TOUR DE FRANCE OF MISCELLANEOUS FACTS – In Ain, the mystery of “the unknown of the post office”

The murder of the postwoman of Montreal-la-Cluse is the story of an extraordinary investigation which, over the years, leads to suspects with increasingly unexpected profiles. A story with multiple twists, transcribed here from the podcast “Hondelatte Raconte”.

It all started on December 19, 2008, in this small village on the shores of Lake Nantua, in Ain. Apparently, it’s a morning like any other for the small La Poste agency. It’s past nine o’clock, a man comes in to pick up his package. There is no one at the counter to greet him. In Montreal-la-Cluse, everyone knows the postwoman: it is Catherine Burgod, a child from the village. In general, she has her ritual at the opening: she talks about everything and nothing with her friends over a “coffee-cigarette”, says Christophe Hondelatte. But that day, it’s not the merry little band that the client discovers in the back room, but the body of Catherine Burgod, lying in a pool of blood.

Who killed the postwoman?

Why would anyone want to kill Catherine Burgod? The La Poste employee leads a quiet little life, even if after twenty years of marriage, she is in the middle of divorce proceedings. We also learn that she is pregnant with a new man, whom she met recently in a nightclub. The police automatically evoke the trail of suicide, because Catherine tried twice to kill herself between 2007 and 2008, but the medical examiner is formal: the autopsy shows that she was stabbed to death. 28, to be precise. Some in the lungs, some in the ribs. The killer also took 2,600 euros from the safes. Was it a robbery gone wrong? Anyway, fear settles in the village, and while the investigation is launched, all the businesses close their doors, like an improvised curfew…

Suspect #1: The exhausted ex-husband

The ex-husband of Catherine Burgod is the first relative heard by the investigation unit immediately set up. In the case of the murder of the postwoman, the trail of “crime of passion” holds water, further specifies Christophe Hondelatte: the ex-husband would have been mad with rage to see Catherine about to have a child with another man, and would have killed her. Asked, he says: “As I came home late from work, she often found herself alone at home with the children. And then she confessed to me that she no longer loved me. , but I ended up giving up and we only saw each other at the lawyer’s.”

We learn that on December 18, the day before the crime, he would have made a call to a colleague to cancel the briefing the next day. Briefing which was to take place initially right at the time of the murder… In addition, the ex-husband confides that on this famous eve of the murder, he was with the woman he has been dating since his separation, and that she would have broken up with him at that time. A man at the end, therefore, that the wife and his new companion have both left. But the “crime of passion” hypothesis comes up against a major element: the DNA taken from the post office, from the counter and from the sports bag left in the rest room, does not match.

Suspect #2: An actor gone mad?

In the Catherine Burgod case, another suspect, much less trivial, hangs over the investigation. A man named Gérald Thomassin, a French actor who has been frequenting Montreal-la-Cluse since 2007. When he arrived, no one believed in the arrival of an actor in this remote town of Ain. Since then, he has lived in a studio in the basement, a few meters from the small post office where Catherine Burgod was stabbed. The main actor of the film “The little criminal” by Jacques Doillon is one of those who laid a white rose in front of the agency in tribute to the postwoman. He is not known to have any connection with her, and yet, in January 2009, two women saw him crying at the victim’s grave. To these passers-by, he unpacks his whole life, from his past as a drug addict to his stays in a psychiatric hospital. Then he evokes the affair of La Poste, and in front of their amazed eyes, begins to play the scene of the murder, says Christophe Hondelatte again. For these two ladies, no doubt: the murderer of Catherine Burgod, it is him.

Alerted, the gendarmes arrive in his apartment. On the walls, they discover with the help of a special product blood stains. “I injured myself last year while cutting a sandwich,” he defends himself. Placed in police custody, he gives no evidence allowing him to be formally involved and his DNA does not “match” either with that taken from the crime scene. In July 2009, Catherine’s ex-husband threatened him with death, convinced like everyone of his involvement in the affair. A friend of Thomassin also reveals to the police that the actor had confided a few months before the murder to want to “do something stupid”, something like an armed robbery. In 2013, he was wiretapped, and confided by telephone to his brother: “I’m going to tell them that it was I who murdered the lady. My spirit was at home but my body was at La Poste…”. For many years, the accusations against him accumulate and make him the main suspect of the investigation, but without the investigators really managing to prove the facts.

Suspect #3: The Perfect Stranger

And then in 2018, ten years after the crime, a new suspect appears in the investigation. He is a man in his thirties, who lives with his fiancée and plays in the city’s football clubs. Everyone knows and appreciates him. He would never have been suspected if his DNA had not “matched” with that of the alleged murderer of Catherine Burgod, after an arrest for a completely different matter. Placed in police custody, he admits having already gone to the small post office twice: once with his mother, and once alone, when the office was empty. According to his words, he would have found Catherine Burgod already dead there, and would have stolen a wad of banknotes before fleeing… Is he simply responsible for the theft or is he the author of the murder of the postwoman? Is there a link between him and Gérald Thomassin? To listen to the end of this story, discover other criminal cases rich in suspense, listen to “Hondelatte Raconte”, the podcast which delivers daily stories of miscellaneous facts and singular life paths.