April 1892. A bomb rips through a Paris restaurant. The owner lies dead. A customer is killed. The city is left in shock.

This was no random act of terror — it was calculated revenge. The man behind the blast was Théodule Meunier, a skilled cabinet-maker turned anarchist bomber who helped ignite France’s deadly “Era of Attacks.” From the failed explosion at the Lobau Barracks to the lethal attack at Restaurant Véry, Meunier struck with cold precision… and later declared from a penal colony that he would do it all again.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson uncovers the story of the quiet craftsman who chose dynamite over the chisel, fled to London, and faced justice without a single word of regret.

Listen now to the forgotten bomber who helped set Paris on fire.

On a quiet Paris street in 1986, two unmasked women gunned down the CEO of Renault in broad daylight. One of them was Nathalie Ménigon — a working-class bank employee turned co-founder of the far-left terrorist group Action Directe.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson traces her path from radical activism to targeted assassinations, a life sentence, and eventual release after more than two decades behind bars. Discover how ideology turned into bullets and shook France during the violent “Years of Lead.”

In a cold Lyon courtroom in January 1945, a nearly deaf 76-year-old man rises to face his sentence and shouts one final, venomous line: “This is the revenge of Dreyfus!”

Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras never held a gun. He never planted a bomb. Yet for decades his newspaper columns called for deaths, named targets, demanded hostages be shot, and cheered the persecution of Jews, Resistance fighters, and political enemies. During the Occupation those words became tips that led to arrests, deportations, and executions.

Host Alexander Lawson examines the rise of France’s most influential ultra-nationalist writer, the death threats and provocations that landed him in prison, the lethal impact of his wartime journalism, and the trial that finally held him accountable.

This is the story of a man whose ink left a trail of real blood—and the moment a liberated nation decided some words are not free.

Summer 1976. A heatwave grips Grenoble. Two young people vanish. Then a third. Letters signed “Red Brigades – Group 666” demand a massive ransom… or the hostages die.

Police launch a manhunt. A city lives in fear of a terrorist cell.

But there was no cell. Only one man: Joël Isidore Matencio.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson examines the calculated kidnappings and murders of Christian Leroy, Muriel Ferrari-Trabelsi, and Olga Moïssenko, the elaborate hoax that terrorized the Isère region, and the eventual unmasking of the man who staged it all for money and notoriety.

From early brushes with the law to a life sentence, medical release, and a quiet end as a poet under a pseudonym — this is the full story of the crimes that turned ordinary summer nights into a calculated slaughter.

Seven young women with intellectual disabilities vanished from the French countryside between 1975 and 1979. No one searched for them. Officials called them runaways. For twenty-five years, their cases gathered dust—until a bus driver named Émile Louis sat down with police and confessed to raping and murdering them.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson examines the Affaire des disparues de l’Yonne: a story of predation, institutional failure, and a justice system that looked the other way for far too long. Only two bodies were ever recovered. The rest remain missing.

A chilling case of how society’s most vulnerable can disappear without a trace.

It’s just after midnight at a wedding in the French Alps. An eight-year-old girl is dancing. One moment she’s there. The next, she’s gone.

The man who took her was an invited guest — a former army dog handler named Nordahl Guillaume Richard Lelandais.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson unravels the chilling double life of Lelandais: the 2017 murder of young soldier Arthur Noyer, the kidnapping and killing of little Maëlys de Araujo at a family wedding, the sexual assaults on young relatives, and the lingering questions about other unsolved disappearances that may still be linked to him.

A story of trust betrayed, forensic breakthroughs, and a predator who moved freely among the people who thought they knew him.

Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of violence against children and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.

In the dark waters of the Avre marshes near Amiens, two young men were found dead months apart — one with a fractured skull, the other shot and tangled in a boat chain. Both had last been seen alive with the same quiet, helpful friend.

Host Alexander Lawson recounts the crimes of David Patrick Roger Lefèvre, the French serial killer known as Le Tueur des Marais — the Swamp Killer. From a violent childhood and an early killing in 1999 to the chilling murders of his own friends in 2011, this is the story of a man who turned ordinary companionship into a death sentence… and left his victims floating in the black water.

Between August 1993 and January 1994, a 22-year-old man quietly terrorized the suburbs south of Paris. Five elderly women were strangled in their own homes. One survived. The killer later admitted the blood excited him.

Host Alexander Lawson recounts the crimes of Claude Lastennet — the man French media called the “tueur de vieilles dames” — from his fractured childhood and psychiatric struggles to the bus-route pattern that finally led police to his door. A chilling true-crime story of vulnerability, impulse, and a tip that stopped a serial killer.

High above the French Riviera, Michel Lambin lived as a quiet goat farmer and cheesemaker. Neighbors saw a polite, ordinary man. The woman who lived with him saw something else entirely—a killer who allegedly hung victims from meat hooks, dismembered them while they were still alive, and treated human remains with the same cold practicality he used on livestock.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson examines the case of the man known as the Shepherd of Caussols. From a bloody string of suspected killings in the 1980s to contract-style executions and the discovery of a body buried on his own land, Lambin’s story is one of dual lives, cold-case mysteries, and a long-delayed reckoning.

Drawing on court records, police investigations, and the chilling testimony that finally brought him into the light, this episode traces how a Parisian criminal reinvented himself in the hills of the Alpes-Maritimes—and the trail of death that followed.

In 1946, a French court sentenced a 72-year-old former revolutionary to life at hard labour. Not for murder — for helping send hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen into forced labour for Nazi Germany.

Hubert Lagardelle began as a firebrand of French syndicalism. He ended as Vichy Minister of Labour, one of the men who made the Service du Travail Obligatoire a reality.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson examines the ideological betrayal, the machinery of collaboration, and the quiet, bureaucratic crime that cost France so much.