The Trash Bag (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00In December of 1988, a young woman was having coffee at her friend's house in the city of Tour, France. And at some point, she excused herself to go use the bathroom. And when she opened the lid of the toilet, she saw in the bowl were two small gold objects floating in the water. They looked like beads at first, or maybe broken pieces of jewelry. And so she leaned down close to get a better look. And then she realized what they actually were. But before we get into that 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.

0:34So if that's of interest to you, please ask the follow button to go get a matching tattoo with you. But after they finish getting theirs done, leave without getting yours. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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2:05See store for details. On the night of December 11th, 1988, a 38-year-old woman named Françoise Gendron touched up her lipstick in the bathroom mirror of a nightclub in the city of Tours, France. Her best friend, Sylvie Riverego, was washing her hands at the sink right next to her. Françoise and Sylvie were best friends. They had basically known each other forever since they were just little kids. And these days, they went out together almost every single night. They were both divorced, and Françoise's 19-year-old son had recently moved out of the house, so she was making the most of her new freedom and staying out late all the time, often with Sylvie.

2:43Now, Françoise and Sylvie were not exactly the same in terms of their attitude towards life. Françoise had always been much more sociable and had this huge circle of friends, and so really she was the one who often had to push her much more introverted friend Sylvie to come out with her, but she usually did. However, tonight, it was Francoise who turned to Sylvie and said that she actually wanted to go home now. She told Sylvie that the men they were there with at the club, Michelle and Luke, were making her feel uncomfortable and she wanted to leave. Now, it was clear to Francoise pretty much immediately that Sylvie was pretty disappointed.

3:17You know, despite being introverted, now that they were out, Sylvie wanted to stay out. And also, I mean, they regularly went out with Michelle and Luke and there was never any issues before. and so she said as much to Francoise. Like, what do you mean? Like, what's the issue? But Francoise just said she was getting a weird vibe from both of them and just would feel better if she went home. And so a few minutes later, Francoise and Sylvie walked back to the table where Michelle and Luke were still sitting and there was a receipt on the table and Michelle was putting his wallet away like he had just paid for it.

3:48And actually, Michelle, he turned to the women and he said, hey, are you guys ready to leave and go to the next club? But Francoise, she just kind of smiled and grabbed her coat and said that actually she was going to leave now. She said she had to get home to her boyfriend, who was probably already at her apartment and waiting for her. The men were pretty surprised by this, and maybe even a little bit offended. And Michelle actually asked Francoise, like, hey, are you sure everything's okay here? Like, is that really the reason you're leaving? And Francoise just said, yep, everything's fine. I just gotta go.

4:17But she could definitely tell that the men did not believe her. But Francoise didn't really care. I mean, at this point, she really just wanted to leave. And so she just turned and gave Sylvie a hug and then just said bye to the group who were just kind of sitting there somewhat stunned this is happening so quickly. And then Françoise turned and she hustled right out of the club and flagged down a cab before any of them could follow her. The next morning, Françoise woke up in her own bed to the sound of her boyfriend, Yves Martin, bustling around her bedroom and getting dressed. She rolled over to look at her alarm clock and saw that it was 8 a.m.

4:52Françoise sat up and Yves turned to her and said good morning, but she immediately noticed that his voice was cold. And she knew why. The night before, when she had come home, they had gotten into a big argument because, you know, he had been waiting for her for quite a while, for hours, you know, by the time she finally got there. That was the reason she had to leave, and it really had upset him. And in many ways, this was not like a one-off issue in their relationship. It was a recurring one. Francoise was always staying out super late with her friends, and often with her male friends, and Eve felt like she was basically prioritizing all of them over him.

5:27He worked during the day, so the evenings were really the only time that he and Francoise could reasonably get together, but Francoise never seemed to get home until super late, and at that point it was too late for Eve to come over, or vice versa, and so they just didn't get to see each other as much as they could be. And so now, Francoise knew she had to do something to try to smooth things over with her boyfriend. So she turned to Eve and said, hey, do you want to come over tonight after you get off work? And she promised she would actually be home when he got there so they could cook dinner together and just spend some time together.

5:59It would be just a night for them. And at that, Francoise saw Eve's shoulders immediately relax. And then he turned around and he smiled at her and said, you know what? I'd really, really like that. And so at this point, the mood in the room completely shifted. They were sort of back on good terms. And so as Eve finished getting dressed, he asked Francoise what else she had going on that day. And she told him that she had a handyman she knew named Christian Moreau, who was coming by that morning to put up new wallpaper in the apartment. So she'd very likely be stuck at home for most of the day while he worked on it.

6:30The two chatted for a bit longer. And then once Eve was ready to leave, Françoise kissed him goodbye. And then after he left, Françoise pulled herself out of bed and put on a robe. And then she went into the kitchen and she opened up a can of food for her cat. And then she made herself some coffee. She was a bit hungover from the night before and she thought maybe a warm bath would make her feel better. So after she drank her coffee, she ran a bath, she got into the water, and she closed her eyes.

6:57At 11 a.m. the next morning, so December 13th, a janitor at the Trousseau Hospital in Tour, France was carrying a trash bag out to the dumpster when he noticed something odd. There were two blue trash bags just sitting out on a strip of grass in the middle of the hospital's parking lot. Now, the trash bags they used at the hospital were gray. So the janitor knew these bags, these blue bags, had to have been left there by someone from outside of the hospital. So the janitor walked over to the bags and sort of inspected them from the outside. And they were sort of bulky, but he couldn't really tell what was inside of them.

7:30And then he just reached down and he opened one of them. And when he saw what was inside, he immediately stumbled back, turned, and ran inside, shouting for someone to call the police.

7:44About an hour later, so just before noon on December 13th, 1988, Chief Inspector Francois Barbier of the Tor Police Department walked across the parking lot of the Trousseau Hospital. He'd been sent out here to investigate human remains that had been found outside of the hospital. And he was the first officer to arrive on the scene, and so now a janitor was walking with him to show him the way to where the remains had been found. They walked over to a grassy strip in the middle of the parking lot, and they stopped next to a pair of blue trash bags. Inspector Barbier knelt down, and he opened up one of the bags, and inside, he saw very clearly there were two severed arms and the lower part of two legs.

8:23He opened up the other blue bag, and he found it contained a woman's torso, but there was no pelvis, no thighs, and no head. Barbier turned to the janitor, who he knew had found the remains, and he asked him, like, when did you find this? And the janitor said that he had been out doing his rounds, throwing his own trash away around 11 a.m., and that's when he had seen them. But they definitely had not been there when he had done his rounds at 9 a.m. that day. So clearly these had to have been dropped off sometime between 9 and 11. Barbier stood up and looked around, and he noticed there actually was a medical school right down the street.

8:59And for a second, he wondered if maybe this was all just a tasteless prank by some of the students who could have maybe stolen a cadaver from the hospital's morgue and dropped it here. But as he thought about it, he just couldn't imagine medical students desecrating a human body like that. I mean, even as a prank, it just seemed not possible. And so to him, it just seemed like the more obvious answer here, albeit a gruesome one, was that this woman contained in these two bags had been murdered. And whoever killed her chopped her body up and put them in these bags because it would be easier to dispose of her body that way.

9:34And so Barbier hoped that when the forensics team showed up, they'd be able to find fingerprints from the killer on the blue trash bags. Because at this point, I mean, they didn't have a head of this woman. The victim didn't have a head. And so it could be very challenging to identify who it was. And if you didn't know who the victim was, it would be even harder to narrow down who might have killed her. Four days later, on the afternoon of December 17th, Barbier was reading over an autopsy report at his desk. After the initial discovery of those blue trash bags at the hospital, more body parts from what appeared to be the same body had been found dumped behind a clothing store in a commercial part of town.

10:12But the head was still missing, and with no clues as to who the victim was, the investigation really was just barely crawling along. The police had put out a press release about the body's discovery, but so far no one had come forward with information, and there had been no women who had been reported missing in the area recently. Also, no usable fingerprints have been found on the trash bags. And so at this point, they really just didn't have forensic evidence and so they were not able to even begin to track down who the killer was or what happened to them. And now, as Barbier continued to read through this autopsy report, he saw that the medical examiner had run the victim's fingerprints through the database, but there was no match.

10:52And so again, there's just like no leads in this case so far. However, as Barbier continued reading through this report, he saw that the autopsy did reveal that the victim had died recently, probably only one day before her remains were discovered. She appeared to have bled to death from two deep gashes on her wrists, and there were also traces of an anti-anxiety medicine that was in her blood, which suggested she might have been drugged before she was killed. And Barbier was sort of baffled by this because the method of murder almost seemed gentle and controlled compared to the extreme violence that was done to the body post-mortem.

11:27Like those two things were totally in contrast with each other. And so he wondered if this was all done this way out of necessity. And so maybe the killer was just too small or too weak or maybe both to kill the victim without sedating her first. And then also along those same lines, maybe they couldn't move her body without chopping it up first. And so as Barbier is just sort of thinking through what could have happened here, the phone on his desk rang. He put down the report and he picked up the phone and it was a woman who said that she had just seen a newspaper article about the dead body and she thought it could be a woman named Françoise Gendron who lived in an apartment complex called La Valais Violette.

12:05And so Barbier immediately sat up, he grabbed his pen and he wrote down the name and the address. But before he could ask who the caller was or why she thought the victim could be this woman, Françoise, the caller hung up.

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15:13Half an hour later, Barbier walked through the hallway on the first floor of the Lavalée Violette apartment complex, where his mystery caller had told him his victim lived. This was the first lead he had gotten since the body was found, so he was hopeful that something would come of it. Now, the woman who called didn't actually give the apartment number for Francoise, just that she lived in this complex. And so Barbier just literally walked down the hallway and knocked on an apartment door at random. And the man who answered, Barbier asked him if he knew a woman named Francoise Gendron and did she live here?

15:46And the man just nodded and said, yep, she lives here. And then he pointed to a door right down the same hallway. And then the man unprompted told Barbier that he hadn't seen anybody go in or out of that apartment for at least a few days, and he was starting to get worried about Françoise's cat. Barbier's heart began to race, because if Françoise really did live in that apartment, and she really hadn't been around in days, well, it seemed very possible that she was his victim. So he thanked the man and said he would handle it, and then he walked down the hallway to the door, and he knocked, and there was no answer.

16:20But he could hear a cat meowing inside. And so at this point, Barbier was feeling really confident about the anonymous tip. And so he just turned and hurried back out to his car, and he radioed for a forensics team to come to this apartment complex. And then a few minutes later, they arrived carrying a battering ram to break down the door. So Barbier and the team, they go back down the hallway to Francoise's door. Barbier got out of the way, and then the officers smashed it down with this ram, and then once it was open, Barbier stepped inside the apartment. As soon as Barbier was in this apartment, he was standing in the living room, and he looked around, and nothing seemed disturbed.

16:58However, when he left the living room and went into the kitchen, it was a different story. Now, the kitchen was not a total disaster, but there was a broken dish on the ground and some food items that must have been on the dish at some point that also were scattered across the floor. And so just at first glance, it appeared like maybe some sort of struggle happened in here. However, Barbier looked around the kitchen, and he didn't find any blood anywhere. So it was just this broken plate. And then when Barbier checked the rest of the apartment, no drawers or closets looked like they'd been ransacked.

17:30So this didn't appear like an apartment that had been robbed at any point. However, one thing Barbier did notice was in the bedroom, there were a few unopened rolls of wallpaper on a stool. like as if somebody had been about to do some work in the bedroom, but then just didn't. Barbier told the forensics team to first make sure the cat got fed, because there was a cat in here and the cat was, you know, a little malnourished, but basically okay, and then to sweep the apartment for fingerprints to see whether Francoise's prints matched the victim. And if she was the victim, he was hoping they might also find fingerprints or blood inside the apartment from whoever might have killed her.

18:06And so the forensics team, they got to work, and Barbier, he just continued sort of walking around the apartment, looking at photos that were out on display, to maybe get a sense of Françoise's body size, to sort of mentally compare it to the victim's body. And as he was doing this, he happened to glance out the window, and he saw a young man standing on the sidewalk outside, who clearly was watching the police through the glass. And when Barbier locked eyes with this guy, the guy suddenly looked terrified and he just turned and began speedwalking away, at which point Barbier opened up the window and shouted at this guy to stay right where he was.

18:43An hour later, Inspector Barbier walked into an interview room at the Tor police station and sat down across from the young man who had been watching Francoise's apartment. By now, he knew this man's name was Yves Martin, and he claimed to have been Francoise's boyfriend. And so Barbier sits down and he asks Eve, you know, what were you doing outside of Francoise's apartment when I saw you? And Eve said that he had just come by the apartment to see if Francoise was home, but like he got there and saw police inside and he knew something was wrong. But he specified that he hadn't seen or heard from her in about five days and didn't know she was missing.

19:18Like the last time he spoke to her was the morning of December 12th. Now, the instant Eve said December 12th, Barbier thought of two things. One, is that was actually the day before the body was found in the parking lot. And two, based on the autopsy report, it was presumed that the victim was killed the day before her body was found. So December 12th. And so it's pretty suspicious that this guy is mentioning December 12th as the last time he saw Francoise. And so Barbier leaned in and he asked Eve to elaborate about the last time he saw Francoise on the 12th. And Eve said he had seen Francoise at her own apartment when he left the apartment around 8 a.m.

19:56on the 12th, and the two of them had made plans to meet up again at her place that evening. But he said when he got there that night, she wasn't home. But this was not unusual for her. So Eve explained that he just let himself inside her apartment with the spare key she had given him, and he just made himself dinner and he watched TV while he waited for her to eventually show up. And then he said at around 8 p.m., her landline, her home landline phone began to ring. Yves said that he answered the phone, which was not totally unusual. And he said the person who was calling claimed to be one of Françoise's friends.

20:29Yves said he didn't recognize the voice, but he said Françoise had a big circle of friends and he for sure did not know all of them. But Yves told Barbier that this caller was not calling the apartment to try to reach Françoise. They were calling the apartment to reach him, Yves. to tell him that apparently Francoise had decided to go out of town this weekend with some other friends and that she would not be home tonight. And Eve said this was not the first time that Francoise had ditched him. And so in his frustration after being told this by this friend, he said he grabbed his dinner plate and just chucked it on the floor and shattered it, and then he left.

21:06Barbier was surprised to hear this, and he was thinking if Eve was the type of person who would immediately start breaking things over something that, you know, didn't seem like that big of a deal, well, what else was he capable of? However, as potentially suspicious as Eve was, Barbier had not actually confirmed whether Francoise was even his victim. This could just be a coincidence here that she left town right before this body was found. Like, she could be just fine. And so before Barbier let Eve go, because he couldn't really hold him at this point, he asked Eve to just give him a detailed account of what else he had done on December 12th.

21:44He Eve just said after he had left Francoise's apartment that morning when he and Francoise had made plans to meet up that night, he said he had spent most of the day at work, and then he had gone back to Francoise's apartment after work, and then after he had waited around for a while and got that phone call and broke the plate, he said he had just left and gone straight to his own apartment, which he shared with his mother, and he was there all night. And so Barbier wrote down what he said and made a note to follow up on his alibi, and then before he let Eve go, he just asked him if Francoise was planning to go anywhere or meet anybody on the day he last saw her.

22:18And Eve, he thought about it for a moment, and then he said, yeah, actually there was one thing Francoise had mentioned to him. She had told him that an acquaintance named Christian Moreau was supposed to come over her apartment later that morning to put up some new wallpaper in her apartment. The next morning, December 18th, Inspector Barbier knocked on the door of Christian's apartment, the guy who was going to put up the wallpaper. Now, at this point, forensics still had not confirmed whether or not Francoise was the victim. But for the time being, Barbier was working under the assumption that she was.