In 1994, a member of the Var was coldly murdered in her car. Convicted for the murder of Yann Piat, Lucien Ferri was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Yann Piat lost his life on February 25, 1994. That day, the member of the Var was murdered on the heights of the city of Hyères, while her driver was taking her home. On the road to Mont des Oiseaux, two men fired on his car from a motorcycle, fatally wounding Yann Piat. Quickly, the political motive was evoked since the deputy was known to fight against corruption and drug trafficking in this city of Var. But it was ultimately by chance, when they arrested a young woman who had participated in the theft of the motorcycle, that the investigators found the trail of the killers – Lucien Ferri, 26 at the time and Marco Di Caro, 25. – and three accomplices. Arrested on June 15, 1994, the “Macama band”named after the bar where they all worked, was tried four years later.
“I’ll tell you what I know. It was I who was the passenger on the motorcyclerevealed Lucien Ferri during his trial at the Assizes. Marco Di Caro was the pilot, continues Ferri, but he was never armed, and he did nothing. When I fired, he was very scared and he fell. He wasn’t really aware of what happened, he must have realized there.” In court, he cleared the other defendants and explained the reason why he had agreed to kill Yann Piat.“I was going to have a child, and I needed the money, he assured. Madame Piat had been in danger for months. They used me, but if I had refused, someone else would have done it.” Without giving names, he accused “several sponsors”, representing the community but also the political class.
Lucien Ferri: what sentence was the murderer of Yann Piat sentenced to?
In June 1998, Lucien Ferri was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Var Assize Court for the murder of Yann Piat. Gérard Finale, the sponsor of the assassination, received the same sentence. Marco Di Caro, the driver of the motorcycle, was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, Romain Gressler, to 15 years, Olivier Tomassone, to 13 years for having been responsible for keeping lookouts and dealing with weapons. Finally, Stéphane Ali Guechguech, the arsonist of the red Yamaha to hide this material evidence, was sentenced to 6 years in prison. Imprisoned after this media trial, Lucien Ferri spent just over sixteen years behind bars before being granted parole.. Yann Piat’s killer died at 41 on February 18, 2013 “of one lightning meningitis in a hospital in Toulouse”according to Var-Matin.
At the time, his fight against corruption even earned him the nickname “Yann d’Arc“. She denounced in particular the collusion between the Milieu and the Var political class, as this subject on the political climate which reigned then in the Var in 1994.