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Guillaume
SEZNEC
The Seznec Affair
Classification: Murderer?
Characteristics: The
body was never found - Miscarriage of justice? - Symbolise the
reluctance of French justice to admit the possibility of a mistake
Number of victims: 1 ?
Date of murders:
May 25,
1923
Date
of arrest:June 14,
1923
Date of birth: 1878
Victim profile: Pierre
Quéméneur,
46 (woodcutter and
conseiller général of
Finistère)
Method of murder: ???
Location: France (during a business trip from
Brittany to Paris)
Status: Sentenced to to hard labour in perpetuity
on November 4,
1924. Released in May 1947. Died on February 13, 1954
The Seznec Affair
was a controversial French court case of 1923-1924.
Course
Joseph Marie Guillaume Seznec, born in
Plomodiern in Finistère in 1878 and the head of a sawmill at
Morlaix, was found guilty of false promise and of the murder of
the wood merchant Pierre Quéméneur, conseiller général of
Finistère.
Among other things, Quéméneur had strangely
disappeared on the night of 25/26 May 1923 during a business trip from
Brittany to Paris with Seznec, a trip linked (according to Seznec) to
the sale of stocks of cars (left behind in France after the First World
War by the American army) to the Soviet Union. Though many other
possibilities were advanced as to the disappearance and despite the body
never being recovered, it was decided only to pursue the murder
hypothesis. Seznec became the prime suspect as the last person to have
seen Quéméneur alive, and was arrested, charged and imprisoned.
His 8-hour trial, in the course of which nearly 120
witnesses were heard, closed on 4 November 1924. Seznec was thus found
culpable, but since premeditation could not be proved and so he was
condemned to hard labour in perpetuity (the avocat général had demanded
the death penalty). He was taken to the Transportation Camp at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni
in 1927, before being transferred to the prison of the Îles du Salut in
French Guiana in 1928.
Benefitting from a remission in his
sentence in May 1947, he returned to Paris the following year. In 1953,
in Paris, he was reversed into by a van that then drove off (the driver,
later questioned, claimed not to have seen anything) and died of his
injuries on 13 February 1954.
Miscarriage of
justice?
Throughout the trial and for the rest of his life,
Seznec never stopped proclaiming his innocence. His descendents fought
on to have the case reopened and clear his name (notably his grandson
Denis Le Her-Seznec). Until today, all their attempts (14 in total) have
failed.
The "commission de révision des condamnations
pénales" nevertheless accepted, on 11 April 2005, a reopening of
Guillaume Seznec's conviction for murder.
This decision could open the way to an eventual
annulling of his conviction in 1924. The criminal chamber of the Court
of Cassation, France's appeals court, examined the case on 5 October
2006. At this point, Avocat général Jean-Yves Launay required the
benefit of the doubt, to Seznec's benefit, raising more particularly the
possibility of a police plot - the trainee inspector Pierre Bonny (twenty
years later to be assistant to Henri Lafont, head of the Gestapo
française) and his superior, commissaire Vidal were charged in the
inquiry. At his side, the conseiller rapporteur Jean-Louis Castagnède
maintained the opposite opinion, deducing on the one hand any such
manipulation seemed improbable due to the few acts established by Bonny
and on the other that the experts solicited by the cour de cassation had
established that Guillaume Seznec really was the author of the false
promise of sale of Quéméneur's property seized at Plourivo.
On 14 December 2006, the Cour de
révision refused to annul Seznec's conviction, judging there was no new
evidence to call doubt on Seznec's guilt, since the implication of
inspector Bonny is (though an interesting element in itself) not new.
The affair seems closed and a new request for an
annulment unlikely. The Seznec family at first intended to take the case
to the European Court of Human Rights, but gave up on their lawyers'
advice.
In popular culture
Several works have been published on the affair, and
Yves Boisset directed the film L'Affaire Seznec in 1992, with
Christophe Malavoy in the lead role and also starring Nathalie Roussel,
Jean Yanne and Bernard Bloch.
Bibliography
Victor Hervé, Justice pour Seznec, Editions
Hervé, 1933 ;
Claude Bal, Seznec était innocent, Éditions
de Paris, 1955 ;
Jean Rieux - Lice Nedelec, Seznec...innocent ou
prestidigitateur criminel ?, Jugant, Lorient, 1976 ;
Marcel Julian; L'affaire Seznec, Les grandes
enquêtes d'Europe, 1979 ;
Denis Seznec, Nous les Seznec, Éditions
Robert Laffont, Paris, 1992 ;
Denis Langlois, L'Affaire Seznec, Pocket,
1993 ;
Michel Keriel, Seznec. L'impossible
réhabilitation, Éditions MEB, 1998 ; reédition LE MANUSCRIT,
2006 ;
Aurélien Le Blé (Préface de Denis Seznec), Moi,
Pierre Quemeneur, Éditions Alain Bargain, Quimper ;
Daniel Le Petitcorps, Seznec En quête de vérité,
Éditions Le Télégramme, 2003, ISBN 2-84833-058-9 ;
Bernez Rouz, L'affaire Quéméneur Seznec -
Enquête sur un mystère , Éditions Apogée, Rennes, 2005 ;
Pascal Bresson (préface de Denis Seznec),
Guillaume Seznec, une vie retrouvée, Éditions Ouest-France, Rennes,
2006 ( Children's book inspired by Denis Le Her, Seznec's grandson);
Guy Penaud, L'énigme Seznec, Éditions de La
Lauze, Périgueux, 2006 .
Cour de Cassation Affaire Guillaume Seznec, Arrêt
n° 5813 of 14 December 2006 ;
Nathalie Le Gendre, 49 302, Mango (Autres
Mondes), 2006 .
Albert Baker, "The Seznec mystery : revealed",
2008
Wikipedia.org
French murder verdict upheld - 82
years on
Mystery lingers over killing with no corpse - Family
fought for decades to try to clear man's name
Angelique Chrisafis - The Guardian
Friday 15 December 2006
It was one of the biggest French murder mysteries
of the past 100 years: a killing with no corpse and a convicted
murderer who always said he was innocent.
Guillaume Seznec, a Breton sawmill owner, was
sentenced to a life of hard labour in a penal colony in French Guiana in
1924 for murdering a dignitary and friend whose body was never found.
He insisted he was innocent and over decades new
theories have emerged of a curious saga of illegal rackets in American
Cadillacs and a possible police set-up by a French officer who later
joined the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation. The case inspired
numerous books, while Seznec's family fought to force the courts to
acknowledge a miscarriage of justice.
But yesterday, amid intense interest from the media,
lawyers and historians, the court of revision refused to posthumously
clear Seznec's name. Last year the state prosecutor concluded that fresh
evidence cast doubt on the guilty verdict. But judges insisted there
were no new facts leading them to doubt Seznec's conviction.
"It is shameful what you are doing!" shouted Seznec's
grandson, Denis, 59, from the gallery, accusing the courts of wasting a
chance to prove the justice system was able to admit its mistakes.
The case comes as the legal system is reeling from
the failures of a case in Outreau in northern France where several
innocent people were jailed for years for paedophile offences, with some
having their children taken into care. Some of those finally acquitted
in that case were present in court with the Seznec family yesterday.
In May 1923 Seznec left Brittany for a trip to Paris
with a friend, Pierre Quemeneur, a woodcutter and local official. They
were to negotiate with Boudjema Gherdi the sale of 100 Cadillac cars,
left by US troops after the first world war. But their car broke down
several times and Quemeneur decided to take the train alone. He never
arrived in Paris and his body was never found. The following month his
suitcase was found at Le Havre with a note in which Quemeneur promised
to sell his land to Seznec. Seznec's family argue the document was faked.
At Seznec's trial lawyers claimed that Gherdi did not
exist, and that Seznec had planned Quemeneur's murder to take over his
land. But Gherdi was later proved to exist. He was a car trader and an
informer for a police officer on the case, inspector Pierre Bonny.
The Seznec family questioned whether the police had
framed Seznec to cover up a racket in American cars. In 1993 an 85-year-old
former shopkeeper retracted statements implicating Seznec, saying she
had been coerced by the police.
Bonny joined the French Gestapo during the occupation
and was shot by firing squad in January 1945. On the eve of his
execution, his son Jacques said he confessed to having sent an innocent
man to a penal colony.
French justice willing to retry 1923 murder
mystery
By John Henley - Guardian,co.uk
April 12, 2005
Judges in Paris yesterday cleared the
way for the retrial of a murder mystery dating back 80 years which has
come to symbolise the reluctance of French justice to admit the
possibility of a mistake.
"This is a historic day for our family," declared
Denis Seznec, 58, grandson of a Breton sawmill owner sentenced to
deportation and hard labour for life in 1924 for the murder of a local
dignitary which he denied till the day he died.
"After a campaign that has lasted three generations,
this is the first time that the French justice system has finally
decided to drop its illusion of infallibility," Mr Seznec added.
The packed court erupted in cheers as the ruling was
read. The case will go to France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation,
to decide whether to grant the family's request - its 14th since 1926 -
for the original verdict to be overturned.
Guillaume Seznec left Brittany for Paris with his
friend Pierre Quemeneur, a businessman and councillor, on May 25 1923.
The pair were to negotiate with Boudjema Gherdi the sale of 100 Cadillac
cars, left by US troops after the first world war. Their car broke down
repeatedly, so, according to Seznec, his partner decided to carry on
alone by train. Quemeneur never arrived in Paris, and his body was never
found.
Seznec was convicted of murder the following year.
The prosecution argued that Gherdi was "a figment of the accused's
imagination", and that Seznec did away with Quemeneur to get his hands
on the latter's country estate: a fake bill of sale, dated May 23, was
found among Seznec's belongings.
He was deported in April 1927 to the infamous penal
colony of French Guiana; it took nearly 20 years before he won a
presidential pardon for good behaviour, and on his return he was a
broken man. He died in 1954 at 75.
Over the years, partly thanks to painstaking research
by his grandson, it became apparent that Seznec could have been framed.
Gherdi, it was discovered, did exist, apparently an informer for the
investigating police officer, Inspector Pierre Bonny. Before the second
world war came, Bonny was thrown out of the police for falsifying
evidence; in the occupation, he joined the French Gestapo in Paris,
where, after liberation, he was shot by firing squad in January 1945.
Colette Noll, a resistance member deported on Bonny's
orders, has testified that Gherdi informed on her and smashed her
network, and the Algerian-born go-between was a "very frequent visitor"
to the French Gestapo's HQ.
Amid huge media interest, this year the Paris public
prosecutor said he was "completely convinced" of Seznec's innocence.
Yesterday's panel could not bring itself to go so far. It merely stated
that Gherdi, and a connection between him and Bonny, were "new elements"
which should be examined. Much of Bonny's case against Seznec remained
valid, it added.
"This case has ruined my life," a tearful Denis
Seznec said outside court. "I don't regret it, but it has stopped me
living. Now, for the first time, there may be light at the end of the
tunnel".
