Loose Units: The Podcast
The Monster of Avignon
John and Paul discuss the unfolding case of the monstrous Dominique Pelicot, and the bravery of his wife, Gisèle Pelicot.
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- Duration:
- 35m
- Broadcast on:
- 23 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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I'm John Bhoeven and I was a cop back in the 80s in Sydney. And I'm Paul Bhoeven, John's son. I'm an author and I wrote two books about dad's time as a cop. The first five seasons of Lucy and it spanned my time in general duties. Forensics, my time as a firefighter and even my stint running a funeral home. This season, we're visiting the locations of Australia's most notorious baffling horrific crimes and looking at what happened there. From Snowtown to the family, from the Morehouse murders to haunted highways. This season, the blue units is your go to guide to the worst crimes in Australian true crime history. Welcome to loose units, the shadow files. Hello and welcome to loose units, the shadow files. Now, listeners, before we proceed, we do actually have some other business to deal with. First of all, I would like to issue an extreme trigger warning for this case. We were talking about an unfolding case taking place in France. We've had plenty of listeners get in touch and dad and I have been keeping up with the news and it is an extremely intense case. It's a case involving rape, involving all kinds of terrible, terrible sexual assault. So if you are, look, I know we don't do trigger warnings very often. There's sort of a blanket assumption. Dad, the true crime listeners can take anything, but this is one of those areas that I feel that anybody who's been affected by this stuff that doesn't feel comfortable listening, we just wanted to give you a bit of a really clear, definitive heads up at the front of the episode about what we are dealing with. Now, before we actually get to this case, dad, you mentioned that something pretty intense has just happened and you want to talk about it on loose ends at the end of the week, but you also wanted people to know because you've been posting videos and photos of something that happened in your street. We sleep with our balcony door open. We're in a cul-de-sac at three o'clock this morning. I was woken by a lady screaming. It's weird when you wake up and you're in a deep sleep because you're very, the disorientation is quite, you know, pervasive. Yeah. And I made my way over to our winter. I looked out and the entire end of the street was just glowing. Now I was a fireer for 10 years. There must have been at least half a dozen smoke alarms going off and there was this woman just literally, she was in a bad way. And you could see the incredible flames. The flames were more than two stories high. I, because of my hip surgery, I had to really make a big call ball. I couldn't go down because of it, if it had involved going into the burning building, I just, I just couldn't do it, not with my hip. So I stayed and weirdly. But anyway, look, I think we'll talk about it on Thursday's podcast. That's all I'm going to say at this stage. But it's looking at a major crime. Do you think about doing it? Yes, I wanted to. My mind wanted to run down and really get amongst it. Because I was, I would have been probably the first person because it's only a 10 second walk from our place. Yeah, I've seen the video. It's pretty intense. It's intense. And I've posted it on Instagram and I've had a lot of feedback, but I just, you know, I had to make that, that call, because there's nothing worse than if you're not. What would happen, of course, is you do things that you, you shouldn't do. I couldn't do it, but I called Triple O. That was intense. Yeah. Anyway, look, I think enough of that. That's so exciting. So listen, as I haven't had any sleep in, in five hours, I'm, I'm delirious. I'm, you know, I've gone down and spoken to the place, put a plug in for those units, of course. Oh, God, that's a priority. Oh, God. Yeah, that is obviously something that's unfolding. But the case we are talking about today, dad, this is really, really intense. And look, I know that I gave a big trigger warning at the front, but this involves a woman called Giselle Pelicor. It's a case that's unfolding in France. It took place over a decade. It has opened up a massive Pandora's box regarding the treatment of women who've been abused in France. It's a massive problem. This case is so disturbing. And you actually asked me if we could talk about it a few weeks back. And I said, no, I said, no, because frankly, there's some stuff going on in my life and in the world right now, which is pretty intense. And I just, frankly, I couldn't take it, but I've been getting caught up on this case. And it's kind of hard to avoid. It was a piece in Vox that crossed my desk a couple of days ago. And it seems that we've sort of reached critical mass on this terrifying story. Now, we're only going to spend one episode talking about it. So this is going to be a pretty condensed version of events. But can you walk us through it from sort of a bird's eye view? Like, obviously, mum was involved in the Romeo squad, which means she dealt with victims of sexual assault. And in the police force, I'm assuming this is something people deal with every day. It's this, it's the cruelty and the scale of this. Where the hell do we even begin, dad? I guess we have to thank the extreme conscientiousness of a security guard in a local shopping centre in this town in France. I was conflicted about talking about it, Paul. I did mention it to you and it's an ongoing court case. So Dominic Pelico, he's at this shopping centre and he's trying to discreetly film up women's skirts. Unfortunately, it's a real phenomenon, it does happen. And it happens a lot in certain countries, one particular country in Asia has been having real problems with this particular type of behaviour. And that country is Korea. And I've been following that for some years. I don't understand why it just happens to be or perhaps it's just it's happening everywhere. Right, right. But this particular rum on this occasion, the some may say overzealous security guard actually apprehended the offender. The police were called in and this is when it gets a little bit sad in a way because the the wife who is the victim in this almost unique case, I hope it's unique in the world. It's such a heavy case. The wife actually comes down to the police station to support her husband, Dominic, because she they've been married 50 years. They've got children, he's 71 and yeah, they do. They're retired to this most beautiful part of France. Correct me if I wrong, Paul. I think it's Avignon. Yes, it is. It's Avignon in the south of France. I've been there. I know the area. It's it's a incredible, incredible part. Is it a wine region? Look, I think most of France is a wine region, but it's just I mean, it's rolling hills. It's about 30 minutes bicycle ride from where Van Gogh worked. It's actually the film with Russell Crowe. That was filmed in Avignon, which one? The really nice one about the the guy that inherited the incredible vineyard. Oh, yeah, I know the one, I know the story. Yeah, sure. So Paul, they get him back to the station. The wife comes in to be his, you know, to support her husband. Her loving husband, a husband that she described in the most glowing terms. This is when things start to go awry in the worst possible way. Now the guy, you know, the, the offender at this stage, just on a. I shouldn't say apologies for using the word just, but I guess it's a word that I'm using as a comparative term to the the heinous offenses that we're going to delve into, but the police, they do a criminal record check. And unfortunately, Paul, they find out, or fortunately, that he back in the 90s, had been charged with the rape of a woman. He has also been implicated and you might not know this, Paul, in the rape and subsequent murder of a second woman. So they have this information. What they're going to do then based on that. And I can only imagine the sadness of the poor wife thinking, this is, this is not good. And they go back to his house and they do what all good police do in relation to any offense that is of a sexual nature because he's filming and they assume that he then would deposit his films onto a device. They grab his computer. Ah, yes. When they open the computer, the first thing they see is a video of a woman curled up on her bed in the fetal position. And they then see a person, a male, just trying to think of the right words here. Look, what they did to put things in a kind of more abstract term, which might help, they find a folder on the computer. Actually, I think it's on a sort of flash drive and the folders are literally, I mean, I don't know what the French word for it is, but the folder is called abuses. And that is, yeah, you're right. That was the, that was the title, Paul, but the title of only one of the files. Right. Okay. Yeah. And what they do, they discover that this particular woman has been raped, whilst being totally unconscious. They actually show the video to Dominic's wife. And at first, she has very, it's very, very difficult for her because she doesn't actually recognize the lifeless body on the bed and how she does finally recognize come to the, how she comes to that horrendous, frightening, devastating catastrophic realization that it's her unconscious being being raped by the number I, it's just difficult to say, but she recognizes the bedroom. She recognizes ornaments, the dressing table, the furnishings, the windowsill, the bed, the bedhead. And she comes to this terrible realization that she, in fact, is the woman. And then she starts to question and look back and she thought that she was beginning to suffer from early onset dementia or Alzheimer's. Yeah, because she was literally, she thought she was losing her mind. Well, she was having all these black arts and memory loss and she was losing hair and she was waiting up in the morning. And she at one stage, Paul, developed not one, not two, not even three, but four types of sexually transmitted disease, four different diseases. And she had no concept, no idea. It's at this point that I just don't know how deep to go in this particular story, but what Paul, this is, it's very important to say that. And this is really creepy listeners. This is so creepy. I look, I'm assuming this is the, OK, this, if you have arrived where I think you're going to arrive in this story, this is the truly villainous part of it, I think. But it's also how he started, Paul. He actually met a male nurse online. Right. The male nurse has and had access to certain drugs. The male nurse taught Dominic, how to make up this concoction, cocktail. Actually had drug, so this is the male nurse, had drugged his own wife. And firstly, in the very beginning, more than 10 years ago, had invited Dominic around to have sex with his unconscious wife. OK. And then Dominic then putting the two, the, the, the rate that he was charged with and the potential charges that are ahead of us in terms of the murder and rape of another young girl, he then began to go down this terrible path. Well, let's talk about that, because there's a now, I think the website might be gone. Yeah, just gone. Yeah. The call, the website was called Coco. And it was basically sort of a dark web kind of message board service. Obviously, it's down. We can't check it out. But basically, it was a way to post ads, I guess. And so an ad is posted there in which Dominic Pelico basically invites people into their house, into the Pelico household in Avignon. He invites people in to do what he, as you're now telling me, did. And Paul, this is a bit creepy, what I'm about to say. It's a minor detail, but it gives you an insight into Dominic's mind. OK, one of the things, there was a whole list of sort of protocols that each person had to, had to agree to. One of the first protocols is that they would park in a nearby street. They would wait for a call from Dominic. Dominic said to them, prior to going upstairs, to meet this particular woman who was utterly lifeless, apart from her heart beating, one of the things, and this is, this is creepy, what I'm about to say. He would always get them to wash their hands under warm water. The reason being, he says that he wanted the men that were about to rape his lifeless, not lifeless, but motionless wife lying on this bed. The reason they warm their hands was that so she had no chance, because if they touched her with cold hands, she may respond. That's the level of preparation and sort of mental sort of thought processes that Dominic went through. He basically covered every single avenue, but the men who come from a complete cross-section of occupations within any society. And I'm going to mention one occupation first. Oh, God, I know which one I know which one I'm going to say, fireman. Yes, because as I look out my window now, I'm watching crime scene investigators investigating a major fire, which we'll talk about later on in the week. Yeah, so I just thought I'd mention fire fireman. You know, there were there were nurses, you know, court officials, teachers, the complete cross-section, you know, the gamut of the working society, the ages of the offenders arranged between early 20s and mid 70s. And people would just come along, but unbeknownst to every single person that raped his wife, he was filming in great detail. Every single sexual encounter. Now, he says that he filmed every single male person as an insurance policy. That's his story. I mean, that's a policy, by the way, that he appears to be cashing in pretty hard in this in the court case. But we'll get to that in a sec. Dad, I just want to point out something else about his. He wanted them to, you know, wash their hands with warm water. But there's something else he said. He didn't want them wearing any cologne that would. Anything that would leave any sort of scent where she might wake up and go, hang on, what's that smell, what is going on here? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Good call. Paul, there's the opening scene in. Kill Bill, yeah, the opening scene. It's a catastrophic and ghastly, but very memorable scene. It's true, evil. It's it takes place in a hospital. Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my hundreds mint commercial, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Honestly, when I started this, I thought only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com/switch, whatever you're ready. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes of city tales. Hey, it's Mark Marin from WTF here to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. And I'm sure the reason you're listening to this podcast right now is because you chose it. Well, choose Progressive's name, your price tool, and you could find insurance options that fit your budget so you can pick the best one for your situation. Who doesn't like choice? Try it at progressive.com. And now some legal info, Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates, price and coverage match, limited by state law, not available in all states. Hate your crime fans. Tired of ads interrupting your gripping investigations? Good news. With Amazon music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your prime membership. After all, ads shouldn't be the scariest thing about true crime. To start listening, download the Amazon music app for free or go to Amazon.com/addfree true crime. That's Amazon.com/addfree true crime to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. And one of the nursing staff to make extra money, he brings men in on the night shift to have sex with a woman in a coma. Fortunately, that, you know, perverse way from that part of the story has a revenge effectively. Yeah, yeah. Look, OK, so she, all right, there's a folder that it's OK. So we know that a lot of men were involved in this. We know that they were invited to the house by Dominic Pelico to rape his wife. We know that it was filmed. We know that she effectively, what was the drug? There was a three drugs ball, one of them was an anti anxiety drug and I know people who are on anxiety drugs and I've been on them myself. So I this is very interesting to me. So they're on a message board on this website, Coco, the message board is called without their knowledge. Again, translated from France, right? So they're brought in, they're given instructions. Now, I don't know if you want to jump forward, but he's in court right now. Yes. And he is, you mentioned insurance. He is. Can I read a quote here? Yep. They came looking for me. I was asked, I said, yes, they accepted they came. I did not handcuff anybody to make them come to my place. So he is very much. And he's another quote. They all knew her condition before they came. They knew everything they cannot say otherwise. OK, so basically every single person here and you mentioned firefighters and lawyers. And the local baker that she used to go into his bakery a couple of times a week and talk. Oh, God, this is something else that I just remembered. Another thing that Dominic would do, he would actually let people know that they could go to a certain location, maybe a shopping centre, where they could actually see her, even talk to her, to decide whether they felt she was going to arouse their, their their desires or whatever. That's creepy, but that's, you know, one of the primary offenders worked at the bakery. And she would come in and they would converse. And he was one of the guys. Now, they estimate that approximately 80 male persons raped Dominic's wife over a period of 10 years. They have arrested 50 and in French law, and I guess it's a massive production every single day in court. But one of the most, I guess one of the reasons this story has made international news is that the wife, she was offered complete privacy and anonymity in the court case. However, Chaselle Giselle, she decided to forego that. Yeah. Every single time she has to walk into court, she has to walk past her 50 accused. And she's so strong that every time she stands up or leaves or enters the court, there is a wild stand up ovation, mainly from women that have come in to support her. He, the offender, has three children. They have also found on some of the hard drives photographs of his daughter, naked. She is convinced the daughter that she has been abused. He denies that. Yeah. I don't know whether that is believable, but perhaps in his mind, he now believes that that is untenable and could not actually even let people know that he even contemplated that. But I feel that a person like this has shown that he's capable of anything. Yeah. They've had to build special glass and perspex, basically holding pens for the 50 because the 50 have to be in court simultaneously. And pretty well every single person charged has their own defence council. I think they're looking at about 20 years each, I believe. If proven. Yeah, if it comes through. It's really incredible what Chazelle is doing here. She's kind of spearheading this incredible movement because let's be honest. Look, I love France. I love French culture. But France has had some issues regarding, you know, the treatment of sexual assault. I mean, the definition of rape in the French court is, and this is a quote, an act of sexual penetration committed on a person with violence, coercion, threat or surprise. And effectively, this is beginning a huge push by women's rights activists to have the word consent added into the legal definition of rape, which isn't there. Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, who has been going through it lately and is making some very odd calls. He agrees. He actually agrees that consent should be put in there. It's interesting because when me too happened, France has a very, they have a very liberal culture and I think they get a lot of things right. But they also thought that that was an example of Americans being puritanical and hysterical and every acting to a lot of stuff. And this is really, I think, I love that an older hate. There's obviously hate that this has happened. But I kind of love the face of this push to help women. It's an older woman. She said this horrible thing happened to her. And again, in no way is this a good thing. But she's making it into a incredible moment, a kind of historical moment. It's interesting listening to, she's also daughter talk about this because obviously, yeah, these photos imply a lot of terrible things. I'm curious as to what you thought of Dominic's explanations for why it happened. Yes, very interesting. First, I mean, everyone has always got an excuse. There aren't too many people who just go, look, they're caught. I'm as charged. But he said two things that may be predictable, but may also be true. But the first one he said that he was abused as a young kid. And I'm not going to make a judgment call on that because being abused as a young person is terrible and can definitely affect you for the rest of your life. Secondly, this is the part of his defense that I find pathetic and piss poor. And that is that she wouldn't engage in mutual swinging parties. Yes. She wasn't up to fucking other men. And she was monogamous. So she and had always maintained that the only person she ever loved was her husband of 50 years, taking into consideration listeners that they'd moved from Paris to this beautiful place to retire. They're in a cul-de-sac. They've got a spinning pool. They had wonderful families. He was an amazing grandfather, according to his wife and family. And this is, by the way, timeline-wise, this took place between 2011 and 2020. Correct. Right. So this has, I mean, you know, this stopped pretty recently. Yes. But that's a long period. It's a long period. It's a long time. And his desires and gratification sort of levels as is often the case, they increase. It fucking gives me the heebie-jeebies, the story, because one only needs to think about one's own loved one and thinking the whole concept of having strange people coming around. There was one, there was one piece of testimony which really upset me, which I read in a French newspaper. It was translated, but basically this guy, a 44-year-old guy who was in the witness stand. And there's an amazing, terrible sketch of all of the, all the accused kind of behind the perspex you mentioned. And this piece of testimony implies that this guy thought it was some sort of consensual game. That's his defense anyway, because basically there was a point where he was apparently, she stirred like she was going to wake up and then Dominique's like, you've got to go, you've got to go. And then he kind of twigged, he's by the way, he's claiming this. But he's saying he thought that it was some sort of role-playing thing and that maybe she was pretending to be unconscious and that if he had to leave to stop her waking up, maybe that was him realizing that actually she was drugged. I know. Paul, what about Dominique every morning? Would then wash her body, in bed, clean her up and sort of reset everything as though, you know, when she wakes up, she, you know, she's supposed to not realize what happened. I would hate to be in this particular case. There are lots of things I'd hate to be, but one of the things I'd really hate to be is defending one of these men. I would find it very, very problematic to go home to my hope fully normal life knowing that I am doing my very best. This is going to be so controversial, but it just creeps me out. And to know that I'm doing my very, very best, which is their duty to get these people off and some of the rationale, some of the arguments, you know. I mean, one person as a defense said, oh, hang on a sec. It's his wife. And he can do with her whatever he likes. Did you read that? Yeah. No, honestly, Dad, I was sort of starting to get whiplash from reading these things. In fact, there's video and photos that they showed the court and they've really had to sort of decide tactically what is okay to show a court full of people. The level of barbarity and evil here, the nickname going around for Dominique Pelico, by the way, is the monster of Avignon. So he's 71 years old. He's facing multiple charges, including rape, privacy breaches, gang rape, recording, all of this stuff. It is Dad. And closing. Look, I did actually go and watch some of the footage of Giselle leaving the courtroom. And you're right. It is incredible, the applause she's getting. I know it's cold comfort, obviously. Yes. God. But one of the things that I've been thinking about prior to us coming to air was what it must be like to live in a very small village. It's a village of, well, it's six and a half thousand people, which is, I guess, a quarter of the size of a medium size, small to medium country town in Australia. So it's not a lot of people. Can you imagine now, because it has become the centre of French and international media. I, as a male, if I lived in that village, would feel terribly paranoid and always trying to justify, oh, I'm not one of those 80. But you're just forever tainted. Well, people, families don't, they're going, do I really know my husband, my boyfriend, my lover, my, do I know them? Do we know, do we really know anyone? Yeah, it's, it's those distrust in such a small place. That's great. Yeah, it's bizarre and it's terrifying. My genuine hope, my prayer is that they all get the book thrown at them really hard. And it's, I, look, we could be on the brink of France changing its laws in regards to rape and sexual assault, but it's so fucking tragic and so awful. And I hope she's okay and I hope her family's okay and I hope Dominic goes away for a very long time as I do with all the people who did this stuff. And I, look, horrible story, terrible story. I think kind of a necessary one to talk about. As you mentioned, it's being, it's all over the press and it's it's historic stuff and I'm just so sad about it. Yeah. I'm glad we sort of dealt with it, Paul. It would have been unusual if we hadn't happened to have dealt with it. We've let it sort of, we have had it on the boil for some weeks and I did, did appreciate your, your sentiment about not wanting to really delve in, but I think we've handled it factually. Yep, and we haven't gone into too much detail. No, a lot more detail is out there. And look, we tried to be as careful as we could. Obviously, we're talking about this stuff because it's, it's awful and it's an, it's an awful crime story about terrible things that have happened and we really hope that it results in some minor good in the legal system or at least some justice to address this evil. Yes. We really do thank you all for spending some time with us today on loose units. We're going to be back with a off topic loose ends spin off episode at the end of the week talking about the pretty aggressive act of awesome that happened near doors down from down and he sent me, you sent me footage. It's incredible stuff. It's very disturbing and please be safe. Please don't run into any burning buildings. But that's all the time we have for this week's episode of loose units, the shadow files. Thank you so much for listening everybody. Stay safe. And we'll see you all very, very soon for more loose units. Bye folks. Cheerio. Good taste is easy to spot, but hard to pin down. You know it when you see it. 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