On a summer night in 1993, seven-year-old Jessica Blanc vanished from a village fair in the French Alps. Hours later her body was found in the garden of a man neighbors knew as “the Legionnaire.”

Michel Sydor had already killed twice before — once in the 1950s, once when he shot his own wife in 1961. The justice system had set him free. What followed shocked France and helped force a permanent change to the country’s life-sentence laws.

Host Alexander Lawson traces Sydor’s decades-long trail of violence, the investigation that finally stopped him, and the lasting impact of one child’s murder.

He answered classified ads, offered the full asking price, and never haggled. Then his victims vanished—and he moved into their homes.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson unravels the chilling crimes of Alfredo Stranieri, the Italian-born Frenchman known as “the Classified Ads Killer” and “the Cuckoo.” Between 1997 and 1999, Stranieri targeted property sellers across France, murdering two couples and attempting to kill a third victim, all so he could claim their businesses and bury the evidence in their own gardens.

From a nightclub outside Paris to a quiet country inn in the Aveyron, follow the cold calculation, the near-miss that should have stopped him, and the investigation that finally dug up the truth.

Franck Siegler was already serving life for murder when he decided to kill again — this time inside a high-security French prison, with a shoelace.

From his first killing at just 18 to a brutal murder on day release and a cold-blooded strangling behind bars, Siegler’s three-decade crime spree exposed every failure of the justice system meant to contain him.

Host Alexander Lawson unravels the full story of one of France’s most relentless multirecidivist killers: the childhood that shaped him, the prison friendships that turned lethal, and the three victims who never stood a chance.

Listen now on A True Crime Podcast.

A fisherman pulls a human foot from the Marne–Rhine Canal near Nancy. Days later, a severed head, hands, and kneecaps surface—pieces of two men, deliberately sawn apart.

Behind the grim discovery is Nadir Sedrati, a lifelong fraudster and identity thief known as Le Dépeceur du Canal. In 1999 he lured three former cellmates to his apartment with promises of money and work, poisoned them with cyanide-laced coffee, dismembered their bodies in his kitchen, and dumped the remains in the canal.

Host Alexander Lawson recounts Sedrati’s decades of deception, the coldly calculated murders, the forensic breakthroughs that finally caught him, and the unanswered questions about how many other lives he may have taken.

A story of manipulation, identity theft, and calculated brutality in the heart of France.

In 2008, women began disappearing from the streets of Marseille. One answered a call about babysitting. Three others met a client after dark. None were ever seen again—no bodies, no crime scenes, only silence. Until one survivor walked out of an apartment and told police what she had seen in the bathtub.

Host Alexander Lawson examines the crimes of Patrick Salameh, the man known as the Marseille Ripper. From his violent past to the disappearances of Fatima Saiah, Iryna Sytnyk, Cristina Bahulea, and Zineb Chebout, and the testimony that finally brought him down. A case of absence, evidence without remains, and a killer who left almost nothing behind.

In 1990s France, the Minitel was the cutting-edge way to connect — including on the secretive “pink” boards where men sought anonymous encounters. One man used it as a hunting ground.

Rémy Roy, an ordinary-looking family man from the Paris suburbs, messaged gay men offering BDSM sessions. He bound them, then bludgeoned them to death. Three victims never made it home. A fourth barely survived — and became the key to catching him.

Host Alexander Lawson recounts the chilling crimes of the man known as the Minitel Killer: the calculated lures, the staged crime scenes, the investigation that finally stopped him, and the dark questions that still surround his motives.

For nearly two decades, Jean-Claude Romand convinced everyone he was a respected doctor at the World Health Organization. He wore the suits, carried the briefcase, and spoke like an expert. In reality, he had never finished medical school. He spent his days in parking lots reading journals and lived off money he stole from family and friends.

When the lies finally began to unravel in January 1993, Romand chose murder over the truth. In a single day he killed his wife with a rolling pin, shot his two young children, then drove to his parents’ house, shared lunch with them, and executed them both.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the full story of one of France’s most chilling true crime cases: the man who built an entire life out of fiction, and the day he destroyed everyone who might have exposed him.

Listen now.

January 1900. Workers digging in a muddy cistern on the outskirts of Lyon pull out packages they first mistake for veal. Then a human torso. Then two severed heads wrapped in old newspapers.

One belonged to a milkmaid collecting a debt. The other to a widow who simply vanished. The soft-spoken Italian concierge living just steps away—the man who fixed shoes, smiled at neighbors, and worked for a religious order—never raised his voice.

His name was Gioanni-Luigi Richetto. For nearly seven years he turned the streets of Lyon into a slaughterhouse.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson recounts the forgotten crimes of one of France’s earliest documented modern serial killers: the disappearances, the precise dismemberments, the attic floor soaked in blood and human fat, and the quiet man who was finally unmasked by the pioneering forensic scientist Alexandre Lacassagne.

A chilling story of a predator who left almost no legend behind—only packages of flesh and two heads in a cistern.

In the shadows of a French train station, young women vanished. Their bodies were later found mutilated with almost surgical precision. For nearly two decades the killer walked free—living near the tracks, striking when the night was quiet—until DNA finally put a face to the monster.

Host Alexander Lawson examines the case of Jacques Rançon, the man known as the Perpignan Station Killer. From his first known murder in 1986 to the horrific attacks that terrorized Perpignan in the late 1990s, this episode traces the path of a predator whose signature was not only death, but desecration. Three young women—Isabelle, Mokhtaria, and Marie-Hélène—lost their lives. Their families waited decades for answers.

This is the story of how one of France’s most sadistic serial killers was finally brought to justice.

In the summer of 1995, a series of deadly bombs tore through the Paris metro and RER, killing eight people and injuring nearly two hundred. French authorities traced the funding of the attacks to a quiet Algerian man living in London: Rachid Ramda, also known as Abou Farès.

Host Alexander Lawson uncovers the story of the man accused of financing the bloodiest bombing campaign on French soil since World War II — his decade-long fight against extradition, the high-profile trials that followed, and the life sentence that still stands.

A gripping true-crime examination of terror, justice, and the long shadow of the Algerian civil war.