At
20 Minutes
, we like to tell scary stories by the fireside.
For Halloween, we tell you about the “Monsters of our cities”
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Killer of shepherdesses, strangler of children, butcher of widows, etc., they threw terror from Toulouse to Lille and everywhere in France.
From 1837 to 1842, “La canaille de Caux” man sowed terror by robbing dozens of merchants on the roads returning from the fairs.
Jean Pomarèdes, sometimes idealized, has become a legend in Languedoc, to the point of being at the heart of a resounding trial in 1980, with Robert Ménard and François Mitterrand as participants.
Its history has marked Languedoc.
So much so that 150 years later, his name was at the heart of a resounding trial during which Robert Ménard and François Mitterrand succeeded each other at the bar….
On February 18, 1843 Jean Pomarèdes was guillotined in Pézenas.
End point of his life as a highwayman.
50,000 people had gathered around the main square to witness his last breath.
Ruined after smoky speculation
Coming from a wealthy family, Jean Pomarèdes could have lived the life of a notable if he had not multiplied smoky speculations. First, the purchase of large quantities of wine alcohol and marc at a time when competition from cheap beet alcohol was breaking the market. Before he invests in disastrous real estate transactions. While his heritage was estimated at more than 10,000 francs, a considerable sum at the time, "Jean Pomarèdes fils was ruined in 1838", recalls Hyacinthe-Marius Maders, in the book he devoted to him in 1981.
In 1837, his first crime was to rob one of his employees whom he had just paid, by intercepting him, armed and dressed up, on the way back.
After setting his house on fire to gain insurance, his technique evolved and it was heavily armed, his face painted black, surrounding himself with bundles of armed wood to feign group attacks, that he forged his reputation.
Its target: merchants, back from the markets.
He doesn't hesitate to kill them if necessary.
250 complaints, 18 days of trial
On February 19, 1842, after a final mischief, he was seen hiding his booty in a field.
It was on his return, when he was collecting the booty, that he was arrested.
"This story kept the inhabitants of the region in such horror that all the regional newspapers published it with many often imaginary details", recalls Hyacinthe-Marius Maders.
The scoundrel of Caux, named after a small village north of the Hérault, was convicted of 35 armed robberies out of the 250 attributed to him, the arson of his house, two assassination attempts and a murder.
The holes of Pomarèdes
His legend continued long after his sometimes idealized death, presenting him as a sort of Robin Hood stealing tax collectors to give money to the poorest. Many gold diggers began to dig holes all over the place in search of loot that he would have buried at the option of his misdeeds. The best known is a mound at the exit of Béziers, which would have hidden the opening of a cave, since collapsed. Other Pomarèdes holes in the area are sometimes shown with other functions. “From Montpellier to Narbonne, from Sète to Millau, who will not show you a hole where he would have hidden? », Continues Hyacinthe-Marius Maders.
His name resurfaced in 1978. That year, a certain Robert Ménard, who was not yet the creator of Reporter Sans Frontière and even less mayor of Béziers, baptized his radio (banned at the time like all free radio stations). ) Radio Pomarèdes.
The transmitter was seized on February 2, 1979 and Robert Ménard tried the following year for infringement of the monopoly.
During this trial, François Mitterrand, who was to be elected President of the Republic a year later, appeared at the bar as a character witness ...
Toulouse
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Paris
Halloween: The multiple infanticides of Jeanne Weber, "the ogress of the Goutte d'Or"
Languedoc-Roussillon
Thief
Organized crime
Miscellaneous
Halloween
Beziers
Horror
Montpellier