Double murder at the Pau psychiatric hospital: 20 years ago, Romain Dupuy killed two caregivers

What happened in Pau on the night of December 17 to 18, 2004? How could a 21-year-old young man kill and mutilate two caregivers at the Pyrénées Hospital Center? How was he arrested? What impact did this affair have at the time? Twenty years after the events, what has become of Romain Dupuy, the young man arrested for these two murders? France Bleu takes stock.

The shock

On December 18, 2004, when the morning shift arrived at the Monbretias pavilion of the Pyrénées Hospital Center, something was wrong. The building is usually locked overnight. It welcomes people over 70 years old, hospitalized in psychiatry for short stays. But that morning, the window of the staff toilet was broken and there were traces of blood. Called, two police officers discovered two bodies inside the building: that of Chantal Klimaszewski, nurse, throat slit, and that of Lucette Gariod, nursing assistant, decapitated. The latter’s head is placed a few meters away, on a television.

At the scene, the scientific police found a lot of blood: that of the two victims, but also that of a person who was injured while breaking in. Of the size 43 basketball marks are also noted. More mysterious: we discovered small golden wood screws on site.

The same day, the Minister of Health at the time, Philippe Douste-Blazy, went to the Pau Hospital Center. In front of the press, he denounces an act “unspeakable, scandalous, horrible” and immediately asks “an immediate moratorium on the closure of beds in psychiatric hospitals”.

The hunt

The same day the bodies were discovered, five people, including a former patient, were taken into police custody. They were released the next day. Hundreds of hearings followed. DNA tests are carried out. Nothing matches.

The holidays pass. Pau holds his breath. A police officer will tell France Bleu Béarn Bigorre at the time that every day, he dreaded receiving this phone call which would tell him: “He did it again.”

The arrest

It is finally by chance that Romain Dupuy is apprehended, more than a month after the events, on January 29, 2005, in Pau. The young man, who holds a CAP in cooking, lives in the Hédas district. Around 10:30 p.m., he was smoking a joint on a low wall in front of his house when several police officers passed by and decided to arrest him. Seeing them, he takes out a gun stolen from his grandfather and tries to shoot them several times. He hides behind a car, thinks he is “in a film”. The weapon is old, it jams and Romain Dupuy is arrested.

Romain Dupuy is a former CHP patient. He was hospitalized there twice, for paranoid schizophrenia. But since February 2004, he has refused to take his treatment, not considering himself sick. He became violent and makes people live “hell” to his family and his partner.

A “dark side”

Romain Dupuy wears size 43 and his sneakers are the same brand as the traces found at the scene of the double murder. And he has a recent hand injury. DNA analyzes are requested. The man was transferred to the Cadillac psychiatric center in Gironde, within the Unit for Difficult Patients.

In the meantime, the police are questioning his partner. She confirms that on the evening of the double murder, the young man went to walk the dog from 11:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., and that he used to carry a kitchen knife with him. During the search of the young man’s home, investigators found the jacket he wore that evening, and an incomplete case of kitchen knives. The murder weapon will not be found.

The young man recognizes the facts quite quickly. But he doesn’t explain them, or in his own way – he will change his version several times: he first mentions revenge for an attack he suffered from marginalized people some time before, “impulses”, and “dark side”. He would later speak of his belief that “supernatural people” were inside the CHP, and will explain that he decapitated one of his two victims to prevent her from turning into the undead. He had hidden the little screws in his underwear so as not to be attacked by dogs.

When the results of the DNA tests came back from Toulouse, his involvement was no longer in doubt.

Never judged

The victims’ families want a trial. But can Romain Dupuy be judged? No, according to experts. A psychiatric dismissal order is issued. In the summer of 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy, newly elected President of the Republic, met them and was moved in front of the cameras: “I am not sure that the word dismissal is perfectly understandable for a husband whose wife’s throat has been slit or a sister whose head has been decapitated.” ‘A dismissal, that is to say that the crime did not take place?’ he protests again.

The families appealed, and the trial of this decision opened in early November 2007 for three days in Pau, before the investigating chamber. Romain Dupuy is authorized to take part, to explain himself for half a day. The dismissal order is confirmed in December.

The affair will give birth to a law, that of February 25, 2008 relating to security detention and the declaration of criminal irresponsibility due to mental disorder. There is now always a hearing to determine if someone can be tried. If the victims request it, the exchanges can be public.

The affair also accelerated the presentation by Philippe Douste-Blazy of his “mental health plan”which provided, among other things, for a billion euros of investment in psychiatry over five years, including 750 million for psychiatric hospitals.

What happened to Romain Dupuy?

The young man has lived in a psychiatric hospital for 20 years, but his pathology has stabilized. He was first detained in Cadillac, in Gironde, in the unit for difficult patients. He could only leave very rarely, supervised by two doctors and a driver, and for a very limited time.

In September 2023, Romain Dupuy obtains what he has been asking for five years, in agreement with his doctors: to be able to be transferred to a less secure psychiatric structure, still under the compulsory hospitalization regime. “He will always be very supervised,” explained her lawyer, Me Hélène Lecat, to France Bleu Béarn Bigorre. “I’ll give you an example: it’s about being able to have access, without being escorted by psychiatric nurses, to your bedroom cupboard to pick up a book.” The man is now over 40 years old. He no longer lives in Cadillac, but in another psychiatric establishment, still in Gironde.