Model Family Man and Serial Killer
A good look at this man shows nothing out of the ordinary. He exemplifies Hannah Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil. Hitler looks a bit disturbed, Kim Jong Il a chubby brat who has failed to launch a new hair-style, Trump the egocentric narcissistic billionaire who failed to get a sun tan, but one doesn’t see evil. Not even on Charles Manson exhibits any signs of his satanism. I daresay that Osama Bin Laden had kindly eyes. None of them shows signs of the malevolence in them. Most of the people who have inflicted serious harm to humanity do not look the part.
Looking at the lives of the infamous men who helped foment the horrid extermination of millions of human beings and the razing to the ground of towns, cities and infrastructures, with the exception of a few, like Adolf himself, who were so driven by incomprehensible forces within them that they would probably have done horrible things anyway, the big majority among them might well have had a different life if a trigger had not operated in them, if they had not been pushed to take the road they took. Albert Speer might have become a respectable architect, Goebbels just another Saatchi and Saatchi, Ribbentrop the founder of a multinational alcohol distributor, Adolf Eichman a director of Deutsch Banhof, Göring an aviation magnate, Trump a hotelier.
The man in the photograph, might indeed have become the leading light of the World Health Organisation that he passed himself for. No one will deny that he had the ability. He could keep the most erudite medical brains enthralled by his knowledge and exposition.
He is Jean-Claude Romand, who after having served 25 years for multiple murders is being released from prison this week, and all France is concerned. Pending his release, he made the enigmatic statement: “J’ai tué tous ceux que j’aime, mais je suis enfin moi.” I killed all those I love, but I can now be myself. I do not detect any remorse in this sentence. Does he mean he can now live happily ever after? Or live in the full knowledge of his wickedness and atone?
He killed his two children, his wife, his mother and his father. It is also possible that the fatal accident of his father-in-law to whom he owed a large sum of money, who fell down the stairs when he was the only other person in the house was … no accident. All this might not have happened if he himself had not had a fall and broken his wrist during his second year medical exams. This accident terminally braked his march towards a medical degree.
He was the only child of a well-to-do family, he led a normal life, was much loved by his parents, and loved them back. He did well at school, and went to the prestigious Lycée du Parc in Lyon, and after his baccalaureate he joined medical school. He did reasonably well for two years, until his accident.
He chose to drop out but staying at university, re-enrolling as a second year student, but he kept this to himself. This, he said during his trial, was the beginning of his imposture.
Every year he informed his parents of his exam success. He had met his wife-to-be, but as she was lukewarm in her response, he invented a cancer for himself to convince her. He would often invoke this cancer to gain sympathy. She agreed to marry him. He would always be devoted and who would bear him two lovely children. Was a he already playing a part or were the sentiments real? She would not suspected the truth for years. After five years of this charade, the university refused to keep enrolling him, and he pronounced himself qualified doctor. To everybody he was working in a practice in the town nearby for some time. It was at this time that he cultivated the habit of spending hours in public libraries, reading up on a number of topics, including medicine. However, a man of great ambition, he had to do better. Monsieur Crolet a notable in the popular lakeside resort of
Annecy often made monetary gifts, as well as generous loans to his son-in-law. Annoy was also strangely the scene of an infamous and unsolved murder of a tourist from the Middle East a few years ago.
He discovered that with his charm, friends and acquaintances were always willing to lend him money. As an only child he knew how to finagle money from his own parents too.
In 1983, he proudly announced to his own parents as well as those of his wife Florence that they were moving to Geneva. He had just been head-hunted and was going to work at the WHO. He had no trouble renting a good apartment in a posh suburb of the Swiss capital. He presented a modest appearance to the world, never boasted openly, and the family soon gathered a number of wealthy friends.
The Romand family seemingly lived an idyllic life. He was worshipped by Florence, now a qualified pharmacist, and by his two children. At his trial he would describe his household as “la maison du bonheur”, house of bliss.
His routine is soon established. Every morning he drops his two children at school, Florence to the pharmacy where she sometimes worked, and off he went to lecture at the university or participate in medical seminars. Or that was the fiction he had created. Nobody entertained the slightest doubt about him. He spent nearly all his time reading scientific papers, and one cardiologist of world renown was said to have been stunned by his erudition.
He told of trips overseas to be part of a panel of experts, but in fact all he did was book into an airport hotel for a couple of days.
It will be established that his average monthly expenditure amounted to just over 9000 euros. He seemed to have had no difficulty borrowing over 3 million euros from his several victims during his stay in Geneva. Claiming to be getting information from real financial Swiss experts, he obtained money from his parents, his gullible father-in-law, his admiring brothers-in-law, allegedly to invest on their behalf. To an uncle of Florence he procured fake medicine to the tune of 60,000 francs, which may have been responsible for the latter’s sudden death. When he learnt that Chantal Lalande, a dentist friend had sold her surgery for 137,000 euros, he seduced her and offered to invest it for her.
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The fake doctor knew that his luck was turning in 1992. His father-in-law had the idea that he would like to have some of the returns from his investment. He seemed to have run out of willing lenders. Florence had met a mother waiting at the school gate whose husband was also a WHO expert, and mentioned the famous WHO’s Christmas parties. Obviously her family had never been. Romand had never even mentioned them.
The house of cards was on the point of collapse.
It was on the 9th of January 1993 that he carried out the plans that he must have elaborated for some time. He beat Florence to death with a rolling pin, leaving her body in the room. He went to sleep in another room. Next morning he woke up the kids, made them breakfast, watched some cartoon together and then played a game with them, involving hiding their faces with pillows. He then shot them dead. He then went to visit his parents, and ate the excellent lunch Maman Romand had prepared. Over Cognac he produced a gun and shot them both dead. Worse was to come. He searched for the family dog and shot him too.
He left the corpses and went to meet the retired dentist Chantal, telling g her that they were invited to lunch with Bernard Kouchner, the health minister. He had always claimed the latter, who had never heard of him, for a close friend. In the car he attempted to gag her with tear gas as a prelude to strangling her, but the plan went wrong. He begged her forgiveness, made her swear that she would not report the attempt and dropped her at her home.
He then retraced his steps to his family home in Geneva where his dead wife and children were and set fire to it. He was found by the firefighters.
He was sentence to life imprisonment.
In prison he very ably treated his fellow inmates for a variety of ailments, and earned himself a genuine degree in Informatics.
He never showed any remorse and his psychiatrist admits defeat to solving his case. Was he born with the predisposition to kill? Was he in fact a psychopath from the beginning?
What would he have been if he had not fallen and broken his wrist?
- EPILOGUE: Now aged 65 (June 2019) he has been released after 26 years detention. He asked to join a convent in the Indre where he will do gardening and teach Informatics.
