in La Grande-Motte in southern France, where he lived with his wife and children.

His sinister past only came to light after he committed suicide in 2021 and French police linked him to 31 rapes and murders in Paris.

He told the host and studio audience about his career as a police officer, including how he patrolled the Bois de Boulogne park in Paris on horseback in the 1980s.

In the footage of his appearance on the 2019 quiz show, Verove is introduced as ‘François van La Grande-Motte’

In 1986, the police had published a police sketch, based on witness statements, showing a man about 25 years old, 6 feet tall, with light brown hair and visible traces of acne on his face.

His TV appearance, which was revealed in French news magazine Marianne, is seen as an indication that Verove did not attempt to conceal his identity – despite police having a suspect sketch that looked like him and suspecting the perpetrator was a police officer used to be.

Verove was nicknamed ‘Le Grele’ or ‘The Pockmarked Man’ after a series of rapes and murders from the 1980s to 1994.

In his most infamous case, he was suspected of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl named Cecile Bloch, who was found dead in the basement of the Paris building where she lived in 1986. He is known to have raped at least two other children.

Among his other victims were aviation technician Gilles Politi, 38, and German au pair Irmgard Müller, 20, both of whom were murdered in Paris in 1987.

He was also believed to have strangled a couple in the capital’s central Marais district in 1987.

Over the years, investigators came to believe that the suspect may have been part of the Gendarmerie – the armed forces responsible for internal security – at the time of the crimes, after victims said he showed them his police badge.

Verove was a former state police officer who later became a police officer and then retired. He later became a municipal councilor in the south of France.

Investigators established a DNA profile of the suspect and in the months before his death in September 2021, an investigating judge had begun questioning around 750 gendarmes deployed to the Paris region at the time.

One of them was Verove, who was sent a summons on September 24 to report for questioning on September 29, but was reported missing by his wife three days after the summons.

He committed suicide in a rented apartment in Grau-du-Roi, a fishing village on the Mediterranean coast, leaving a written confession in which he told his wife that he had “carried a mad rage that made me a criminal.”

The note continued: “There were times when I couldn’t stand it and I had to destroy, defile and kill an innocent person.”

Verove also mentioned ‘impulses from the past’ in the letter, but added that he had now brought them ‘under control’.

Among his other victims were aviation technician Gilles Politi, 38, and German au pair Irmgard Müller (pictured), 20, both of whom died in Paris in 1987.

In his most infamous case, Verove was suspected of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl named Cecile (pictured in an old photo hugging a dog), who was found dead in the basement of the Parisian building where she lived.

Cecile Bloch (pictured above), 11, was found dead in 1986 in the basement of the Parisian building where she lived

Aviation technician Gilles Politi (pictured), 38, was murdered in Paris in 1987 by Francois Verove

He admitted to murders without detailing the victims or circumstances, and said he had committed no crimes after 1997. The murder confession contained no details, prosecutors said.

Police took a DNA sample from his body and found that it matched the genetic profile found at several crime scenes.

In 1986, the police had published a police sketch, based on witness statements, showing a man about 25 years old, 6 feet tall, with light brown hair and with visible traces of acne on his face.

A lawyer for Cecile’s family, Didier Seban, thanked police for their work but also said it was “painful to know that the criminal took his secrets with him.”

His nickname ‘The Pockmarked Man’ dates back to Cecile’s murder. Her half-brother, Luc Richard, was among the residents who recalled seeing a man with an acne-scarred face in their Paris apartment building on the day of the crime.

The then youth, who helped police sketch the suspect, said he shared a ride with the man who seemed “very sure of himself.”

He recalled during a 2015 interview: ‘He said something to me like, “Have a very, very good day.”

According to the newspaper Le Parisien, Verove is also the suspect in another murder near Paris, of 19-year-old Karine Leroy, in 1994 in the city of Meaux.

His widow, who has not been named, said she never suspected her husband was leading a double life and had raped and murdered dozens of children and adults.

He was asked two general knowledge questions. The first was about which new sport would be included in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Verove said it was squash, but the correct answer was break dancing

She said that even after he was told to provide a DNA sample alongside the hundreds of other officers stationed in Paris in the 1980s when the attacks occurred, his behavior remained unchanged.

On the day he committed suicide, Verove cooked lunch, took his usual afternoon nap and told his wife he was going for a bike ride before his body was found in the rented apartment in a neighboring town.

In the footage of his appearance on the quiz show in 2019, Verove is introduced as ‘François from La Grande-Motte’.

He told the host and studio audience about his career as a police officer, including how he patrolled the Bois de Boulogne park in Paris on horseback in the 1980s.

He was asked two general knowledge questions. The first was about which new sport would be included in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Verove said it was squash, but the correct answer was break dancing.

He was then asked about tuberculosis vaccinations, but he did not give BCG as an answer and was eliminated from the show.