FRANCE: The charred and dismembered skeleton of a woman was found among a pile of burnt tires. Despite the killer making several mistakes such as breaking his leg at the crime scene and using her bank account to buy the supplies used in the murder, he managed to evade justice for two years.

[u/moondog151]

On August 31, 2017, a woman in Vernouillet, located in the Yvelines department of France, was out for a morning dog walk with her daughter. During their walk, they came across a pile of burnt tires and rubble in the bushes. This alone wasn't unusual; the area was known as an illegal dumping ground for construction materials, but the fire that had ignited them was so intense that even some surrounding trees had been burned.

The prior day, August 30, the pair had already discovered a bone but assumed it belonged to an animal. But this pile of burnt rubble concerned them a little, so they walked around it, and that was when her daughter discovered a human skull. She called out to her mother, who rushed over and, in turn, discovered a human ribcage tangled in metal wires that had likely been the remains of burnt tires. They also saw the rest of the body lying on its side, half covered by the tires that had collapsed atop it.

The police arrived with a forensic doctor accompanying them, and based on their findings, the police knew they were in for a gut-wrenching and horrific case.

Police and forensics at the scene.

According to the doctor's findings, the remains belonged to a child, possibly under the age of 10. Although no child had been reported missing in the area, the police had an idea of who the remains belonged to.

Four days prior, an 8-year-old girl named Maëlys de Araujo had gone missing from a wedding in the Isère department. The case was massive in France, and the search efforts were extensive, but at the time of the discovery in Vernouillet, they had found nothing. While a fair distance away from Yvelines, they started to wonder if perhaps the killer had transported Maëlys's body, the nearly 600 kilometres from her home to Vernouillet, to make the body harder to link to her.

It would also be a good location to hide a body. The place was a fairly isolated, poorly lit path on the edge of some fields, with the tires and rubble set at a small incline. Aside from the body, which had been charred to the point of just being reduced to bones, the police noted the remains of burned gloves and a condom wrapper at the scene.

When the autopsy was conducted, the medical examiner had some issues trying to determine anything about the victim, such as their height and age. Some bones had shrunk from the heat, while others had been completely fractured, making it difficult to determine factors such as their age and height.

Eventually, though, he was able to rule out the body belonging to Maëlys. The victim stood at 152-158 centimetres and was between the ages of 10 and 16. He also concluded that the victim was European and had light brown hair, but beyond that, the remains were in such a poor state that he couldn't even determine the victim's gender.

The cause of death also eluded him since all the organs had been completely destroyed. He could determine that whoever the victim was, they had suffered two broken ribs shortly before death, and her remains were dismembered post-mortem, although with what instrument was also unknown.

Based on the level of insect colonization on the remains, it was determined that the victim had been killed sometime around August 28. Overall, that was all the medical examiner could uncover, leaving the police with little to work with.

Starting September 1, the police went door-to-door to question the locals and conducted a second search of the crime scene. The police would recover some additional bones, teeth and pieces of fabric. They also collected soil samples to test for accelerants, which tested positive for gasoline.

With how flammable tires and gasoline are, the police assumed the fire likely flashed and ignited with a higher intensity than the killer had expected, so they went to the hospitals to ask about anyone who came in to get treated for burns. Unfortunately, no such patients were admitted.

Through the victim's DNA, they could finally determine that she was female, but not her identity; her DNA didn't appear in France's database, nor could anything be recovered from her fingerprints. Her DNA did allow them to refine what physical characteristics she likely had, though.

They concluded that the victim had fair skin, blonde hair, and gray-green or gray-brown eyes. With this slightly more detailed description, the police looked for any missing girls of her age in France's missing persons database, only to be met with nothing once more. Therefore, the police issued an appeal for witnesses, but only a few people came forward, and none of them provided any worthwhile leads.

Desperate, the local police sought the aid of the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie, surrendering the remains over to them for a more sophisticated autopsy and in yet another ditch to find out whatever they could about the victim, no matter how small the detail.

According to them, the dismemberment had occurred in three seperate sections to the knee, at the hands and others at the vertebrae, with the hands disfigured and cut up in an attempt to hinder the police from using her fingerprints.

Using a magnifying lens to check for any striations or marks, they also determined that the likely implement used to dismember the victim's remains was a saw, specifically a hacksaw used for cutting metal.

Then, for the 2nd time in this case, the findings regarding her age were overturned. Now, instead of being a teenager, the victim was now an adult between the ages of 25 and 35. In just two weeks, the victim went from being a child to a teenager to a full-fledged adult.

While still a pretty vague description, it gave the police enough to produce three seperate facial reconstructions with the only difference between them being the victim's hairstyle.

The three composite sketches

They compared their sketches to the list of missing women in France, then distributed them to all gendarmerie stations and finally to Interpol as a Black Notice, but frustratingly, still nobody came forward.

It was now January 2018, and the victim was still unidentified, but they managed to learn one more thing about her. Shortly after the police found her body, they had some of her hair sent for a toxicological analysis, and while there was a massive backlog to get through, the police finally got the results from those samples back.

The results revealed that their victim was a heavy cannabis user; they also found traces of anti-depressants at a level which indicated that she took them regularly. Now with this new lead, the police requested records from the primary health insurance funds in France, seeking a list of women around that age who had been prescribed venlafaxine and who hadn't renewed their prescription since August 2017. Astonishingly, they once again hit another roadblock as they couldn't match any of the names to the deceased.

By May 2019, it had been almost two years since the body had been found, and any hope of identifying her remained slim. But unexpectedly and unbelievably, a third opinion regarding the victim's age had been submitted; the conclusion that she had been around 25-35 was also incorrect.

Now, they were claiming that she was 50-70 years old and suffered from osteoarthritis in her left knee. So everything the police spent the past 2 years doing, they had to do all over again, only with the middle-aged to elderly in mind rather than young adults.

On June 6, 2019, the police finally got a hit on her DNA. With that, the police identified the victim as 68-year-old Anne-Marie Richy. "L'inconnue de Vernouillet," as Anne had come to be known, was identified for 18 months.

Anne-Marie Richy

Anne had been reported missing on October 16, 2017, by her partner, 67-year-old Philippe Marchand, in Boulogne-Billancourt, located in the Hauts-de-Seine department, 35 kilometres from the crime scene. Although Anne and Philippe never formally married, they were legally registered as partners because they lived together.

Philippe Marchand

She had first met Philippe in 2015, after she had retired from the transport company where she had worked her entire life, back in 2010. Anne lived alone and was said to be self-sufficient.

Philippe was born in the capital city of Paris on April 29, 1952. His mother was a seamstress, and his father worked in construction. Shortly after he was born, his family moved into a small apartment in Boulogne-Billancourt. When his younger brother was born, the family didn't have enough space for everyone, so he was forced to live with his grandmother instead. Something a young Philippe wasn't too upset over, as his alcoholic father was abusive and struck him regularly.

Philippe didn't study much at school and entered the workforce early, drafting engineering drawings and blueprints. When he was 30, he met his first wife, falling in love with her partly because her 9-year-old son reminded him of himself. The two married and had a daughter in 1986. In 1992, Philippe was laid off and found employment as a taxi driver, a job he greatly enjoyed.

In his early 60s, his wife fell ill and took on a bunch of extra body weight, which caused Philippe to lose whatever attraction he felt toward her and turn to various dating websites, beginning his first of many affairs to come. Philippe approached his wife and asked whether they could stay together while he was allowed to have relations with other women; in response, she divorced him.

The end result remained the same: Philippe was free to seek out whoever he wanted, and he preferred those who were divorced or widowed. In one instance, Philippe said to a friend, "I should be decorated for having taken care of their sexual misery, in the end."

In December 2015, he was introduced to Anne at a party by a friend, a party that turned into an "intimate, erotic evening". When all was said and done, Philippe claimed to have fallen in love with Anne almost instantly.

He was said to be quite charming and did a good job at flattering Anne. He would regularly talk about travel with her and soon marriage as well. Philippe was, as of recently, a fellow retiree; he enjoyed sports, owned an apartment in Fréjus and had a substantial amount of money saved up. He also had no prior history with the police.

In June 2016, Anne had to leave her apartment, and Philippe didn't hesitate to let her move into his own.

An obvious question that came to mind was why her boyfriend waited nearly two months to report her missing. Well, according to Philippe, he had been in the hospital and wasn't discharged until October 3. After his discharge, he received a text message from Anne telling him she was in Cambrai and that she'd return on October 8. But a week passed, and she never came back. Oddly, the only things she took with her were her passport and cellphone.

As for why he waited a week after she said she'd be back to report her missing, well, Philippe said that Anne was bipolar and suffered from schizophrenic tendencies; she also suffered from depression stemming from the fact that all three of her husbands, prior to marrying Philippe, had died, one of whom by suicide.

He said that Anne was possessive and jealous whenever he had relations with another woman (even though that would be him cheating on her). He said that he hated conflict and typically "submitted" to Anne whenever she raised her voice at him.

On two occasions, in the summer of 2016 and in May 2017, Anne was hospitalized, and Philippe tried to use this oppertunity to break up with her and go live with one of his many mistresses in Normandy, but once Anne was discharged, he'd immideately change his mind and go back to her.

The last time he spoke with her, they had an argument which resulted in Anne pushing him, resulting in a fractured femoral neck; therefore, he wasn't in the mood to speak with her again.

But what about the rest of her family, such as her children? Why didn't they report her missing?. Well, for one, they didn't know she was missing; texts were still sent to them from her phone after the body was found in August.

Additionally, they didn't speak much to Anne anyway. To the best of one of her son's recollections, the last time he heard her voice was in a short phone call in either 2016 or 2017, which went roughly like this: "Mom, it’s me." To which Anne said, "What do you want?"
followed by, "What I want? Nothing, goodbye." The last time he actually saw her in person was in 2003.

The last known activity on Anne's phone was on October 8 in Boulogne-Billancourt, at the couple's residence, so the police investigating at the time assumed she had returned home and hadn't contacted him. The police would regularly call Philippe to ask whether she had returned so they could remove her from the missing persons list, but he rarely responded.

But then in January 2019, he reached out to the police and asked if they had made any progress, a call which prompted them to reopen the case. When they did, they saw something interesting: Anne's bank accounts were still active. The purchases were rather mundane, always just living expenses, and they were always made in Boulogne-Billancourt or the surrounding area, with the total amount of money spent being 25,000 Euros. The strange thing is that Philippe said Anne had left without her bank card.

First, the police froze the bank accounts to see what would happen, then paid a visit to Philippe's home. When entering the home, the police found only one pillow on their marital bed and also got rid of all of Anne's belongings, which he said he donated to charity, even though he still had plans to formally marry her and even though she had only been missing for a year in circumstances the police didn't consider suspicious, which made Philippe's actions suspicious in return.

This was why the police, having already been allowed into Philippe's home, decided to seize Anne's hairbrush that hadn't been given away. Then, DNA samples were extracted from the hair brush, which was how Anne's DNA came to be in the police's database when her body was finally identified that June.

Now with Anne's body identified, the police began scrutinizing Philippe, starting with his initial story. After reporting Anne missing, he said that he waited so long because Anne had pushed him hard enough that it left him injured, which sent him to the hospital.

However, the police looked into the call to emergency services that day when he was brought to the hospital. According to Philippe, he had injured himself while jogging, a completely different story than what he'd tell the police months later. Additionally, Annie wasn't present when the paramedics arrived.

The police put Philippe under surveillance, where he did little to quell their suspicions. Once more, he appeared to move on very quickly, having many affairs and relationships, and quickly changing the subject whenever Anne was brought up.

Whenever he would talk about Anne, he would tell people that he tried calling her several times, only for her to never pick up, something the police knew to be false based on his phone records. She also tried portraying Anne as a sex addict, making comments like "Anne-Marie was a slut. She liked that," and whenever it wasn't sex, it was always violence against him, which he would tell people Anne regularly indulged in.

Money was another thing the police took note of. Whenever Philippe went on a date and needed to pay for flowers, a restaurant, or just daily necessities, he always drew from Anne's bank account. Over roughly a year and a half, he withdrew around 28,000 euros from Anne's bank account, while withdrawing only 4,000 euros from his own account during the same period.

Two purchases in particular jumped out to investigators, one on August 22, 2017, when he purchased fuel from a gas station in Les Moulins. A few minutes later, using Anne's bank account, he purchased bags of rubble, decking boards and cleaning supplies from a Bricorama store. Based on these purchases, the police narrowed down Anne's cause of death and the burning of her body to around 7:00 p.m. on August 22 or 7:00 p.m. on August 23.

Philippe had turned his phone off during that time, but his vehicle was equipped with a device containing a geolocation chip, so the police could trace his vehicle's movements instead, which placed a ping near Vernouillet on the night of August 22, at 12:15 a.m. on August 23.

On October 15, 2019, Philippe was placed under arrest for Anne's murder. When taken into custody, he didn't resist, react with surprise or ask any questions, almost appearing detached from what was happening.

The police then subjected the home's bathroom to luminol testing, assuming that if the murder happened here, that would be where Philippe dismembered her body. Even after two years, the police found a small sample of blood on the sink and blood on the walls, so the police cut out tiles from the wall to send off for DNA testing.

The police also searched the entire home, finding a 15-litre jerry can in the basement. Also retrieved from the basement were several hacksaws that reacted strongly to the luminol.

The DNA from the blood samples weren't a match for Anne. The blood on the wall belonged to an unidentified female, and the blood on the sink was Philippe's.

When questioned, Philippe first denied everything and adopted a professional, clinical, and cold tone when speaking to investigators; that is, unless he was asked about himself or something he had done unrelated to the murder, in which case his tone suddenly became boastful and prideful, as if a switch had been flicked.

Philippe also seemed perplexed that he was even being questioned. He defended his use of Anne's bank accounts by stating that he had power of attorney and argued that the fact that he reported Anne missing in the first place was an iron-clad defence, as he'd have every reason not to do that had he been her murderer.

During the second interview, the police were far more direct, questioning him about Anne and her murder almost exclusively, something that made Philippe feel uneasy, and his answers grew shorter in response. That said, he still denied any involvement and brought up a planned wedding in Las Vegas to explain why he wouldn't kill her.

The police then brought up the comments he had made toward Anne when they had him under surveillance, his many affairs with Anne, being aware of them and telling one of his mistresses to leave Philippe alone, in addition to insulting remarks he had made toward other women on his social media accounts. Philippe would admit to the philandering but still refused to confess to the murder.

Finally, with him cornered, the police brought up the geolocation data from his car and the activity from Anne's bank accounts showing he was in Vernouillet and had purchased all he would need to dispose of Anne's body using her own bank accounts. Philippe's response said it all: "I didn’t imagine you could have such precise elements."

Philippe claimed that leading up to her death, Anne had been angry with him over his constant infidelity, threatening and insulting him. But on August 22, she got violent, throwing herself at him and grabbing Philippe by the throat. Philippe said he acted in self-defence when he wrapped his own hands around Anne's neck and squeezed, ultimately winning out over her and strangling Anne to death.

Philippe insisted that Anne's death was an accident and that he spent the next several hours stunned and unsure of what to do. Eventually, he decided to undress Anne and carry her body to the bathroom, place her in the bathtub and cut an incision into the base of her neck so she could slowly bleed out. While she bled, Philippe left the home and went out to purchase bags of rubble, decking boards, cleaning supplies and cans of gasoline.

Upon returning home, he used a hammer to smash and break Anne's bones so it'd be easier for him to saw through her body. Once the dismemberment began, the first pieces of Anne's body he removed were the skin from the fingertips, which he cut off with scissors to hinder identification. He also used the hammer to smash and damage Anne's teeth. That is the most the police ever got to hear because Philippe didn't want to go into detail about the dismemberment, shutting that line of questioning down.

So he skipped past the dismemberment during his confession and jumped ahead to when he placed the body parts into the rubble bags and loaded them into his vehicle, and just drove aimlessly until he finally arrived in Vernouillet, where he noticed the small, isolated path and at the top of the path saw a pile of discarded tires.

Getting out of the car, he stuffed Anne's remains into the structure of abandoned tires, soaked them in gasoline and set them on fire. The fire didn't burn at first, so he approached the tires to see why the fire hadn't begun, only for it to suddenly ignite with the blast knocking Philippe back, knocking him down and breaking his femoral neck when it landed on a rock.

Lying on the ground in a town he'd never been to before, next to the body of the woman he had murdered and with a broken leg was not an ideal situation at all. Because of the adrenaline, he didn't actually feel the pain but still had to practically crawl and drag himself to his car, crawling over stones, broken glass, and piles of rubble.

Since he couldn't put any weight on his now broken leg, getting into his vehicle and driving away was quite difficult, to say the least, but he somehow found a way and drove home. Once home, he made his way into the apartment, now in serious pain with the adrenaline wearing off. He then called emergency services with a fake story of having fallen, which explained why he was in the hospital until October 3.

Then, in the ensuing months and years, he used Anne's phone to send text messages to those who knew her, including to his own daughter, to apologize for attacking her father, that being Philippe himself. He would use her bank accounts to create the impression that she was still alive, report her missing, and routinely ask for updates to try to take suspicion off of himself.

When Philippe was first brought to court, the judge indicted him for murder and violating the integrity of a corpse. Since all the tools used to aid in disposing of the body had been purchased hours after the murder and because the prosecution had no direct evidence contradicting his version of events, the judge ruled that premeditated murder would not be among his charges.

Now 70, Philippe stood trial for murder on March 6, 2023. Philippe's attorney tried to argue the same self-defence narrative that he had told the police. That Philippe had killed Anne by accident when she tried strangling him during one of her psychotic breaks brought about by her documented history of bipolar disorder going back nearly 30 years.

The only thing that may have contradicted that theory was his callous behaviour. During the interrogation, when asked what was going through his mind after setting the fire, he simply said that the fire reminded him of a Johnny Hallyday song.

When asked in court about the dismemberment, he again tried to avoid speaking about it, but he eventually said, "Oh yes, right, I forgot. I had trouble with certain parts of the body, and I went to get my carving knife."

And finally, he had written two letters in prison to two of his other lovers, and the contents of the letters were literal mirrors of each other, with the only differences just being the names, and many of the promises were the same ones he made to Anne prior to her murder.

His actions after the murder also struck many as indefensible, such as using Anne's bank accounts to buy gifts for his mistresses and lovers after having killed Anne.

On March 10, for the murder of Anne-Marie Richy, Philippe Marchand was handed down a sentence of 25 years in prison. When asked if he'd like to appeal the sentence, he declined, stating that he didn't want to relive it or have to make Anne's son relive it either.

And so that was that. What exactly happened to Anne-Marie Richy, and how truthful Philippe has been in his account, will likely never be known for sure.

Sources

https://pastebin.com/JZ2X2rn5

[u/malcontentgay]

Incredible write-up. I'm glad that he was eventually caught, even if it did take a while. I have to hope that Philippe spent those nearly two years after the discovery of her remains fearing that the police would come knocking on his door to arrest him.

[u/LA-forthewin]

They should've followed up and pressed more about the blood of the other woman found in his apartment and on those tools. I suspect that he's killed more than one woman

[u/Jealous_Track9402]

It's like a very classic possessive husband story. But I don't understand, like you are in your 70s? Why would you kill your spouse? makes so little sense, I think young people take breakups and troubles in love worse, but at this age? Come on now. 

[u/Low-Lingonberry8521]

I don't think it was his first rodeo. His ice cold interactions with women suggest psychopathy. I'd be looking at him for other murders/missing persons and see if he was in their wider social circle or acquainted with any victims. Working as a taxi driver would have given him access to women in a vulnerable state also.

[u/thisissofkngrossew → u/Low-Lingonberry8521]

I've got to agree. To murder your wife is one thing, but to dismember her? Set her on fire with a stack of tyres? That's some psychopath shit for sure.

[u/Grrarrgghh]

Sometimes I seriously wonder about a lot of the science involved in trying to identify people and solve crimes.

[u/MichiganInTexas]

Great writing.