Ep. 097 - 098 | Jean-Claude Romand
On a freezing January night, a house on the French-Swiss border burned to the ground, leaving behind the bodies of two small children and their mother. Miles away, their grandparents were also found dead. Only one member of the family survived. Jean-Claude Romand—a respected doctor and World Health Organization researcher—was pulled from the flames barely alive, mourned as the tragic victim of an unimaginable loss.
Friends believed he had built a beautiful life for his family, bravely battling cancer for years to protect it. Now, everything he loved had gone up in smoke, and no one could understand why. Investigators initially suspected that maybe Jean-Claude himself had been the target, perhaps because of the classified, high-level research he conducted for the WHO. Those who knew Jean-Claude had no inkling what exactly that research was, they knew only that it was of international importance.
But as police searched for answers, the story they had expected to uncover began to unravel. They learned that Jean-Claude’s research wasn’t classified, it didn’t exist. In fact, he had never worked at the World Health Organization. He wasn’t even a doctor. Everything friends, family and neighbors knew about Jean-Claude was a carefully constructed façade, hollow at its core. And with every lie exposed, the central question grew darker: had Jean-Claude’s web of deception placed his family in danger… or was Jean-Claude responsible for the annihilation of his wife, his parents, and his own children?
SOURCES:
BBC News. (2019, June 28). Jean-Claude Romand: Fake French doctor who killed family is free. BBC News.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48790276Carrère, E. (2001). The adversary (L. Coverdale, Trans.). Metropolitan Books. (Original work published 2000)
Carrère, E. (2001, January 13). Deadly fantasist. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2001/jan/13/weekend7.weekend1
Carrère, E. (2001, January 14). The adversary. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jan/14/biography.features
CNN. (2001, January 8). Reading up: The adversary. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/readingup/01/08/adversary/
Elkin, L. (2012, July 20). They were like us & we were like them. The New Inquiry. https://thenewinquiry.com/they-were-like-us-we-were-like-them/
Paraskevoulakou, A., & Antonopoulou, V. (2010). The altruistic homicides of Jean-Claude Romand: An autopsy of family secrets. Annals of General Psychiatry, 9(Suppl 1), S230. https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-9-S1-S230
RedHanded. (n.d.). Jean-Claude Romand [Podcast episode]. RedHanded Podcast.
Suarez Sang, L. (2019, June 28). Frenchman who killed entire family— inspiring a book and two movies — to be released from prison. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/world/frenchman-who-killed-his-entire-family-inspiring-a-book-and-two-movies-to-be-released-from-prison
