Serial killer Patrice Alègre, in prison for more than 23 years, has just renounced his request for parole.

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CHRISTOPHE ENA / AP / SIPA

  • In 2002, Patrice Alègre was sentenced by the Assize Court of Haute-Garonne to life imprisonment, with a 22-year safety sentence, for the murder of five women, six rapes, as well as an attempted murder.

  • In September 2019, after having served his entire safety period, the “serial killer” filed a request for a modification of his sentence.

  • After having read the report of the psychiatric experts, who evoke a risk of recurrence, he decided to waive his request.

In September 2019, after having served the entire safety period to which he was sentenced in 2002, Patrice Alègre asked for a modification of the sentence.

This "serial killer" had admitted at the time of his trial to be the author of five murders of young women, one attempted murder and six rapes.

More than a year and a half after submitting his request, this 52-year-old Toulouse resident, now incarcerated at the Moulins plant, has decided to withdraw.

It must be said that his request now had very little chance of success, if any.

A report by psychiatric experts has indeed dampened the hopes of the detainee.

Risk of acting out

The latter leave few doubts about Patrice Alègre's reintegration capacities.

For them, “the risk of taking action could quickly be compared to the risks that existed before his imprisonment”.

“After this very unfavorable assessment, we requested a new one which was refused to us.

In these conditions, he probably considered that, taking into account this first and only expertise, his chances of obtaining a modification of his sentence were almost nil.

He certainly prefers to reserve the possibility of filing a new request in a few months, or even a few years, ”says his lawyer, Pierre Alfort.

It is to this criminal lawyer from the Pink City that Patrice Alègre had addressed himself a little less than two years ago.

The detainee's new companion, who left Canada to be closer to him, had called him to resume the defense of this client for whom he had been the lawyer sixteen years earlier.

Described by psychiatrists during his trial as a "psychopath" and a "perverted narcissist", specialists who recently examined him believe that he "is fully aware of the criminal character and the gravity of the acts committed.

However, this does not lead to a real feeling of guilt ”.

The latter thus imply that after more than 23 years of detention, his case would be somehow irrecoverable, he would not present disorders accessible to treatment or psychotherapy.

“When one has committed the acts for which he has been accused, which has earned him a conviction, care seems to be required.

This is not the opinion of psychiatrists who, it seems, consider it incurable.

It is quite surprising and despairing of the evolution of the human being ”, continues his lawyer from Toulouse.

He would have liked to see a college of experts look more precisely at the personality of his client whose development seemed "positive".

For the latter, the request for a modified sentence remains a right.

“Whatever the extreme gravity of the acts he may have committed, he has the right to a life.

He has the right to evolve, he had the right to submit a request for an adjustment of the sentence, and perhaps one day, we must not destroy hope, he will be able to hope for a release in a setting. extremely strict and supervised, ”continues Pierre Alfort.

"Dangerous problem"

Nothing prevents Patrice Alègre from making a new request within a few years, but if the accommodations are refused, his sentence will really be life imprisonment.

On his road to parole, he risks finding the families of his victims each time.

When he made his first request in September 2019, these civil parties remained convinced of the dangerousness of the man.

A position which, a year and a half later, has not changed.

“As a man and a lawyer, I have always believed in the forces of resilience and even redemption.

As a result, I think nothing is ever lost.

However, in the circumstances, it is a problem of potential dangerousness and therefore a risk of recurrence that arises.

Therefore, it is wiser to think that a release could be a mistake ”, pleads Guy Debuisson, lawyer of the family of Laure Martinet, a young student murdered in January 1990 after being taken in hitchhiking by Patrice Alègre.

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