Werner Ferrari was active in the 70s and 80s, a period during which there were numerous disappearances of children in Switzerland. A repeat pedophile serial killer, he evaded the authorities for a long time by moving from canton to canton.
Werner Ferrari made his first victim in August 1971 in Reinach (BL). One weekend of celebrations in the village, he abuses little Daniel, aged 10, before strangling him. He was quickly arrested after taking too close an interest in the searches undertaken by the authorities to find the child.
Sentenced to 14 years in prison in April 1972, he was released for good behavior in August 1979. Once released, he began killing again in the cantons of Zurich, Aargau and Solothurn, without ever being bothered by the police, who can’t unmask him.
Absence d’expertise
And for good reason: the killer changed residence thirteen times, settling in different cantons between 1979 and 1987. He was convinced that he was being monitored by the police, when this was not the case.
Questioned in this episode of “Swiss Crimes”, psychiatrist Camille Jantzi returns to this terrible case. Head of the Psychiatry Unit of the French-speaking university center of forensic medicine (CURML) at HUG, she underlines how an expertise could have better assessed the danger represented by the killer at the time. She also explains how the risk of recidivism is measured today.
Antoine Droux
Swiss
