Murder In Marseilles (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00One morning in January of 1990, a man walked into a police station in Marseille, France, clutching a newspaper that was rolled up in his fist. He went right up to the desk, and he said that he'd seen a sketch of a murder suspect in the paper that morning, and he knew who it was. He then unrolled the newspaper, revealing the composite sketch that was in the paper, and he held it right up next to his own face. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload two, three, even four times every week.

0:35So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Buttons house and replace all their toilet paper with sandpaper. Okay, let's get into today's story.

1:17We'll be right back.

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1:57That's E-R-N-E-S-T-A dot com.

2:03At 5 p.m. on May 18, 1988, a 71-year-old hospital director named Léon Smou carried his briefcase through the halls of the medical clinic that he owned in the city of Marseille, France. He was about to go home after a long, stressful day of business calls and paperwork. As he walked, he passed by various doctors and nurses who were all hard at work. And they all, you know, when they saw Leonce, they would nod at him. And Leonce, he would nod back. And at some point, Leonce turned a corner into the lobby where he saw several security officers and guard dogs were stationed right by the entrance and they were screening each person that came inside.

2:40Now, Leonce knew that to some people, the security in this clinic might seem like overkill. But to him, it felt necessary to keep everybody here safe. So, Léonce himself was not a doctor. He was not in healthcare really at all. He was a businessman, and he'd gone into private healthcare because it was very lucrative. But in recent years, it had also become very competitive and cutthroat. There was now a lot of governmental red tape that made it nearly impossible to open new clinics in Marseille. So, existing clinic owners actually had to buy other already operational clinics if they wanted to expand their businesses.

3:17And over the past few years, one of Léonce's primary competitors, a doctor named Jean Jiraki, who owned a lot of other private clinics in Marseille, had become really, really aggressive about trying to buy Léonce's. Léonce, though, did not want to sell. He wasn't ready to retire yet. And when he did retire, he'd considered leaving his clinic to his daughter, Catherine. She was a doctor and she had a head for business, so Leonce thought she might be interested in taking things over versus a private sale. But despite expressing his intentions to Shiraki, Shiraki had continued to pressure Leonce and try to get him to sell, and Leonce was becoming afraid of just how far his fierce competitor would go to get what he wanted.

4:04After all, Leonce knew that Shiraki was really powerful and very well-connected in town, and there were even rumors that he had ties to organized crime. And so out of an abundance of caution that really came from this general tension slash fear with Shiraki, Leonce had installed all of these security measures, the cameras, the hired guards, the dogs. He'd even replaced the windows in his office with a one-way mirror so nobody could spy on it. And so even though Leonce to some degree believed he was doing all this to protect the people that worked for him, it still caused a lot of tension between Leonce and his employees.

4:43It just seemed like he was becoming sort of crazy and paranoid. And because his staff clearly thought he was becoming paranoid and sort of wacky, it made him lash out at his staff and he distrusted everybody around him. He was sort of like this grumpy old man. And he knew that a lot of the doctors probably wished he would just retire already, that he was becoming sort of a nuisance, even though to him he was just being a responsible business owner. And so with all this tension going on inside the clinic, Leonce was beginning to get into these sort of awful fights with some of the people he worked with that just were at odds with what he was doing and how he was behaving.

5:20And in particular, Leonce had gotten into a few fairly high-profile public fights, including one with one of his most high-ranking administrators, a man named Mark Gagliazzi. And that fight had basically destroyed their relationship, even though Mark still worked at the clinic. They just now couldn't interact with each other. And so as Léonce is making his way out of the clinic this day, it's on his mind that a lot of people here, they're waving and being nice to him, and he's waving back, but he knows that people don't really necessarily like him here. But you know what? He's had a stressful day, and at this point, he just wants to get through security, get out to his car, and go home.

5:59So he walked out to his beautiful white Mercedes car, he unlocked the door, and he got into the driver's seat. He set his briefcase down on the seat next to him, and then he started the engine. But as he pulled out of the parking lot out onto the road, another car suddenly appeared from a side street. And before Léonce could even react, it veered into Léonce's lane and stopped right in front of his car, blocking his path. Seconds later, a woman walking down the street outside of Léonce's clinic heard two loud bangs right behind her. She turned, and she saw a white Mercedes stopped in the middle of the street, and there was a man standing by its front bumper pointing a hunting rifle at the windshield of the car.

6:41The woman instinctively ducked for cover behind a telephone pole, but also sort of watched as the man with the rifle ran to another car that was stopped nearby, and he climbed into the passenger seat, and they sped away. And then once they were gone, the woman slowly stood up from behind cover, and she walked a little bit closer to the Mercedes, and she saw there were two bullet holes in the windshield. And through the shattered glass, she saw there was a man in the driver's seat who was slumped over and blood was clearly pouring out of his head. At this point, the woman turned and ran down the street, screaming for someone to call the police.

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8:44That's G-L-O-W-Gummies.com and use code PODCAST20 for 20 % off. Finding the right size rug can be hard. Enter Ernesta, designer-quality, custom-sized rugs cut to the exact size of your room and delivered in as little as two weeks. Not sure of the size or the material? Start with five samples for just$10 today to see them in your own light and match to your decor. Plus, get$50 toward any rug of your choice. Visit Ernesta.com today. That's E-R-N-E-S-T-A dot com. The next morning, Detective Richard Zerdoumi of the Marseille Crime Division sat at his desk reviewing crime scene photos from a shooting that had occurred yesterday right outside of a medical clinic.

9:28Now, Zerdoumi had not gotten to look at the scene in person, but he was told that the victim had already been identified. It was actually the owner of the clinic. It was Léonce Mou, and the officers who responded believed this shooting was a gang hit. And Zerdumi agreed that this did seem like organized crime, because at this point in 1988, Marseille was the epicenter of organized crime and corruption in France. And since Zerdumi had by this point been on the force for decades, he was very tapped into the city's criminal underworld. So he knew firsthand that gang hitmen would typically ambush their victims with hunting rifles and then drive away, which according to witnesses that had been interviewed at the scene, that was exactly what had happened in this case.

10:10The responding officers had also found a hunting rifle that had been tossed out into the street just a few blocks away from the crime scene, and forensics had confirmed it was the murder weapon. But that was about all they had so far, because while they had found the getaway car nearby as well, it had actually been set on fire, which meant that any forensic evidence that might have been found in the car had burned up. Zardoumi knew that when it came to professional hit cases, the victims often turned out to be gangsters themselves who had gotten into trouble with their associates. But Léonce, the victim, did not seem to fit that profile.

10:46He was a successful, upstanding businessman and a well-known name in the healthcare industry. And that was actually what had already turned this case into front-page news in France. Because Marseille's private healthcare industry was notoriously competitive, it was really compelling. for people to read about how one of its members had been gunned down in broad daylight. It's like, wow, it's so competitive, they're killing each other now? And so in less than 24 hours, multiple news outlets had caught wind of this murder and claimed it was some sort of business feud. They'd even given it a catchy name, the Clinic Wars.

11:22But Zerdumi, you know, he had enough experience that he was not ready to simply jump to conclusions here. Now, he was pretty confident that this was a hit based on everything they've been told so far. But at this point, anybody could have ordered it. He knew that a ton of high-profile business owners in Marseille had secret ties to organized crime, so it could still be gang-related. Or it could be a family issue or some kind of personal dispute. To get to the bottom of this, Zerdumi decided the first person and best person to talk to was Léonce's own daughter, Catherine, who he'd found out was actually a doctor herself.

11:59and she worked at the clinic that Leonce owned, which meant she not only might be able to tell him about her father's personal life, but also his professional life as well. On the morning of May 19, 1988, so a day after Leonce Mu was killed, Detective Richard Zerdumi sat down in the living room of Leonce's daughter, Dr. Catherine Mu. Catherine was sitting across from him, and her face was visibly red and puffy from all the crying she'd been doing. Zerdumi explained what the investigation had found so far, including his theory that Catherine's father's murder appeared to be a professional hit. And when he said that, Catherine just looked confused and said that that did not make any sense to her.

12:37And she said her dad had never been involved in anything illegal, so she couldn't understand why gangsters would be after him. But when Zerdumi asked if her dad had any enemies, Catherine's eyes grew wide, like she just thought of something. And then she said, actually, yes, he did. There was a man named Dr. Jean Shiraki who'd been trying to buy her father's clinic for years, but she said her dad had always said no. But Shiraki was not taking no for an answer, and there was like this growing tension between them because of this. Zerdumi, when he heard this, I mean, he perked up because he knew who Dr.

13:13Shiraki was. I mean, everyone in Marseille did. He was a very rich and successful business tycoon and sort of a local celebrity. I mean, And he was constantly seeking out the media and giving interviews about his health clinic empire. Catherine said that Shiraki had been buying up every private clinic in Marseille, and supposedly he was furious that her dad just wouldn't budge. And so now she wondered if maybe he had killed her dad to just get him out of the way. And furthermore, Catherine said, you know, she was in line to take over her father's clinic now that he was dead. And so was she now at risk of being Shiraki's next target?

13:51Like, she was scared. And at this, Zerdumi paused. Because Catherine, she was onto something. It did seem like Shiraki had motivation to want Leon's dead. And he obviously had the money to hire a hitman if he wanted to. But if Catherine was set to inherit the clinic, that gave her motivation too. She had just as much at stake as Shiraki did in some ways. But at the same time, Catherine did not strike him as a very strong suspect. Number one, she seemed genuinely devastated. Plus, she already had a very successful career of her own and didn't seem like she really needed the clinic at all. But Zerdumi didn't have enough information to truly eliminate anyone at this point.

14:31And so soon after that, he stood up to leave and told Catherine he would be in touch. That afternoon, when Zerdumi got back to the police station, there was a crowd of reporters and photographers all waiting for him at the door. And as soon as they saw him, they began immediately peppering him with questions all about the case. And Zerdumi, he pushed his way through the crowd without saying a word and went inside to his office. There, he sat back down at his desk and tried to put all the media pressure out of his mind. Now, he still needed to question the clinic's employees to see if any of them might have had an issue with Léonce, and he wanted to call the criminal informants in his own network that he had amassed over the years of being on the force to check if they'd heard about a hit being put out on Léonce.

15:13I mean, there were dozens of gang-related murders in Marseille every year, and it was entirely possible that Léonce was maybe living a double life that even his daughter didn't know about. But Zerdoumi's biggest suspect right now was definitely Dr. Shiraki. Zerdoumi had been thinking about what Catherine had said, and Shiraki had the most to gain from Léonce's death. Shiraki was pretty publicly obsessed with growing his business empire and sort of bragging about it, And he had the money and connections to do basically whatever it took to beat his competitors, like maybe to include hiring a hitman.

15:48But despite his intense suspicions at this point, Zerdumi knew that bringing such a powerful high-profile suspect in for questioning right now was a bad idea. He had to move carefully and wait until he had solid evidence before confronting him, because the media was going to go wild if they found out Shiraki was a suspect. So he wrote up a request to secretly wiretap Shiraki's phone. Zerdumi hoped that if Shiraki was involved in Leonce's murder, this would be the best way to catch him saying something that was incriminating and would allow him to bring him in as a suspect. A week later, Zerdumi was back at his desk when his phone rang.

16:25And when he answered it, the man on the other end said that he had a tip in the murder of Leonce Mu. And Zerdumi was intrigued because after a week of investigating this murder, he had zero new leads. He'd ultimately decided to rule out Catherine, the daughter, since he hadn't found anything that connected her to the crime. And after a week of secretly listening to Dr. Shiraki's phone calls, the police had not overheard anything to suggest that he was involved in Leonce's death either. Zerdumi had also spoken to some of Leonce's employees at the clinic, and he'd found out that a lot of his staff didn't like him.

16:59He apparently had a temper, and he'd been growing increasingly paranoid and distrustful. But despite that, none of the clinic's employees seemed like serious suspects here. They just didn't necessarily like their boss. And on top of all that, none of the criminal informants Zerdumi had spoken to knew anything about Leonce's murder. So he didn't seem to have any direct ties to any of the city's gangs. But now this tipster on the phone said that one, this was a hit for hire. And two, he knew who ordered the hit. It was Dr. Shiraki. And when Zerdumi heard this, he just set his pen down, disappointed, because, you know, he'd been hoping for a new lead, you know, but this caller was really just giving him a name, Shiraki, that he had already been very suspicious of and had already considered him in the whole hit-for -hire routine, and for the most part, Shiraki had been ruled out here.

17:51So this was sort of a useless call. And so Zerdumi was about to hang up on this guy when the caller said, wait, I have something else. I also know the name of the shooter that Shiraki hired. And at this, Zerdumi paused and he picked his pen back up again. And then the caller told him exactly who Shiraki apparently had hired and how the two men had gotten to know each other. And by the time Zerdumi hung up with this guy, he was buzzing with excitement. I mean, he finally had a new trail to follow, and he was hopeful that this one would actually lead him somewhere. And even though Shiraki at this point had not said anything incriminating on his personal phone, Sir Doomy wondered if maybe his hitman, if this was his hitman, would be as careful.

18:36So Sir Doomy immediately ordered another wiretap on this new suspect's phone, the supposed hitman, and then he waited. But this tip ultimately went nowhere. The police spent months following up on this lead and listening to hours and hours of phone calls and never overheard anything that connected either man to Léonce's murder. And the supposed hitman even had an alibi. So even though Dr. Shiraki was still a suspect, Zerdumi really couldn't find any evidence to actually link him to the murder. And even though he would continue to keep on searching, after a year and a half with really no new leads at all and everything just turning into a dead end, the case got shelved and went cold.

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20:49That's E-R-N-E-S-T-A dot com. On the morning of January 17th, 1990, so a few months after Leonce's case kind of officially went cold, and now almost two years after the murder itself, Detective Zerdumi was at home when he turned on the TV in his living room to listen to the news while he got ready for work. At some point, he went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, and as he was doing that, he could still hear the TV, but he wasn't really paying close attention. Until suddenly, a couple of words from the TV caught his attention. There had been another medical industry-related murder the night before.

21:28Zerdumi went right back into the living room, and he saw on the TV there were two police sketches of the murder suspects on the screen. The reporter was saying that a local surgeon and city councilman, a man named Dr. Jean-Jacques Pachar, had been gunned down in his car after leaving a restaurant with some of his colleagues. And the killer had apparently shot Pachar with a hunting rifle and then got in the passenger seat of a getaway car and sped away. Then the reporter said something else that really got Zerdumi's attention. The victim, Dr. Pichard, worked in a private clinic that was owned by Dr.

22:03Jean Shiraki. Zerdoumi couldn't believe it. This murder happened the same way as Leonce's, with the same type of weapon. The whole thing was the same, and both victims had ties to Dr. Shiraki. On January 24, 1990, so a week after the second Clinic Wars murder, Detective Richard Zerdoumi was at his desk comparing the newer case file with Leonce's. Dr. Pashar had been shot outside of a busy restaurant, so there were a few witnesses that had actually seen the shooter and also the getaway driver. And the police had released composite sketches of those two suspects, but so far, neither had been identified.

22:41And that was about all the investigators had so far. But the fact that both hits were carried out virtually the exact same way, and that both victims had a connection to Dr. Shiraki, was enough for Zerdumi to feel pretty certain there had to be a link between these two cases. But just then, an officer barged into his office, and he told Zerdumi that a man had just come into the station claiming to be one of the suspects in Pashar's murder. A few minutes later, Zerdumi walked into an interrogation room where this man with a mustache and graying hair was sitting. And the first thing Zerdumi noticed about this guy is he looked really nervous.

23:18And the other thing he noticed was that this guy also did look a whole lot like one of the two suspects in the composite sketches, so he figured this was definitely not a prank. But Zerdumi couldn't imagine why a professional killer, potentially, would just walk into the station and turn himself in. So Zerdumi took a seat and he asked the guy why he'd come in. And the man said there'd been this horrible mix-up and he was here to clear things up. The man said his name was Marcel Long and he was one of the people in those composite sketches. But he had nothing to do with the murder. He said he was just eating at the restaurant where Pashar was killed that night and witnesses must have identified him as the shooter's accomplice by mistake.

24:02Sir Dumi was immediately very skeptical, so he just quickly excused himself from the room and he went down the hall to a computer terminal to look Marcel's name up in their database. And when he saw the results for this guy, his eyes went wide because Marcel had this really lengthy criminal record. I mean, he'd served 12 years in prison for manufacturing heroin for a major gang. It was just way too much of a coincidence that a literal known gangster would have been mistakenly identified at a crime scene. Zerdumi thought it was much more likely that Marcel realized he was likely about to be identified and was trying to get ahead of it.

24:40So Zerdumi simply went back into the interrogation room and told Marcel he was under arrest. Later that day, Detective Zerdumi was walking through the living room of Marcel's house, which was being torn apart by a forensics team. They were looking for any evidence that would tie Marcel to Peshawar's murder, or at least lead them to the person or people who had masterminded the hit. But so far, they were striking out. At some point, Zerdumi found his way over to a desk and began searching through a pile of papers that were on top of it. And most of them were just bills or junk mail or to-do lists.