Pat Perna is the author of a graphic novel called Gregorywhich looks back on the still unsolved murder of little Grégory, in 1984. The comic strip is prefaced by Jean-Marie Villemin with whom the author worked to write the book. “When we discuss with Jean-Marie Villemin and later as I did with Christine, we feel all the weight resting on our shoulders. These people were broken“, testifies Pat Perna, guest of Focus Dimanche on RTL. “We have all gone through their history, their life, they are frozen in time,” he explains.
“I said to myself, we have to reincarnate them, give meaning to these people, a kind of dignity. I had the permanent feeling of having a responsibility towards them,” explains the author, who had Jean-Marie Villemin reread his pages.
Little Grégory’s father entrusted more than 5,000 documents to the co-author of the comic strip. “He was incredibly generous,” assures Pat Perna, who explains that Jean-Marie Villemin asked him that his work be as fair and true as possible.
Jean-Marie Villemin sent 5,000 scans, listed and classified, of all the newspapers, all the press articles, all the photos concerning the affair. Page 68 of the comic strip Gregory is particularly upsetting. Boy’s father tells how he saw his child’s bodyplaced on a table, in a fire station.
“He said to me, ‘I swearI thought he was sleeping, he looked peaceful. He had a little tear in his eye and he said to me, ‘actually, I just wanted to die,’ says Pat Perna. When he confided this episode to him, Jean-Marie Villemin, plunged back into the scene, said yelled. “There’s an animal cry that came out and he does it again. I collapsed with him,” the author recalls.
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