the underside of the comic strip on which Jean-Marie Villemin collaborated

C’was 40 years ago, already. Before the Internet, cell phones and social networks, we shudder to think of the role they could have played then. On October 16, 1984, little Grégory was kidnapped and murdered, and his body found in Vologne. Since then, the mystery remains unsolved around the identity of the culprit and the famous crow, each of the actors in this affair with multiple twists and turns having given their version of the facts which are still under investigation.

This masterful comic strip, however, sheds new light on it, because it was designed with Jean-Marie Villemin, whose words are rare and who explains it in a luminous preface. Why speak now? And especially through a comic strip? “I like this means of expression, which can be rigorous, accessible to all,” he says. And it is on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the discovery of Grégory’s body that Jean-Marie Villemin decides to “take the lead” for fear, once again, that “everything and the opposite of everything” will be said again.

Through the screenwriter Pat Perna and the designer Christophe Gaultier, he offers a testimony of impressive strength, “on edge” despite the almost half century that has passed, which skillfully mixes emotion and precision, rigor and confession. It is in fact through the prism of the trial, in November 1993, of Jean-Marie Villemin for the assassination of his cousin Bernard Laroche that the authors will reveal the implacable judicial and media mechanics which were shaken during these ten years, and in which each of the participants (judge, investigators, journalists) assumes, or not, their share of responsibility.

Remains, in this ocean of sadness and pain, the dignity of the Villemin couple, survivors of a disaster whose memory still haunts all French courthouses. For The Pointscreenwriter Pat Perna looks back on the conception of a moving book.

The Point: You are around fifty years old and you have experienced the Grégory affair and its tragic twists and turns. Has this story always fascinated you?

Pat Perna: No, not really. I was young and, like all young people of my generation, I had other concerns at that time, which were those of SOS Racisme, of Renaud… On the other hand, I remember very well the fear in which this The affair had plunged the generations before me, those of my grandparents and my parents. With the serials in the press, everything was in place to captivate all French people and ensure that family discussions revolved around it constantly.

However, it seems to me, in retrospect, that there were two media moments in this affair. There was first much talk about it in popular circles, and it was the article by Marguerite Duras in Release, on July 17, 1985, in which she claimed to believe in the guilt of Christine Villemin, who made her an object of curiosity in intellectual circles. On the other hand, I remember being marked, a few years later, by the way in which the affair and its actors were ridiculed.

I think, for example, of It happened near you [un film à l’humour très noir de 1992 dans lequel un tueur interprété par Benoît Poelvoorde apprend à préparer un cocktail nommé Le Petit Grégory, NDLR]. This is something that I have mentioned several times with Jean-Marie Villemin and which makes me uncomfortable, because it is the symbol of a generalized lack of empathy which Christine, his wife, and he suffered a lot. Are nasty, falsely transgressive jokes really a victory for free speech?

How did you come to collaborate with Jean-Marie Villemin on this book?

This comes from a request from Laurent Beccaria, who directs Les Arènes. Many years ago he published The Bonfire of the Innocents by Laurence Lacour, which is still the best book on the Grégory affair today. Jean-Marie Villemin therefore contacted him because he wanted to try to give as rigorous and accurate a version as possible of the facts relating to the case, while also telling it from his point of view and that of Christine. Laurent therefore suggested that I work on the script with Christophe Gaultier on drawing.

I must admit that I was a little reluctant at first. There was already Laurence Lacour’s book and I wondered what more could be said. And I did not want to come across as an opportunist on the occasion of this fortieth anniversary. Laurent Beccaria understood this very well and simply said to me: “Meet Jean-Marie and let’s talk about it afterwards. »And then, Jean-Marie and I met. Jean-Marie told me: “I would really like it to be you who wrote the book. You do it your way, I provide everything you want. For my part, I just want it to be impeccable in the accuracy of the facts. »

He knew what he was talking about, because it was this lack of details that had landed Christine unjustly in prison. We did several interviews, he entrusted me with a file that he had created himself of more than 250 pages, with 5,000 press articles relating to the affair. And I started.

We wanted, without spin, for everyone to form their own opinion about these testimonies and their credibility.

Why did you mainly center your story around the trial of Jean-Marie Villemin for the assassination of his cousin Bernard Laroche, which takes place almost ten years after Grégory’s death?

By force of circumstances, there was no trial in the Grégory affair, because the main accused, Bernard Laroche, will never be able to appear. The Jean-Marie trial therefore became the Grégory trial. Moreover, the idea of ​​the president of the court was to re-investigate this case. And, for Jean-Marie, it was the first time that he would be confronted with Murielle Bolle, Laroche’s sister-in-law. Everyone was hoping she would finally break down and tell the truth. The key moment is here.

We wanted, without spin, to show all the protagonists in the case, literally transcribe their words, keep a certain distance, so that everyone can form their own idea of ​​these testimonies and their credibility. It is for this reason that we chose a certain dryness, a sought-after sobriety, playing fully on the double effect produced by the words and the drawing.

There are very few comics depicting a trial, unlike cinema where it is almost a genre in its own right.

Yes, we have a very good recent example with The Goldman Trial. Even if comics have matured in recent years, it remains a medium for telling stories where action and dynamism are needed… There, it remains very static and we have to play on other sources, such as direction, which Christophe Gaultier does fantastically well. And, as Denis Robert says in his book I killed the chief’s son. Grégory affair, the novel of Vologne. 1984-2018this story is so epic that it needs nothing but itself.

Gregory is also a book which above all gives flesh to the Villemin couple…

In Jean-Marie and Christine, I met two exceptional people. What I wanted was to restore a part of humanity to this couple. To me, they were frozen in time, like that class photo of their child. They really were like fictional characters, abstractions, who would never age.

When the Villemins talk about Grégory, they cry. When they talk about this period, they tremble.

I didn’t want to make a book that stirred up mud, but one that showed this incredible love story between these two individuals. They experienced something that placed them above their own condition. What I discovered is that even though 40 years have passed, time has not done its work. When they talk about Grégory, they cry. When they talk about this period, they tremble.

No one comes out of this affair unscathed in your book. Neither the justice system nor the media…

All the ingredients were there for this affair to become a novel. This is what excited all the journalists of the time. The theater was wonderful: a hostile and harsh region, an isolated and dark house. If the affair had happened in a Marseille cove, it would not have been the same. We perceive class racism, which was one of the main reasons for the media’s relentlessness. In this lost village in the Vosges, Parisian journalists arrive who, according to the testimony of Laurence Lacour, do not care about seeing hillbillies killing each other.

But Christine and Jean-Marie had managed to extricate themselves from their environment, in a certain way, and their child, sunny, gifted, was the symbol of their happiness and their success. Jean-Marie Villemin told me that the motive for Grégory’s death, in his eyes, was not jealousy, but envy. But, at the time, no one was ready to hear this type of message. It was not audible.

For your part, what do you remember from this experience?

I am not a very prolific author, I write few books. When I start a new one, I always have in mind this sentence from an American author, John Truby, who says something like this in The Anatomy of the Screenplay : “If you tell a story without being convinced that it will change your life, don’t tell it. » This story is not going to change my material life, it will not make me famous either, but it allowed me to meet Jean-Marie and Christine and shake up a number of certainties within me. And, in that, she changed my life.

Gregory by Pat Perna and Christophe Gaultier, with Jean-Marie Villemin (Les Arènes), 144 pages, 25 euros