1983 – The murder of the parish priest of Saint-Michel-l’Observatoire

On 14 September 1979, his neighbours, surprised not to have seen Father Henri Brau, aged sixty-three and parish priest of Saint-Michel-l’Observatoire for twenty-six years, who was usually an early riser, forced open the door of the presbytery and soon discovered the priest’s bloodstained body, tied up in the cellar. All over the house there were traces of blood and great disorder. Many items of religious art, of which the priest was a passionate collector, were missing from the sitting room, which over the years had become a small “museum”.

Exactly one week later, gendarmes arrested a 23-year-old Spanish national, who very quickly admitted to the burglary but always denied having killed, let alone tortured, the priest.

Before the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence Assize Court, which tried him in 1983, the man his friends called “Manu” looked nothing like a murderer or a torturer. Balding, with thin gold-rimmed glasses and a refined way of speaking, he looked more like a student than a man facing charges of “murder, torture and aggravated theft”.

In fact, this man was deeply wounded. Born in Spain but brought to France at a very young age, he barely knew his father, a notorious alcoholic, and his mother, perpetually ill, was neither able nor willing to raise him. His whole childhood, punctuated by epileptic fits, was spent being shuttled between children’s homes and medical and social centres. At fourteen he ran away for the first time, and he would do so again many times, even beyond France’s borders. What he called a “stupid bet” led him, at seventeen and a half, to join the Foreign Legion. The military doctors quickly discharged him for “nervousness and indiscipline”.

Before the Assize Court, the case took an even more dramatic turn when the advocate general, the serving public prosecutor of Digne, declared that had he had the power to do so, he would have sought the death penalty. Failing that, he asked for life imprisonment for the main defendant.

Philippe Vouland, together with Daniel Borde, defended the main defendant. They worked together to present a robust defence, highlighting contextual factors and mitigating circumstances. Their aim was to avoid the maximum sentence sought by the prosecution.

The defendant was ultimately sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, a significantly lighter sentence than the one sought by the prosecutor.

Read the Le Monde article on this case (in French): Link to the article