SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Riviera’s ‘black widow’ accused of murder

A Frenchwoman dubbed the "black widow" of the Côte d'Azur stands accused of seducing several elderly men after meeting them through dating agencies and poisoning them. At least one of her victims died.

Riviera's 'black widow' accused of murder
Photo: AFP

A French woman was charged and remanded in custody on Monday accused of seducing and killing an elderly man and poisoning at least three others on the French Riviera.

Patricia Dagorn, who is in her 50s, was already serving a five-year jail sentence for theft, fraud and kidnapping concerning an 88-year-old widowed teacher.

A source in the new investigation said she was taken from prison to be formally charged with “poisoning with premeditation” in the first case in 2011 and murder for a second death the same year in the southern coastal city of Nice.

She also faces charges of “administering harmful substances with premeditation to vulnerable people” in two other cases in 2011-2012, while a possible fifth case is still being investigated, the same source said.

Dagorn's lawyer, Cedric Huissoud, told AFP: “She denies all the accusations against her.”

He said his client was a “fragile” individual who had been placed with a foster family at a young age. “She says she feels better with elderly people,” he said.

In the case for which Dagorn was jailed in 2013, police found bottles of Valium pills and methadone at the home of her victim, a retired teacher identified only as Robert.

He told AFP then: “I almost died for three days of love.”

In the new cases, one of the alleged victims she had befriended in 2011 died at the age of 85.

Two other suspected victims, who live in Frejus and Nice on the sun-drenched Cote d'Azur, believe she tried to poison them.

The man from Frejus, who is in his eighties, said he had met Dagorn through a dating agency in 2012.

But soon afterwards, his hope that he had found new love late in life was shattered when he found Valium in her case and his doctor said he found traces of poisoning in his body.

“I was heading for death without even realising it,” he told a local newspaper.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CRIME

Detectives return to French village to solve missing toddler mystery

Investigators cordoned off a tiny village in the French Alps on Thursday to solve the mystery of a missing toddler whose disappearance last summer gripped the nation.

Detectives return to French village to solve missing toddler mystery

Emile, two-and-a-half, was staying with his grandparents for the first day of the summer holidays when he disappeared on July 8th last year.

Two neighbours last saw him in the late afternoon walking alone on a street in Haut-Vernet, a small settlement of 25 inhabitants at an altitude of around 1,200 metres.

The little boy, barely 90 cm (35 inches) tall, was wearing a yellow T-shirt, white shorts and tiny hiking shoes, according to a call for witnesses at the time.

A massive on-the-ground search involving dozens of police and soldiers, sniffer dogs, a helicopter and drones failed to find him in July.

It was called off after several days following a prosecutor saying it was unlikely such a young child would have survived in the summer heat.

An initial probe into a missing person soon became a criminal investigation into a possible abduction. But the options of an accident or a fall remain open.

French investigators have summoned 17 people, including family members, neighbours and witnesses, to re-enact the events of the day he disappeared.

They are to focus on the last few minutes during which Emile was seen by neighbours, trying to untangle their contradictory accounts.

The family’s “only hope is that the child is still alive, even if this hope fades from day to day,” the grandfather’s lawyer said.

To ensure no outside interference in the investigation, police cordoned off the village from the outside world on Wednesday morning. It will remain so until Friday morning.

Flights over the village are also forbidden.

Early on Wednesday morning, around 15 journalists huddled in the cold rain at the barrier cutting off access to the village, kept at bay by two police cars.

Some 20 investigators are to guide the re-enactment of events, with some flying drones above to film it all.

The boy’s grandfather was questioned in a 1990s case into alleged violence and sexual aggression at a private Catholic school, it has emerged.

But a source close to the case said his possible involvement in the disappearance had always been examined to “the same degree” as other hypotheses.

Emile had just arrived in Haut-Vernet to stay with his mother’s parents in their holiday home for the summer when he went missing.

His parents, devout Catholics living in the southern town of La Bouilladisse, were not present on that day.

His mother is the oldest of 10 children.

Emile was her first child and she also has a younger daughter.

Investigators received some 900 calls from members of the public in the case, all of which have been dismissed as unrelated.

They have also sifted through endless mobile data and call logs in the hope of finding a clue.

In late November, a day before Emile would have turned three, his parents published a call for answers in a Christian weekly.

“Tell us where he is,” they wrote.

SHOW COMMENTS