Thierry Fornasari began his career as a robber as a teenager, following in the footsteps of his father and uncles, with whom he had cut his teeth. He was only 17 years old, at the beginning of the 1990s, when he was tried before the Alpes-Maritimes criminal court for armed robbery. “La Saucisse” or “Saucisson”, his nicknames in the community, will climb the ranks to acquire the title of figure of banditry on the Côte d’Azur. When, in 2014, Spain handed him over to France, we can read on a document from the prison administration: “It was a very big name in Riviera banditry who was extradited, a legend even, that France despaired of one day recovering. » His career came to an abrupt end. On February 25, 2019, the body of Thierry Fornasari, 45, was found charred in the back seat of a vehicle parked on a forest track in Tanneron (Var).
Before the Bouches-du-Rhône Assize Court, in Aix-en-Provence, which is trying from Monday January 27 four men aged around thirty, accused of murder and complicity, several versions go confront each other. The most surprising would have to be that of a “preventive elimination” of a gang leader by his young accomplices recruited to commit the robberies of the Cartier or Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry stores, on the Croisette in Cannes. These “valiant”as he himself designated them, would have taken the lead, fearing being eliminated by Thierry Fornasari. Some in fact put forward a rumor, a reputation, according to which the thug was a hothead who did not hesitate to kill during robberies, and to make his accomplices disappear so as not to have to share the loot.
A young man, with whom the police believe that the perpetrators of the assassination would have taken refuge immediately after the events, carrying Fornasari’s belongings, his weapons and his loot, says it in his own way: “At first, they had to organize a robbery. As soon as they understood that it was impossible to each leave with some of the loot from the heist, with this guy, they panicked and made a decision, how to put it, to kill him. » Others will argue that he was killed for his war chest – 300,000 euros or 500,000 euros – with which he intended to settle in Portugal with his wife, a lawyer from the Malaga bar who had defended him in his drug business in Spain.
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