In 1964, Luc Taron’s parents were devastated when their son, 11, was found murdered in the woods near their suburban Paris home. The killer then began taunting them with a series of letters
In 1964, Luc Taron’s parents believed they had already endured their worst nightmare when their 11-year-old son was found murdered in the woods near their suburban Paris home. However, when the killer began taunting them and the police with a series of letters, it became clear that their nightmare was far from over.
Luc, a young boy from the southern suburbs of Paris, had an argument with his mother on the night of May 26, 1964, over 15 francs he had secretly taken from her. After the disagreement, Luc left home, and his parents assumed he had run away. They expected him to return soon.
But the next morning, Luc’s lifeless body was discovered mutilated in the Verrières-le-Buisson woods, a tragic turn of events that shattered his family.
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For the next two months, Luc’s killer terrorised the family and the local police with dozens of taunting letters. According to reports from Time, the killer frequently communicated with authorities and the media, signing off as “l’Etrangleur” – “The Strangler”.
Police found no evidence linking the killer to any other crimes, which led them to believe he was claiming responsibility for murders he had not actually committed.
As the case progressed, the killer’s letters captured the attention of the media and the public, with police desperate for answers. Eventually, in late 1964, investigators arrested 27-year-old Lucien Léger, a student nurse, after he made several phone calls boasting about the murder.
During questioning, police searched his apartment and found newspaper clippings about the case, as well as a notepad – rose-tinted and matching the one used by the killer to write his letters.
Léger eventually confessed to the murder after 24 hours of police interrogation. As he was escorted to jail, he reportedly shouted to a crowd, “They’re right! I am a monster!” However, in the years that followed, Léger retracted his confession, claiming he only wrote a few of the letters. Despite his retraction, he was convicted of Luc’s murder in 1966.
For nearly 40 years, Léger served his sentence, continuing to claim he suffered from memory loss regarding the night of the murder and filing multiple appeals for a retrial. He was ultimately released from prison in 2005, but lived just three more years before being found dead in his home in 2008.
The case, once widely reported, portrayed Léger as a seemingly “normal” man with a “banal” hobby of writing, even though he had once been hailed as a criminal mastermind.
His boastful letters had terrorised Paris for weeks after Luc’s death, with media outlets like Le Monde describing him as having haunted the city.
When police asked Léger why he chose Luc as his victim, he explained that he targeted the 11-year-old because the boy “seemed as unhappy as I was when I was his age”.