Gérald Thomassin, an ideal “little criminal”?

“This is not just another news item. It is inconceivable that we could be murdered in Montréal-la-Cluse” : these are the words of Marie-Christine Tarrare, the prosecutor of Bourg-en-Bresse, seized of a case which stunned this quiet commune of Haut-Bugey in December 2009. The postwoman, Catherine Burgod, was found in her agency, stabbed with 28 stab wounds.

Very quickly, a misfit who lives opposite the post office is suspected. His name is Gérald Thomassin. His name has been known to moviegoers since he burst onto the screen in a Jacques Doillon film, The Little Criminal. At 16, after a chaotic childhood, he won the César for Most Promising Male. The young prodigy takes on roles, but discovers hard drugs on a film set. What was the promise of a happy life also becomes its poison. Money problems followed, then the street, the English Channel… It was to “go green” after a drug trafficking affair in which he was involved that he moved to Montréal-la-Cluse , in June 2007.

A year and a half later, after the murder, investigators explored all avenues, but none came to fruition. At the post office, a DNA fingerprint is found: it is not that of Gérald Thomassin. The police have no material evidence that could link him to the crime.

There is this DVD of one of his films directed by Jacques Doillon, The First to Comewhich he left with Catherine Burgod a few days before the murder… They find a scene there that challenges them, where Gérald Thomassin plays a robber armed with a knife. This was all it took to transform a fiction into incriminating evidence. The prosecutor herself acknowledges that “it could have played a role”. “There, we went into a great frenzy”, sighs journalist Frédéric Boudouresque, who followed this affair: “The gendarmes asked him seriously: 'Wouldn't you have done like in the film?'”

Another element will direct suspicion towards Gérald Thomassin. Two sisters living in Montréal-la-Cluse think they have “maybe found the murderer”. Two months after the death of Catherine Burgod, in front of her grave, he mimed the murder for them, they claim.

One of them (she wants to remain anonymous) recounts this key episode for the first time: “[Au cimetière]we saw this guy who was distressed, because he took off his glasses, we saw that he had cried… I told him 'We loved him a lot too, Cathie'. So he looked at us, he said, 'She talked too much.' And he made the gesture of taking it from behind, putting his hand in front, and with his right hand, he was miming, how can I put it, a knife going in? (…) And afterwards, we went back up the cemetery, he accompanied us, and he said to us, 'Ladies, shush', putting his finger in front of his mouth.”

However, the actions described do not correspond to the blows that were delivered… which will be emphasized by the forensic expert, cited by the actor's lawyer. For Me Benoît Cousin, this testimony should not have had any weight in the procedure. It simply shows, according to him, that in a town where everyone suspects everyone, “Gérald Thomassin, because he is Gérald Thomassin, is necessarily a little more suspicious than the average individual.”

The actor was taken into police custody and released due to lack of supporting evidence. Now guilty in the eyes of the village, he proclaims his innocence. Catherine Burgod's ex-husband will even beat him up (and receive a conviction). Feeling threatened, Gérald Thomassin decides to leave the village, but will continue to sink… and will never go to the cinema again.

Extract from “The strange disappearance of an ideal culprit”, a document to be reviewed on November 24, 2024 In “Sensitive Affairs”, a co-production between France Télévisions, France TV presse, France Inter, INA and Capa Presse adapted from a France Inter broadcast.

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