“It can’t be him. Emile Louis is a very common name“.
In March 2001, Andrée Werner confided in Parisian. From her home in Briey (Meurthe-et-Moselle), she discovered the involvement of Emile Louis in a series of crimes committed in Yonne. On December 14, 2000, the company’s former bus driver The Burgundy Rapids, arrested in the Var and even confessed.
Countless numbers of victims
Arrested by the gendarmes at his home in Draguignan on December 12, 2000, the man, then aged 66, tirelessly hounded by the victims’ families, admitted his involvement in sordid crimes.
Suspect number 1 claims to have murdered seven young disabled girls, who went missing in the 1970s, in Yonne. He recanted a month later but would never leave prison again until his death on October 20, 2013.
In 2024, eleven years after his (natural) death at the Nancy-Maxéville remand center (Meurthe-et-Moselle), the number of victims of the “Butcher of Yonne” is not fixed. At the request of Maître Didier Seban, lawyer for the victims, new research was carried out by the Auxerre public prosecutor’s office.
Excavations have been taking place since September 23, 2024 in the woods of Rouvray (Yonne), called the “Emile Louis cemetery”. This Tuesday, October 1, the public prosecutor of Auxerre, Hugues de Phily, also confirmed the discovery of clothing which is now being analyzed (DNA and dating of the seized objects).
And in the Var, do we know everything about the criminal journey of this serial criminal?
A caravan neighbor
For Andrée Werner, Emile Louis is a familiar character. Emile Louis had become close to his daughter Ségolène, the helpful caravan neighbor of the young mother, often alone at the Bravet campsite, near Fréjus. The famous friend who wishes you well in an evil version. A helpful fifty-year-old who skillfully hides a dark past.
Emile Louis was the one who took the young woman, aged around twenty, shopping. “He even looked after the children!“, confides Mrs. Werner to Paris-Match. Emile Louis looked after Andrée Werner’s three grandchildren. The children of his daughter Ségolène who are 5, 3 and 2 years old.
But Ségolène is no longer there to testify. Ségolène died on the night of November 24 to 25, 1986. Her husband Alain Stenger, a 23-year-old delivery driver, discovered the lifeless body of his partner, aged 25, in the mobile home at the Var campsite.
He leaves Auxerre to live in Var
In November 1986, Emile Louis was released from prison for two years. Sentenced in March 1983 by the Auxerre court to five years in prison for indecent assault on children with social and psychological difficulties, his sentence was reduced to four years on appeal on December 24, 1983.
The adopted son of a gravedigger, a former legionnaire deployed during the Indochina War, leaves behind his ex-wife, his four children, his past as a municipal councilor in Seignelay (Yonne), his sexual assaults and numerous disappearances.
Auxerre, it’s over. Emile Louis settles in the Var. In Dracenia. He lives at the Bravet campsite doing odd jobs. He was 52 years old when he was interviewed in 1986 by the gendarmes of Roquebrune-sur-Argens after the death of Ségolène.
A sudden death classified as an “accidental death”
The investigation will not go any further. The forensic doctor in charge of the victim’s autopsy, carried out at Fréjus hospital, concluded that it was an accidental death. The reason for the young woman’s death is stated: “accidental death due to pulmonary edema“.
The doctor specifies, however, that “this type of condition is very rare at this age“. At the age of 25, in the middle of the night, the young mother died of respiratory failure.
On January 13, 1987, the judicial investigation was closed by the Draguignan prosecutor. Despite an already “speakable” criminal record – the Auxerrois was suspected of the death of an ex-lover Sylviane Lesage whose corpse was discovered in 1981 (again) in Yonne – Emile Louis got away with it as an eel that slips through the hands of justice.
Emile Louis took in the children of the deceased
The grandmother explains that Emile Louis had taken in the children.the evening when Ségolène died (…). Then, when we went to pick up the children from their father in Fréjus, he was the one who brought them to us. He was very nice“, we read in an article in Parisian you March 31, 2001.
This modest family regretted not having ignored the official cause of death, after discovering the personality of the famous neighbor. It was difficult financially for the parents of the deceased to be accompanied by a lawyer and to request additional examinations.
The judge in charge of the case then advised them to turn the page and devote themselves to the education of their three grandchildren, now aged 33, 31 and 30.
“Survivor” camper says she was raped and kidnapped
During their investigations in 2001, the investigators interviewed a certain Anne-Marie. She will reveal to them that she was a victim of Emile Louis. The facts date back to 1986, the same year as the death of Ségolène Stenger, in the same Var campsite. She waited until her attacker was behind bars to speak.
She points to Emile Louis. He would have made him drink “bitter tasting coffee“. She describes a scene of incredible violence. He allegedly offered to drive her to look for work. The man stopped his vehicle in a forest area, hit her, raped her, stripped her naked, tied her up and put her in the safe and sequester it for several days.
Anne-Marie is a survivor. She promises him not to talk. He threatens to physically attack her children if she says a single word about the facts. The mother will remain silent for fifteen years. Fifteen later, the facts are (unfortunately) prescribed.
Indecent assault on campers’ children, rape, torture… How the serial killer “fell” in Draguignan
On March 26, 2004, before the Assize Court of Draguignan, the verdict was pronounced. Emile Louis is sentenced at first instance to 20 years’ imprisonment, with a two-thirds security period, for “rapes with acts of torture and barbarity” against his second wife Chantal and “rapes” against his daughter-in-law Karine .
Indicted for murder in the so-called Yonne missing persons case, the serial killer is (finally) caught in the judicial net.
He confesses to crimes while believing he is evading the statute of limitations
The one who worked for a funeral company in Dracénie was already sentenced on November 23, 1989 before the Draguignan criminal court. He received 5 years in prison (one of which was suspended) for “indecent assault” committed against the children of his camping neighbors; the same campsite where Ségolène Stenger was found inert.
On December 12, 2000 in Draguignan, Emile Louis was placed in police custody. He is the number 1 target of investigators in the Yonne case. He will never set foot outside a prison again.
The one who married on his release from prison in Draguignan, in avril 1992upon her release from prison, Chantal P., a fifty-year-old beaten by her first husband, will confess to the murders of seven missing women from Yonne, thinking that the statute of limitations (of 10 years at that time) will absolve her of her crimes.
Delivered from this domestic tyrant, on December 13, his wife Chantal filed a complaint and revealed that she had suffered rape and torture, victims of chemical submission (drugs) between 1992 and 1995. His daughter Karine, aged 14, filed a complaint for assault sexual.
The judicial machine will no longer stop. Emile Louis incapacitated.
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