Marcel Bousquet’s plan for the trial’s next day was to concentrate on the events of 14 November 1953, the day that Gaston Dominici confessed to the murders. Victor Guérino was the first witness to be heard on Tuesday, 23 November. He gave a sober account of events that led to Gaston’s making a confession. He stated that they had conversed in a friendly atmosphere, exchanging stories, for which Gaston had used the word “parabolas.” Gaston had rambled on about good times and bad: his snaring seven hares in one day, his military service, his years toiling at Ganagobie, his marriage, his discovery on his wedding night that his wife was carrying another man’s child, and his saving for years to buy the Grand’ Terre. Then suddenly he had blurted out: “Yes, they attacked me. They thought I was a prowler.”1 He next told Guérino that he wanted to see “the President.” The policeman assumed that by this he meant Commissioner Pierre Prudhomme.
Shortly afterward Gaston told Guérino’s colleague Joseph Bocca that he was sacrificing himself for the sake of his family. In his deposition, Guérino said, Gaston had repeatedly muttered, “Oh, the little girl!”2 Léon Charles-Alfred for the defense pointed out that these words did not appear in the transcript. Émile Pollak added that it was unacceptable to have considerable differences between the statements made before the trial and the testimony made in court, especially from the same witnesses.
Gaston claimed that he could not remember a thing because he was in such a confused state after hours of interrogation, but Bocca confirmed his colleague’s account. Gaston had claimed he would shoulder the blame to save his grandchildren’s honor, because he did not mind going to prison if he could take his dog with him. He loved that animal more than all the rest of the family. Bocca went on to say that Gaston had told him the following: Gustave bought the carbine at the time of the liberation, that it was he who did the deed, that Yvette had told him that three people had been killed, and that he got up two or three times during the night. “Now they are all putting the blame on me!”
Commissioner Prudhomme was then called to the stand. He said that he could not remember word for word what had passed between him and Gaston, but it had been more of a conversation than a cross-examination. He had asked the old farmer whether the Englishwoman had anything to do with it, whereupon “the patriarch launched into a very compromising account of what happened.”
Pollak and Pierre Charrier tried to show that Prudhomme’s statement contradicted those of Bocca and Guérino on several points. Pollak stressed that Prudhomme had not even mentioned the mulberry tree, even though the newspapers had talked about it for months on end. He also asked at what time Edmond Sébeille had joined Prudhomme at the law courts, because Gaston had made his formal statements to these two men alone. Gaston claimed that he could only remember talking about the carbine, whereupon the advocate general remarked that his amnesia was remarkably selective. Staff Sgt. Marius Sabatier testified next that on 14 November 1953 Gaston had said that he had run after the little girl and had hit her over the head with a rifle butt.
Gaston’s wife, Marie, was the final witness that morning. “The Sardine” was a tiny, thin old woman, her face deeply lined. She said, “I don’t know anything. I didn’t hear any shots that night or any screams. I just heard the dog barking. At about six o’clock Gaston told me that there was a little girl dead by the bridge. That’s all.” Bousquet asked her, “Weren’t you upset? You have grandchildren; you are a mother and a grandmother. You didn’t think of going to help the little girl?” She replied, “Good heavens no! I didn’t think of it!” She maintained she had not seen the English people the previous evening; in fact, she had seen nothing, heard nothing, and knew nothing. When asked about her married life, she answered that she had never lacked anything, that she missed her husband since he “went away,” and that she rejected out of hand any suggestion that he might have been involved in the crime. Gaston was visibly moved by this demonstration of loyalty. He asked her, “Is it true that you saw my trousers covered with blood?” She replied, “Your trousers? They were dry. And clean. As usual.”
Yvette was the first witness called that afternoon. Smartly dressed in a blue suit and a green and red pullover, with a gold heart on a chain round her neck, she was carefully made up and her hair was freshly permed. She made a gesture of acknowledgment to her father-in-law as she took the stand. Before she had a chance to speak, Pollak interrupted the session and insisted that she be put under oath. The presiding judge adjourned the court for longer than an hour to discuss the matter with his assistants, but again they denied the request.
Yvette then gave her version of events during the night of 4–5 August. She and her husband had gone to bed at ten o’clock but were awoken at eleven thirty by the dogs’ barking. They heard Gaston talking to three strangers, asking them where they were going and what they were doing. The strangers left, and she and Gustave went back to sleep, only to be awoken again at one o’clock by gunshots. Gaston got up at four thirty; Gustave, half an hour later. The courtroom was deeply shocked when she recounted her actions that morning: how she had failed to even look at a little girl whom she knew was still alive; how she had taken her baby and gone to Oraison to buy some medicine; how she had had a leisurely lunch with her parents, the Barths; and how they had all gone back to the Grand’ Terre “to have a look at the bodies.”
She withdrew all her previous statements to the effect that she had heard cries in the night; that her husband had got up to “have a look”; that he had seen her father-in-law “looking distraught” while walking up and down in the courtyard; that she had ever said, “Gustave didn’t tell me why my father-in-law had killed the English”; and that Clovis was the one who had told them that Gaston had committed the crime. Now she knew nothing, remembered nothing, and denied everything. She previously had maintained throughout that she had never seen the M1, but she now claimed to have heard two cars immediately after the shootings. She insisted that “the English” had not come to the farmhouse to ask for water. She said that Zézé Perrin had confused them with three Swiss people who had come to the house with a canvas bucket three days before. This claim did not explain how Zézé knew that Elizabeth could speak French and her mother could not. Yvette’s was such an impressive piece of stonewalling that the public prosecutor, Calixte Rozan, said in his summing up, “What a kid!”3
Getting nowhere with this obdurate witness, Bousquet called Clovis to the stand. Short and stocky, he bore a close facial resemblance to his father. He wore a pair of velvet trousers, a jersey, and a gray jacket. Spruce and clean-shaven, he appeared to be calm. Unlike the rest of the clan, he gave answers that were clear and unequivocal. He began by stating categorically that his son had not lent Zézé his bicycle until two weeks after the crime, on 18 August. Zézé had said that he had given the bicycle back on 18 August, thus sowing further confusion, but it did not alter the fact that only Gustave’s bicycle was at the Grand’ Terre on the day of the murders. Clovis also said that he had first seen the carbine when he went into the shed to look for some string, but he did not specify the date.
On 5 August 1952 Gustave had told him that he had heard shots in the night and that he had found the body of a little girl. She had groaned a little but was dead by the time he approached her. Clovis had asked him whether he had alerted the gendarmes, and Gustave had replied that he had. Clovis then went to look at her and returned to the Grand’ Terre with Faustin Roure, who had checked the landslide. It was then that he had seen the bodies of the parents. One was under a blanket; the other, covered by a camp bed.
Two days later Sébeille had shown him the murder weapon. He recognized it and had felt weak in the knees. Bousquet asked him how he had reacted. He said he knew that the weapon had come from the Grand’ Terre, so he asked Gustave about it. He told him that their father was the one who had fired the shots. At first Clovis had refused to believe it. He knew that his father was quick tempered, but he could not believe that Gaston was capable of committing such a terrible crime.
Clovis then repeated his story that when Gustave was in jail, his parents had asked him to sleep overnight at the Grand’ Terre.4 One evening, when Gaston was in a terrible rage, he had blurted out in patois, “I’ve killed three. I could easily kill another.”5 Clovis still found this hard to believe, but when Gustave was released from prison he said that at four o’clock in the morning of 5 August 1952, while he was taking out the goats to pasture, their father had told him everything. The presiding judge asked Clovis why he accused his father of murder. He replied that it was because of what Gustave had told him. Asked whether he was certain, he stated that he always stuck to his word, even though it was a terrible thing for a son to have to accuse his father. Clovis was now obviously under great strain and had difficulty in maintaining his composure.
Asked about a letter that he had written at his wife’s entreaty to Gustave’s father-in-law, François Barth, and called upon him to encourage Gustave to “tell the whole truth,” Clovis said he had done it so Gustave would clear himself of all suspicion. Bousquet asked him whether, once his father had confessed to the crime, he still suspected his brother. He replied that he did not know what to think and then, after a brief pause, said that he had never suspected Gustave.
Zézé was the first to appear on the witness stand at Wednesday’s session, the seventh day of the trial. Captain Albert, head of the Forcalquier gendarmerie, said that Zézé’s testimony on 5 August 1952 had been a fabric of lies and that his alibi for the previous night had been proven false. Pollak agreed with Albert that Zézé had lied, but he pointed out that it was important to find out why he had done so. Zézé was questioned throughout the morning, but the net result was extremely meager. When asked why he had lied he simply shrugged his shoulders, saying that he did not know. Bousquet asked him whether he had spent the night of 4–5 August 1952 at the Grand’ Terre. He artfully replied that he had not slept there since he was eight years old. He was sixteen in 1952. This agreed with Gaston’s answers to this question. On 4 August Zézé had helped his mother water the beans in the family’s new farm. He had returned that evening to the farmhouse at La Serre, from which they were moving soon, and had eaten supper. He spent the night alone there, his mother having left to rejoin her husband at the new farm. Contrary to his previous statement that Gustave had stopped off at La Serre on his way back from seeing Faustin Roure at Peyruis the evening of 4 August, Zézé now stated that he had simply seen him ride past on his motorcycle. Bousquet asked him why he had lied. Zézé again said that he did not know.
When Gaston was asked what he thought of his grandson’s testimony, he replied that he was a little crook who went poaching with Gustave. Although almost all the peasants in the area were dedicated poachers, to describe someone as a “poacher” was an extreme insult. He then rambled on, asking why Clovis was accusing him of the murders when he had thought it was probably Gustave who had committed the crime. He then returned to his denunciation of Gustave and Zézé. After some hesitation he said, “Both of them are poachers.” Clearly Gaston was suggesting that Gustave and Zézé were out poaching on the night of 4–5 August and were thus implicated in the crime.
As Zézé had testified that his aunt Yvette had said that Anne and Elizabeth had come to the Grand’ Terre to ask for water, the Marrians were called back and asked whether they knew if the Drummonds had a canvas bucket with them. Neither of the Marrians could answer this question. Mrs. Marrian had previously testified that she had seen a canvas bucket, but she was unable to say with any confidence whether they had taken it with them.
Germaine Perrin—Zézé’s mother and Gaston’s daughter—readily admitted that there were problems between the Perrins and the Dominicis, but she was unable to offer any useful evidence in the case at hand. Pollak cried out in desperation, “We refuse to give up when faced with the lies of the Perrin family!” Paul Maillet was equally reticent in answering the questions fired at him, provoking Pollak into histrionic outbursts of frustrated rage.
Gustave was called to the witness stand when the court resumed at three o’clock that afternoon. He did not create a good impression. Although a handsome, well-built man, he had a weak mouth and a mirthless smile and spoke with a thin, high-pitched voice. He soon became enmeshed in a series of lies and falsehoods to the point of appearing almost feebleminded. He began by blurting out, “I’ve been lying all the time. My father is innocent!” He then launched into a garbled account of events since the evening of 4 August 1952. In answer to the judge’s question why he had continually changed his story, he said that the police had told him that they had to “finish this business.” He said, “They accused me of all manner of things, and they beat me. They simply wanted to make me lie. Now I say that my father is innocent, just like all the other family members do. We don’t know anything about this business.” He accused Clovis of having thought up the idea of denouncing their father, whereupon Gaston leaped to his feet yelling, “That’s not true! You were the first to accuse me!”
Gustave cut a pathetic figure. Obviously terrified of his wife, his father, and his brother Clovis, he became entangled in a web of lies and contradictions. His pathetic efforts to defend his father only served to make the case against him stronger, and the poorly prepared defense team did nothing to help. Judge Bousquet, unable to restrain his contempt for the witness, denounced him in no uncertain terms:
You are a coward, a creature without the slightest trace of guts. You were the first to accuse your father, to make him into a suspect accused of murder. Now you claim that the police beat you up in order to get out of you what you now claim to be a pack of lies. You claim that you were forced into lying. Thus you were prepared to lie and accuse your father of murder and you continue to lie. You are a coward and your behavior is unconscionable.
Gustave appeared to be unmoved by this outburst. Dressed in his Sunday best, he stood there impassively, a look of utter stupidity on his face, moving nervously from one foot to another. Judge Bousquet, Advocate General Rozan, Deputy Public Prosecutor Louis Sabatier, and the attorney Claude Delorme got nothing out of him but an uneasy smile, a blank stare, and endless assertions that the entire Dominici clan was innocent. The defense team of Pollak, Charrier, and Charles-Alfred were left equally frustrated. The more Gustave lied the more the conviction grew that he knew a great deal about the crime. Gustave, the key witness whose testimony had led to Gaston’s arrest, now retracted everything and thus placed the entire case against Gaston in serious question.
The judge reminded Gustave that he had said upon finding Elizabeth’s body that he had not gone to see her parents because he thought they had murdered their own daughter. At this point there were murmurs in court. He then asked how Gustave could possibly have thought such a thing. Gustave replied, “It happens all the time!” At that there were howls of protest. Bousquet asked him if he really thought that it was a common occurrence for parents to kill their children. At this Gustave replied that he had not realized that they were her parents. Having been caught in this obvious absurdity, he blandly stated that everything he had ever said was a lie. Five minutes later, to general astonishment, he announced that he had never told a lie. Shortly afterward he retracted this obvious falsehood.
Clovis was recalled to the witness stand to answer more questions about the Rock-Ola. When questioned about the similarity between the oil used in it and his own weapons, Clovis confidently asserted that the carbine had never been in his possession. He further claimed that he had never gone poaching. He said that the carbine was kept at the Grand’ Terre, but he did not know who owned it. It took the court more than an hour to understand that Clovis recognized the weapon, but that did not necessarily imply that he knew to whom it belonged. He then said he did not believe his father had taken the gun with him when he first went outside. After all, why should he take a gun that he had never used with him to walk a couple of hundred yards along the railway line? This implied that Gaston had deliberately gone to collect it with intent to use it against the Drummonds.
When Pollak asked Clovis why he had never mentioned the carbine when he had accused his father in front of the magistrates, he answered that he did not want it to be known that it had come from the farm. Pollak then demanded to know why Clovis had not revealed the ownership of the carbine when it had first been shown to him. Clovis remained silent. A long discussion ensued, during which the defense pointed out certain minor inconsistencies in Clovis’s testimony regarding the murder weapon.
Gaston was then asked what he had to say. He stood up, pointed at his son, and with his voice trembling with rage, claimed that Clovis was bearing false witness. He yelled, “I’ll tell you the pure and simple truth. I’m a loyal Frenchman. And you [pointing at Clovis] lie every time you breathe. I’m going to refresh your memory. First of all on Christmas Day you came to eat at the Grand’ Terre. You now say that you couldn’t eat anything because of your worries and that you couldn’t eat a thing. That was not the real reason. You were not hungry because you’d partied all night in Peyruis. You were completely plastered and puked all the way. Bastard!” Clovis, equally furious, swore that he was telling the truth. Gaston said that he was a liar and ought to be ashamed of himself. His final remark was to yell, “I have a clean conscience, but your brother and you—” As things were now getting out of hand, the judge prudently adjourned the court for lunch.
When the court resumed in the afternoon Clovis’s wife, Rose, stated that her husband had been very secretive about the whole affair. She had been very annoyed at his reticence, and in an argument on this score, Clovis had said that he hoped that his father would either hand himself over or write a confession and then kill himself. She then said that the story that Clovis had got blind drunk that Christmas Eve was a complete fabrication but confirmed that he had vomited on the way back from the Grand’ Terre on 25 December. Finally, she spoke of the letter he had written to Yvette’s father, in which he implored him to make sure that Gustave and his wife told the truth. The rumor was that Gustave was guilty, but Rose believed he was absolutely innocent and wanted him to clear his name.
There not being enough time that day to question Gustave once more, the court agreed that some minor witnesses suggested by the defense might be heard. Various passersby during the night of 4–5 August 1952 were questioned. Nothing of any value transpired.
The eighth day of the trial began with yet another confrontation with Gustave. He was soon entangled in a series of demonstrable lies. Sabatier for the prosecution announced that he did not want to go over all the witness’s lies again. It was up to the jury to decide which parts of his testimony were true and which were false. Charles-Alfred for the defense announced that his team refused to question Gustave, saying that it was beneath the men’s dignity to question a man like that. The courtroom was getting restless as the situation was once again clearly out of hand.
Bousquet called an adjournment, after which he consented to the defense team’s request to go outside and look at a Hillman, similar to the one owned by the Drummonds, ostensibly to see how Sir Jack might have wounded his hand on the rear bumper. The red gowns of the judge and prosecution and the black gowns of the defense team fluttered around the car as they wandered around in the mud for an hour. It proved to be a totally pointless exercise that cast no light on the case. The court resumed deliberations at 11:35 a.m.
Judge Bousquet called Roger Périès to the witness stand to hear his version of Gustave’s interrogation. It was a most unusual move to call the examining magistrate in a case as a witness. Examining Magistrate Périès was placed under oath. His statement went as follows:
I learned that Gustave wanted to speak to me. I received him. He told me that he had been mistreated, but had not been beaten. I asked him whether he had any bruises. He was unable to show me any. If he had done so I would have called for a doctor to examine him. Anyway, the magistrates did not leave the law courts during the three days of interrogation between 12 and 15 November. If there had been any ill treatment, we would not necessarily have heard any screams, but we would certainly have noticed something.
Gustave replied that he had told Périès that he had been punched in the stomach. Périès flatly denied that there was any evidence to support such an accusation.
French court procedure required at this point that the accused be given the right to question Périès in his capacity as prosecuting magistrate. Bousquet refused to make such a ruling, thus provoking an indignant outburst from the attorney Scapel, who was acting as representative of the Marseille bar to make sure that due procedure was observed.6 He demanded that the hearing should be suspended. He invoked the imprescriptible rights of the defense, and with loud support from Gaston’s defense team, he insisted that the proceedings be suspended.
Bousquet, who was visibly irritated, brusquely refused this request and continued to question Gustave amid constant interruptions from the defense lawyers. He concentrated on Gustave’s different accounts of what had happened on the night of 4–5 August 1952. Gustave blurted out that he had heard screams that night. When reminded that he had previously insisted that he had heard nothing, he replied that he had “thought” he had heard them. Gustave was gradually worn down until he finally blurted out, “I’ve been lying all the time! It’s entirely false! My father is innocent. They made me lie.” Bousquet was scarcely able to control himself and yelled at Gustave, “This is monstrous! You were lying when you accused your father. This is more than a lack of courage; it is more than cowardice. It is unspeakable!”
At this point Gaston stood up and with a trembling voice said, “Gustave, I pardon you, but tell the truth. In what of a state have you placed your family? Look at me now, sitting in the dock. It’s shameful. He [Gustave] has disowned his mother, who gave him her breast. He has disowned his brothers, with whom he led a joyful life. He disowned his father. Ah well, a son! They treat me like a sheep in the fold. You have committed a mortal sin in accusing your own father.”
On hearing this emotionally charged statement, the courtroom for once fell silent. Gustave muttered that he had never accused his father of anything.
Gaston then blurted out, “When you were in the alfalfa field with another, after having heard the screams, you knew where the weapon was and where it came from. It didn’t come from us. But it didn’t come from far away!” Gustave muttered, “I didn’t go into the alfalfa field that night, not with anybody.”
Bousquet let father and son continue this bizarre exchange as if it were of little concern to him. He then asked Gustave how many shots he had heard. He replied there were five or six. When the judge pointed out that the previous day Gustave had said that he had thought he only had heard some screams, Gustave murmured something about having thought so.
The courtroom became increasingly restless as Gustave replied to further questions with denials, silence, or “I don’t know.” Gaston again stood up.
Gaston (loudly): I want to say to Gustave: you know the truth. Think of the entire family. Think of the honor of all my grandchildren. Tell the truth!
Gustave: I’m thinking of that. I don’t know a thing
Gaston: So, you prefer to let your father stay in prison. Your father, who never harmed anybody.
Gustave: It’s all Clovis’s fault!
Gaston: You were the first to accuse me. I’ve said that I pardon you, but tell the truth.
Gustave remained silent.
Bousquet, rather than following up on this interesting lead, in a tone of utter contempt, ordered him to return to his seat and adjourned the court. Deputy Director of the National Police Charles Chenevier, who later led an inquiry into the case, wrote that Bousquet had lost an opportunity to reveal the truth and sabotaged the entire trial when he ordered the adjournment. Chenevier later wrote: “Law faculties now take this case as an example of what not to do when presiding over a criminal trial.”7 Gustave’s “truth” was never revealed.
Clovis’s brother-in-law, Jacky Barth, was called briefly to the stand. He was asked why he had not reported to the police that Gustave had told him on the morning of 5 August 1952 that Elizabeth had groaned when first he saw her. He replied that he had not even thought of it.
Augusta Caillat, Gaston’s oldest daughter was the next to testify. A corpulent woman, she appeared to be confused and highly strung. Speaking with a pronounced stammer, she proclaimed her father innocent. She was forced to confront Clovis, whom she wrongfully accused of having denounced his father before Gustave had. She then demanded to know why he had accused their father. He replied that it was because Gaston had told him that he had killed the Drummonds. Even though she had not been present when Gaston confessed to Clovis, Augusta insisted that her father had said that “they,” not “I,” had killed three people and would kill another, meaning Paul Maillet. This revelation caused a prolonged stir in the courtroom.
A further argument ensued over what precisely Gaston had said and continued over the question of whether the carbine had been kept at the Grand’ Terre. At this point Gaston interjected, “That carbine was never at the Grand’ Terre. The false witness who stands before us [referring to Clovis] knows very well where it comes from. We talked about it. My son-in-law Roger Perrin [Zézé’s father] said, ‘If I had had the carbine I would have killed the wild boar!’ You have in front of you the most discreditable witness.”8 To which Augusta added, “And the most cowardly.” Clovis simply shrugged his shoulders. The effect of this outburst was somewhat weakened when Gaston claimed that it was Clovis who had mended the carbine with a metal band. Clovis laughed off this claim, for it showed that the weapon had indeed been at the Grand’ Terre and that Gaston was well aware of its existence.
Augusta’s husband, Clément Caillat, was the next witness. He dutifully claimed that Clovis had told him that he had never seen the carbine at the Grand’ Terre and that he suspected Paul Maillet.
Two further witnesses were brought to the stand—Paul Deloitte and Germaine Perrin’s lover, Jean Galizzi. Both men testified that Zézé Perrin had asked them to give him an alibi, begging them to tell the gendarmes that he had come to fetch milk at 6:00 a.m. on 5 August 1952. On 29 January 1953 Zézé told the police that 6:30 a.m. he went to the Garcins’ farm, where his mother and father were tenants, to collect milk. Then Faustin Roure had arrived to buy a bottle of wine at La Serre and had told him of the murders at the Grand’ Terre. On 17 March Zézé admitted to a Sergeant Romanet that he had lied and that his mother had bought the milk. Then he promptly changed his story, claiming to have gone to Peyruis at 6:00 a.m. to fetch bread and milk. The dairyman told him that the milk had been picked up by Jean Galizzi and taken to the Garcins’ farm. Zézé promptly went to the farm, picked up the milk, and returned home to La Serre. Then Roure had appeared at 7:00 a.m. to ask if they had any milk. The dairyman’s wife, however, had no recollection of a visit from Zézé Perrin on 5 August and added that her husband had died in November 1951. Roure stated that he often went to La Serre to pick up some wine, but he could not remember doing so on the morning of 5 August. A few days later Galizzi told Romanet that Zézé’s story was a pack of lies.
Gustave and Clovis were then confronted with one another. Both adopted a truculent manner and stuck to their recent versions of events. Bousquet asked Gustave whether he had accused his father. He replied that he had but that it was all a pack of lies. At this point Gaston said that it was Gustave who had repaired the carbine and went on muttering something meaningless.
This unseemly family squabble, which the judge seemed incapable of controlling, reached fresh depths with the testimony of Gaston’s son-in-law, Angelin Araman. Having given a brief and pointless testimony, he turned to Bousquet and said, “Mister President, I want to clear the courtroom!” Bousquet asked him what on earth he was talking about. Angelin replied that there was someone in the courtroom whom he did not like and who had stolen a metal cart. Bousquet asked him whom he meant. Angelin replied that it was Paul Maillet. When asked what harm he had done, Angelin replied, “None.” In desperation Bousquet asked what this had to do with the Dominici case, to which Araman responded, “Nothing whatsoever!”
Amid much laughter at this bizarre interlude, Angelin’s wife, Gaston’s formidable daughter Clotilde Araman, was called to the stand. She was in an ugly mood. She stated that she had never seen the carbine at the Grand’ Terre, adding that she suspected that it belonged to Paul Maillet. When asked why, she replied that Clovis had thought the same. Clovis flatly denied that he had ever suspected Paul Maillet. Gustave, when questioned on this point, said that he too suspected Paul Maillet. Gustave punched Clovis on the shoulder and, eyeball to eyeball, shouted: “You’ve lied too! I want the truth to come out today.” Fearing that they would soon come to blows, the judge called for order.
Gaston demanded to know why Clovis treated him as an assassin. Clovis replied that he was simply repeating what Gaston had told him. Gustave yelled at his brother, “Yes, and can you remember what you said to me? ‘It’s that old bastard who killed them!’” Gaston then said that the carbine belonged to Clovis, but he denied this, saying that it was kept at the Grand’ Terre.
Things were once again getting out of hand, but there was a slight lull in the storm when a fresh witness, Aimé Dominici, was cross-examined. He also said that he had never seen the carbine at the Grand’ Terre. This was confirmed by young Gaston Dominici’s wife, Marie, who asserted that there was no reason to doubt her father-in-law’s innocence. She further claimed Clovis had said that “it would be better if it were the old man, rather than a young innocent.” An outraged Clovis denied having ever said such a thing. In a feeble voice Gaston repeated that he was not guilty and that he did not want to take someone else’s place. When Marie was asked what she thought of Gustave, she replied, “He’s a weakling.”
Gaston’s nephew, Léon Dominici—his half-brother Leon’s son—was the next witness to be called. He was a good-looking man, well spoken, intelligent, and polite. He was the only one of the entire Dominici clan who made a favorable impression. He said that he had never seen his uncle lift a hand against his children. He also thought that Gustave was a feeble creature, lacking any strength of character, whereas Clovis had backbone. Once, when Léon was eleven years old, he had amused himself while at the Grand’ Terre by throwing stones at the porcelain insulation units on the electric pylons. Gaston had caught him in the act and had simply said, “Pack your bags and fuck off!”9 He was at least able to cast a little light on the bizarre business concerning Paul Maillet and the metal cart. Maillet had sold it to Léon’s cousin Bonino for 1,000 francs ($3). One day some employees of the electric company reclaimed it, saying that it had been stolen from them some time ago. Bonino went to Paul Maillet and asked for his money back. Maillet replied that it was pretty stupid of him to get caught. The story did not reflect well on Paul Maillet’s honesty, but it contributed nothing to Gaston’s defense. Léon tried to put Clovis on the spot by saying that although Gustave was spineless, he had not reacted when shown the murder weapon; whereas the tough Clovis had fallen apart.
The court now heard attorney Delorme speak for the civil party.10 He had some experience in such matters, having won a symbolic 1 franc in damages in the court at Aix-en-Provence in a case against the seventy-three-year-old Georges “Dr. Sarret” Sarrenjani, who was accused of murdering three people and dissolving their bodies in sulfuric acid. Delorme began by saying that there was a fourth victim in this case, Lady Drummond’s mother, Mrs. Wilbraham, who had suffered a stroke on hearing of the murders. He gave a moving account of Sir Jack’s career and his family life with Anne and Elizabeth. He expressed his deep repulsion at the way in which Gaston had insulted his victims with his obscene and mendacious account of his exchange with Lady Drummond on the night of the crime. “It was not enough for Gaston Dominici to assassinate Lady Drummond, he also wanted also to dishonor her!” At this a number of women in the courtroom shouted, “Bravo!” He praised all those involved in the case and closed with a periphrastic flourish: “In order for the immense stain on our country to be removed, and to give back to the population the peace of mind to which they are entitled, justice must be done by punishing this terrible crime that you are called upon to judge.”
Friday’s session ended with Deputy Public Prosecutor Sabatier giving a passionate defense of the dossier. He began by stating categorically, “I am convinced that Gaston Dominici is entirely culpable, totally culpable and solely culpable.” He gave a brief account of the course of the investigation, stressing Gustave’s lies, the contradictions in the statements made by Yvette, and the fact that Gaston had made a voluntary confession, which he could have easily retracted when Périès questioned him. Sabatier discounted Dr. Dragon’s testimony about Elizabeth’s condition on the grounds that there was enough grass along the path for her feet not to have suffered any abrasions and because expert testimony had shown that rigor mortis begins much later in a child. He cleared Zézé Perrin of any suspicion, because had he been guilty he would not have testified that the Drummonds had come to the Grand’ Terre to get water and would not have said that Gustave got up much earlier than usual on the morning of 5 August. He gave a violent temper as the motive for the murders: “You have before you a brutal and savage crime, committed by a violent man in a fit of rage. In my opinion it was the act of a single man. If there were a second person involved that would involve complicity—that is to say, a coolheaded action. I do not believe this. Just look at Gaston Dominici’s character. He is proud. He says himself: ‘I’m afraid of no one.’ This crime is a reflection of his personality: anger possibly combined with alcohol.”
As Gaston left the courtroom, there were many cries of “à mort (death)!”11
On Saturday morning, 27 November, the tenth and final day of the trial, Advocate General Calixte Rozan, who had lost his voice the day before due to influenza, had to use a microphone during his summary of the case for the prosecution to be intelligible. A technical fault resulted in his speech being heard over loudspeakers by the crowd outside the courtroom. It would be difficult to imagine a prosecutor who looked more prosecutorial. With small, beady eyes; a long, pointed nose; and bitterly ironical mouth, he was the very image of an inquisitor. Speaking in the flowery tones and rich cadences of an actor from the Comédie-Française, he dismissed out of hand a series of fantastic versions of the crime, the most persistent of which was that secret services were involved. He could do so with utter confidence, for he had seen a letter written by Patrick Reilly, the British minister in Paris, that had been given to attorney Delorme that testified that Sir Jack had never been engaged as an intelligence agent.12 Rozan also was convinced that Zézé Perrin had not been at the Grand’ Terre the night of the murders and that Gustave was innocent. He argued that Zézé’s lies were designed to hide the fact that he had got out of bed late, which would have angered his father. Then Rozan played another dubious trump: Zézé would never have dared leave the farm during that night, because the horse stabled at La Serre, worth 100,000 francs ($300), might have strangled itself with its halter. Further, Gustave would have been exhausted, having spent the entire day threshing, and would not have wanted to wander around in the middle of the night poaching.
Rozan spoke to the “jurymen from the Basses-Alpes,” men “with their feet on the ground,” while constantly repeating that he came from the same region. His thumbnail sketches of the witnesses were remarkably succinct. Panayotou was “a piece of shit.” Yvette “owed nothing to Jacques Fath and to Elizabeth Arden, but owed everything to our sun and our sky. . . . She’s pretty but she’s only a little ‘garce’ and you, gentlemen of the jury from the Basses-Alpes, you know what that means.”13 Gustave was “a pathetic creature. . . . In this part of the world when one says he is nothing at all one has said everything.” He quoted Michel de Montaigne and Alphonse Daudet, heavily underlining that the jurymen had probably never heard of them. He then paid tribute to Gaston Dominici’s sterling qualities as a hardworking farmer. Gaston was clearly delighted at such praise.
Having voiced his appreciation of Sébeille’s patient and exhaustive investigation, Rozan then launched into a lengthy description of the crime. It was embellished with many a rhetorical flourish. Turning toward the accused he declaimed, “You washed your hands in the Durance. As a result the people in Marseille drank some of little Elizabeth’s blood.” His description of Elizabeth’s childish face bathed in moonlight, her little eyes full of an indescribable horror, her little hands imploring for mercy brought tears to many eyes. After two hours of flowery eloquence, he concluded by pleading with the jury to answer yes to all the seven questions they were going to have to answer “in the name of little Elizabeth, who is our little girl.” In a parting shot he pleaded with the jury, “You should have no pity for this man, who had no pity for a ten-year-old child!” It was a magnificent show and a superb theatrical performance but was woefully lacking in substance.
For the defense, attorney Léon Charles-Alfred used a tone of biting irony to praise Rozan’s exquisite rhetoric. He painted a glowing portrait of the stalwart patriarch and expressed his profound indignation at the methods used to extract his confession, but he offered little apart from a feeble attempt to present Gaston as an innocent old man who had confessed to the crime to save his grandchildren’s honor.
Pierre Charrier, the Marseille Communist Party’s lawyer, spoke next for the defense. He described the advocate general as a man who was overwhelmed by the task of defending a questionable dossier. He claimed that Rozan did not have a single decisive fact on which an objective judgment could be based.
The defense ended with Émile Pollak’s plea. He argued that the case had been judged in advance and that it was based entirely on a confession. In a British or American court, where lawyers all have at least a fleeting acquaintance with Jeremy Bentham’s “Rationale of Judicial Evidence,” the weakness of such a case would have been self-evident; however, Pollak had to remind the court that a confession is worthless without material evidence. Sébeille’s much vaunted psychological approach had ignored a great deal that might have bolstered his case. Furthermore, knowing exactly under what conditions Gaston’s confession had been obtained was essential. Here Pollak became enmeshed in his own grandiloquence, even comparing Gaston’s ordeal in the law courts to that of Christ on the cross. Indeed, he worked himself up into such a state that the court had to be adjourned for him to be able to change into a fresh shirt.
Pollak then dwelled at length on the lies and inconsistencies in the testimonies of Gustave, Clovis, and Zézé, a group that he described as “that disturbing trio.” He reminded the jury of the Richauds’ terrible murder at Valensole, for which two teenagers had been convicted. Who could say that Zézé Perrin, aged sixteen at the time of the murders, was incapable of committing such a crime? Pollak next claimed that Clovis was full of hatred for his father and that he was the owner of the murder weapon. He painted the reconstruction of the crime as “a pathetic movie.” Pollak then solemnly announced that whereas Clovis was motivated by hatred, Gustave was motivated by fear. Turning toward him, he said, “Gustave! If you are guilty, or if you know something, come here and speak out. We at least have no fear of the truth. Gustave! I go down on bended knee and beg you!” Gustave remained silent.
Pollak described Gaston as the victim of his two sons, whom he described as “wild beasts” and as “monsters who want to disembowel their father.” He then turned to the jury:
Are you going to be satisfied with this scapegoat? Are you going to find this innocent man guilty? Are you going to accept liars’ words? Are you going to shed the blood of a decent man? Do not be cowards! Only count on yourselves. Do not bank on the prince’s clemency. There is no legal provision for saving the old man from the scaffold. Accept your responsibility. It is not crimes that remain unpunished that wring the hearts of governments and the people, but the condemnation of the innocent.
He warned the jury of the terrible consequences of judicial error, mentioning the infamous cases of Jean Calas and Alfred Dreyfus.
The jury appeared to be unmoved by this florid peroration. At a quarter past twelve, Bousquet announced that the proceedings were over, whereupon he left the courtroom followed by his associate judges and the seven jurors in single file. Gaston’s final words as they left the room were: “I’m here in place of another. I’ve already spent a year in prison. I’m honest and loyal. I’m innocent.” This plea also made no impact on the stone-faced jury as the men left for the conference room to reach a verdict.
At two-thirty that afternoon, the bells rang, calling the court to reassemble. The presiding judge—who with his huge round head, thin lips, bulging eyes, and plastered-back hair, bore a marked resemblance to the prominent resistance leader and founder of the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (Popular Republican Movement), Georges Bidault—turned to the jury. In a low Provençal voice without a trace of solemnity, he asked the jury to announce its answers to seven questions: Was the accused guilty of the murder Sir Jack Drummond? Was he guilty of the murder of Lady Anne Drummond? Did he murder Elizabeth? Was Elizabeth’s murder premeditated? He asked three further questions as to whether each murder happened at the same time as the other two. The jury answered yes on all seven counts.
The presiding judge then read out passages from paragraphs 302 and 304 of the criminal code and 351 and 367 of the code of criminal procedure in a monotonous tone. Then, raising his voice somewhat, he announced, “The court and the jury condemn Gaston Dominici to death!”
At first Gaston appeared to be unmoved. He sat quietly chewing a lump of sugar. Then as he left the box, he began to murmur some incomprehensible phrases. Then he exclaimed, “Must I pay for others? Ah! Those bastards . . .” It was unclear whether he was referring to the members of the jury or his own family.
Minutes later Bousquet called the court back into session so he could read the verdict of the civil case brought by Anne’s mother, Mrs. Wilbraham, and in which the jury was not involved. She was awarded the symbolic one franc in damages.
Gaston was then asked whether he had anything to say. He launched into an antiphony of “I’m honest and loyal” and the like until he was interrupted by Charrier, who said that the invitation to speak on his own behalf was merely a formality and that he should say nothing. Immediately Gaston muttered, “Ah, so it’s a formality. I don’t understand anything, nothing at all!” Catching sight of Clovis, he spat out, “You filthy bastard!” After ten grueling days the trial was finally over, but was the Dominici affair now closed?
Gaston’s nephew Léon, a strongly built man with a commanding presence, was standing in the corridor outside the courtroom when he heard the verdict. Overcome with emotion he rushed outside to where Gaston’s grandson Marcel Dominici was waiting anxiously in the courtyard. Together they walked in silence through the wind and rain to a little hotel where the “clan of the faithful”—Yvette Perrin, Gustave Dominici, and Augusta Caillat—were eating sandwiches. On hearing the news, Yvette fell sobbing into her husband’s arms. Augusta ran out of the room to hide in their car, quietly sobbing. Marcel, then drove them all to the Grand’ Terre, where old Marie had a wood fire burning. They stayed until six o’clock, and then Marcel drove Augusta home.
Clovis, who had left the courtroom alone with tears in his eyes, entertained some journalists in his modest home in Peyruis. He told them he was convinced that his father had acted alone but confessed that he had not thought that Gaston would receive a death sentence.
Commissioner Charles Gillard, a senior policeman from Paris who was present at the trial as an observer, told the press, “The verdict and the condemnation to death cannot be considered satisfactory. A disagreeable impression remains of lies and of the impossibility of knowing whether one is more guilty than another.”14 The commissioner, who would play a prominent role in a later inquiry into the case, thus demonstrated that he was already predisposed to believe that Gaston Dominici had not acted alone.
With the trial over, the “Lurs Affair” became known as the “Dominici Affair.” A trial that had been expected to last for four days had stretched to ten. The outcome came as no surprise. The newspapers had already created the picture of a vicious old man, a homicidal patriarch, and a drunken brute. This impression was reinforced by the representation in court of his curriculum vitae. Much here hinged on interpretative nuance. Was he miserly or economical? Was he healthily libidinous or sexually obsessed? Was he harshly authoritarian or merely strict with his children? Much was made of how he had aided in the birth of several of his children, implying a bestial indifference to his unfortunate wife; but the reports did not mention that this practice was common since there were no midwives in the region at that time and the doctor lived miles away. The Dominicis had neither a telephone nor a car, and at that time the road was unpaved. Even the fact that he had been involved in a fight fifty years earlier weighed heavily against him.
The Gaston Dominici who appeared in court seemed to bear little resemblance to the sadistic brute of the public imagination. Here was a simple old man in his Sunday best, full of native cunning, frequently smiling, slyly winking, joking with the warders, being sarcastic, and innocently believing that he would be able to speak his mind, would be heard, and would be believed. He played many roles—archetypical peasant, clan chieftain, simple goatherd, politician, and demagogue—but he never once looked as though he were a man charged with an appalling crime on trial for his life. Under constant attack from the presiding judge, Gaston frequently lost his temper, so he increasingly appeared as a violent, intractable, arrogant, authoritarian, and proud man who believed in nothing, who cared for nobody, and who was governed by feverish egotism.
The communist press, once the ardent defenders of the Dominicis but now determined to disassociate themselves from a man who was universally reviled, had no doubt that Gaston was guilty. Le Dauphiné Libéré gave twelve reasons for his guilt:
1. He had told Edmond Sébeille that Lady Drummond had died “without suffering.”
2. He had claimed to have found a splinter of wood from the butt of the carbine under Elizabeth’s head at nine o’clock in the morning of 5 August, when a gravedigger had found it at three o’clock that afternoon.
3. He had gone without the slightest hesitation to the shed where the carbine had been kept.
4. He had positioned himself during the reconstruction of the crime at the exact spot where the ejected cartridges had been found.
5. He knew that a bullet had wounded Elizabeth.
6. Without knowing the contents of the autopsy report, he knew that Sir Jack had been shot in the back.
7. He alone knew that the first shot had caused the wound on Sir Jack’s hand.
8. He knew exactly where Inspector Henri Ranchin had found the barrel of the carbine and the spot where he had washed his hands in the Durance and maintained that he “didn’t have to wash his trousers as there was no blood on them.”
9. He admitted that, just like the murderer, he did not know how to shoot the carbine.
10. He had given details of the aluminum band used to repair the carbine, even before it was known that it was from a bicycle license plate.
11. He had told Pierre Prudhomme that Lady Drummond was wearing a dress with a leaf pattern.
12. He had claimed that Gustave was in the alfalfa field at two o’clock in the morning, but on another occasion he had said that at that time he was talking to him in the courtyard. After his confession, he had also told Sébeille exactly where the bodies had been before they were moved.
All this information was in addition to his own confessions, made without intimidation, violence, or drugs, plus the denunciations of his two sons. Quite apart from the dubious assertions in several of these points, particularly numbers 5–8 and 11, that the communist press insisted so vehemently on Gaston’s guilt was grist to the conspiracy theorists’ mill. Further, it was taken as further evidence of the Soviet Union’s complicity in the murders.15
The French had serious misgivings, for the trial had been conducted according to a dubious procedure introduced by the Vichy regime that had not been repealed. In 1941 the “jury of peers,” analogous to the British jury system, was abolished and replaced by a seven-man jury, accompanied by three judges: the presiding judge—in this case Marcel Bousquet—and two assistants (assesseurs), Roger Combas and André Debeaurain. The verdict was by simple majority vote. Thus, since the three judges were almost certain to vote guilty, only the votes of three jurymen were needed for the accused to be condemned to death. The judges, experts in the law, would not find it difficult to persuade most jurymen of their point of view.16
Gaston’s arrest had taken a load off France’s conscience, but now it became troubled again. The general agreement was that although the court was biased against the accused, with the presiding judge desperately trying to defend a less than satisfactory dossier, Gaston was guilty of the murders of Sir Jack and Lady Drummond; but there was considerable doubt about whether he alone had killed Elizabeth. A Gallup poll showed that 45 percent of the French thought that Gaston was solely guilty; 25 percent thought that Gustave had had a hand in the murders; 10 percent already believed in some form of conspiracy involving the British secret service, the Maquis, or the Soviet Union; and the remainder had no opinion. It was not long before doubt was cast on the verdict, not least because the spectacular trials of Marie Besnard, who was accused of being a serial arsenic poisoner, happened at the same time. She was in the end acquitted. Would Gaston also be eventually exonerated? What truth was hidden behind the body of lies created by the dreadful Dominici clan?
The British press was delighted at the conviction. The “Lion of Lurs” was now “a cold, cunning and pitiless old man of 77,” from “a tight-lipped hostile and fearful peasant community unable or unwilling to help (the police).”17 But the papers had little time to analyze the trial, for on 30 November the nation celebrated Winston Churchill’s eightieth birthday. In France the question of German rearmament was at the top of the agenda, a fresh controversy having been stirred up by Churchill’s sensational announcement that in 1945 he had ordered Gen. Bernard Montgomery not to disarm the Germans because they might soon be needed for use against the Russians.18 The French press also had its preoccupations: French rule in Indochina had come to an end, the polar air route to North America was opened, Vyshinsky had died, and Colonel Nasser had replaced Gen. Muhammad Neguib, beginning a new and threatening era for the colonial powers in the Middle East.
The Dominici trial had been an extraordinary show. White-gloved Republican Guards presented arms each time the court rose. Pretty young law students from Aix-en-Provence adorned the front row seats. Photographers clambered all over the place to get good shots, resolutely ignoring the presiding judge’s ruling against the use of flash. Women screamed and fainted. Lawyers shouted. Witnesses gesticulated. The public booed. Most of the Dominici clan lied, even over such trivial points that it seemed as if they did it for fun. Gustave received a chorus of boos when he said that he was not lying when he said that he had lied. Clovis left the courtroom smiling. Gustave looked grim. Zézé, the Daily Mirror’s “rosy-cheeked butcher’s boy,” whistled a merry tune and took a ride on a carousel at the fair. Most of the Dominicis went to the cinema. All this took place in the dingy little town of Digne-les-Bains, where it rained for seventeen straight days.
Once the initial excitement was over, a period of reflection and unease began. The French press, uninhibited about the way the case was reported because the concept of contempt of court did not apply, was unsparing in its criticism of the trial and particularly of the performance by Judge Bousquet. Although frequently hard hitting, the coverage overall was evenhanded. There was no attempt even on the part of the communist press to revive the absurd stories about Sir Jack Drummond’s being a secret agent who had parachuted into France to work with the Maquis, nor was there the slightest attempt to discredit him in any way. With the exception of L’Aurore, the French press was uncertain whether Gaston had committed the crime, and even that paper thought that he might not have acted alone. The press pointed out there was no convincing motive for the crime, and the medical evidence about the time of Elizabeth’s death did not seem to fit very well with the prosecution’s version of events. It pointed out the police had gone to exaggerated lengths to obtain a confession, and it widely criticized the president’s refusal to place the Dominicis under oath. Furthermore, the press expressed much concern about the comparatively recent changes in court procedure, as a result of which the president of the court and his two assistants sat with the seven jurymen during their retirement. The practice of summing up in open court, as in the British system, had been abandoned in 1881 on the grounds that it usually amounted to little more than yet another speech for the prosecution. Critics of these changes argued that formerly the summing up was in the presence of the counsel for the defense, whereas under the then current system the presiding judge’s influence was likely to be even more unfavorable to the accused because he consulted privately with the jurors. The widespread feeling was that condemning the old man was the best way of getting rid of an embarrassing case. Anyway, at his advanced age he would not be executed, so no great harm would be done.
There was widespread criticism of the police’s policy of conducting an open investigation with daily press conferences so that professional confidentiality gave way to a sensationalist journalism, turning the case into a detective story that inevitably inflamed public opinion. The police also ignored material evidence and concentrated solely on getting a confession, which on its own was insufficient proof of guilt. Many commentators in France argued that had the case been tried in an English court, where the accused was treated with a far greater degree of impartiality, Gaston Dominici would never have been convicted.
In Britain the Dominici trial soon came under attack as a blatant example of the inadequacies and injustices of French criminal law. Outspoken criticism came from surprising sources. The Times pulled no punches in an editorial:
France, like Britain, is a member of an alliance of countries bound together not only by bonds of interest but also by a community of ideals. Those who set store on the good example of the western alliance cannot help feeling disturbed at recent trends by which French justice—turning back on the reforms, however imperfect, of the Revolution—seems to be reverting to practices of an earlier regime: the confessions under pressure, the toleration of police methods which the law reproves, the prolonged detention of suspects before trial, the admission of irrelevant evidence, and the licence allowed to the Press, to witnesses, and even to magistrates to besmirch reputations and constantly to ignore the essential presumption of innocence.19
The writer boldly suggested that at least the conviction was not a foregone conclusion. But in 1949 a longshoreman named Jean Deshays was accused of murdering an old man and of the attempted murder of his wife. He was condemned to twenty years’ imprisonment, but after four years the true culprit was found. Deshays was released. Marguerite Marty, condemned for murdering her rival in a ménage à trois in 1953, was declared innocent. The Dominici case was also subject to a form of revision with a fresh inquiry against an “Unknown” (or “X”). Procedures, methods, and practices may be bad, it was argued, but the aims of a fresh inquiry were laudable. This distinguished current practice from the forms of partisan justice after the liberation. Public outrage at the police’s dubious and often ruthless methods was bound to lead to reform.
A number of British newspapers, particularly the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, and the News Chronicle, were prone to sensationalism. They suggested sinister political motives were behind the murders and that Sir Jack had been involved in clandestine operations during the war, but at least they were restrained by British libel laws and the concern not to be found in contempt of court.20
The Dominici trial set off a healthy debate in France on reforming the criminal justice system. Attorney Reliquet, chairman of the Federal Union of French Magistrates, wrote an open letter to President René Coty protesting the press and radio attacks on the magistracy in connection with recent trials. Magistrates were, he claimed, themselves the victims of “an archaic judicial organization” and were well aware of “grave imperfections” in a system of criminal justice that was “already technically ill-adapted to the requirements of modern life.” Vicious attacks of this sort merely hindered the vital process of considered reform. Who, he asked, would want to become a judge or magistrate in such an atmosphere? People in such responsible positions needed “the esteem and confidence of fellow citizens.” The conservative daily newspaper Le Figaro, which was outspoken in its criticisms of the criminal justice system and thereby became the principal target of Reliquet’s ire, defended itself by saying that “strict observance of the letter of the law would be sufficient to eliminate many of the abuses which have been brought to light in recent trials” while lamenting that “judicial habits and usage have deteriorated in France to a serious degree.”21