“August 1945. Strange atmosphere in Angoulême. Summer is suffocating, the atmosphere oppressive. The spirits are heated by the exit of the war, the desire for revenge. In Ruelle, in Chalais, in Angoulême, we exhibit mowed women, they are sentenced to the pillory. The intoxication of the liberation has given way to general suspicion: we see collaboration everywhere and violence is outcropped. A cuckold husband who puts three bullets in his wife’s head, at 4 p.m., in the street, Aguesseau ramp. A duo of former soldiers who attempts to recover from the francs by multiplying the intrusions of violent homes in the Confolentais. Assessment: some serious injuries before having the irons to the feet.
The photo of the trial published in “La Charente Libre”. The two accused Neguyen van Dong and Do Van Trong surrounded by their guards. In the foreground the lawyers my Cheminade, Keller and Priollaud.
Fonds Mallet
And when Madeleine Brimaud’s body is found, backed by 20 stab wounds, in his Blanchettes bar, at 416 rue de Périgueux, in Angoulême, on August 8 in the morning, rancor and post-war conjectures collide. “Political revenge”. The thesis is essential, consolidated by rumor and fantasies. It is a certainty, Madeleine was a gourgandine. We say to ourselves with covered words: she would have had relations with the occupier. The proof? La Tenancière hosted an interloped crowd in her bistro. The neighbors are even convinced that she had the light thigh with “North Africans”. From the Bacchanal with men of the colonies to horizontal collaboration, there is only one step which is quickly taken.
The writing advises you
The rumor of political crime
During their search, while Madeleine’s body lies in front of the ground, Commissioner Aumont and his judicial police inspectors discover, on a dining room, a swine cross flag and a German revolver. If the house has been excavated, if the furniture is above -mentioned, the thesis of the elimination of a bistro which would have attended the Nazi too closely takes precedence over the crime crime.
Especially since the Inspector of the Poitiers Mobile, specialized in political surveys, arrives at the Blanchettes while the bloodhounds of the PJ and the examining magistrate Angoumois examine the premises. The information spreads like a trail of powder in Angoumois streets still marked by the memory of the occupation.
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Except that just as quickly, the investigators make back machine. Misleading appearances. The swine cross flag and the German revolver? War trophies brought back from the front by the son of Madeleine, fighter of freedom! As for the Poitevin expert, he hoped to extract from Madeleine some information on men of his customers suspected of having been a little too cooperative with the Germans.
With the help of Madeleine’s son, they succeeded in drawing up an inventory of the flight of which was the victim of the bar owner: 80,000 francs flights, an automatic pistol, watches, a camera, the small currency.
On a table, six glasses are still in place, two of which are liquor. Some still contain white wine. Regulars then evoke the presence, the day before the discovery of the murder, of four Indochinese who would have remained for a long time in the Blanchettes, to type the card, to play billiards and lock the buckets. Madeleine would have asked them several times to leave the premises, without success.
-The crow relaunches the case
The police are looking for them. But comes up against a major problem. At the time, in Angoulême, the 62nd company of Indochinese workers had 600 men. They all came from June 1940, were requisitioned as a non -specialized worker within the National Porterie.
In 1945, there were 600 to 700 to be still barred in Angoulême, a few hundred meters from the Blanchettes. Police are looking for 4. And only have waves reports.
For a year, the investigation comes up against dead ends. A dismissal is even issued by the investigating judge, in 1946. A crow revived the case in March 1951. In a malicious Frenchman, the anonymous bird, probably Indochinese, accuses four men of the 62nd. On the front line, he delivers the name of Nguyen Van Phuoc, who would actually be called Nguyen van Dong. Found in Le Havre, the latter denies having passed through Angoulême. His fingerprints, and several of his former colleagues speak for him and contradict him.
The required death penalty
Van Y, also accused by the anonymous letter, will never be explained. He committed suicide in 48, in Kehl military prison, Germany. In Hanoi, the investigators fail to get their hands on a third suspect, N’Guyen Van N’Ho. The latter would have benefited from local complicities to escape the thread. On the other hand, Do Van Trong is arrested near Haiphong, Tonkin, extradited in France and then imprisoned in Angoulême.
In an arch-fashion room, on February 24, 1954, nine years after the facts, Van Dong and Van Trong play dissonant scores. Van Dong adopts a suicidal position; deny everything, even the obvious.
Van Trong is responsible for his friend. He accuses him of having had the idea of murder, in the evening, when they relaxed after a day of chores at the Basseau camp. He swears that Van Dong asked him to watch, but that he preferred to leave so as not to be associated with the murder.
The problem is that another Indochinese testifies. Said Van Dong boasted of the murder in 1948 in Marennes. That he even clarified having returned the corpse on his stomach to hide his eyes so that the image of the assassins does not print in his pupils. “” Plot “howls van Dong.
Not convincing enough to prevent the public prosecutor from claiming that his head is put on the hob. For Van Trong, he claims forced perpetuity work. In 45 minutes of deliberation, the jurors condemned Van Dong to forced work in perpetuity. For Van Trong, it will be 15 years to break stones. Van N’Ho, the volatilized suspect, is sentenced to the death penalty in absentia. It has never been found.
The Indochinois, forgotten of the war
This news item highlights Indochinese detached workers, often described as forgotten by war. In Angoulême, the 62nd company welcomed up to 1,798 men assigned to the start of the production lines of the Porterie. They were all requisitioned, from 39, to participate in the war effort and replace the workers sent to the front.
15,000 kilometers from their home, they were employed as non -specialized workers, choreable. Demobilized the day after the defeat of 1940, they again served as low-skilled labor from 1942, to compensate for the departure of French at the STO.
At the Liberation, they participated in the reconstruction, in the chores. Cased, they formed companies of detached workers. Tonkin repatriations spread until 1951
