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Patrick Salameh

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Patrick Salameh
Born (1957-04-21) April 21, 1957 (age 67)
Fréjus, France
Other names"The Marseille Ripper"
Conviction(s)Murder x4
Criminal penaltyLife imprisonment x4
22 years preventive detention
Details
Victims4
Span of crimes
May – November 2008
CountryFrance
State(s)Var
Date apprehended
November 2008

Patrick Salameh (born April 21, 1957), known as The Marseille Ripper, is a French criminal and serial killer.

In 2008, women began disappearing from the Marseille area without any trace left. Despite the investigating authorities' efforts, no bodies were found until statements from a key witness helped relaunch the investigation, which eventually lead them to Salameh. While examining his past, investigators were overwhelmed by his checkered criminal record.

In 2014, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with 22 years preventive detention for kidnapping, sequestration and rape leading to death.

Biography

Patrick Salameh was born on April 21, 1957 in Fréjus, Var Department. He was born into a large family of Lebanese-Syrian origin, with nine other siblings. When he was a child, the whole family moved to Marseille. As an adult, Patrick married and later fathered two children. In the 1980s, he ran a restaurant located in the heart of Marseille's sensitive areas.

Earlier crimes

The entirety of Salameh's life is punctuated with delinquent acts. Between September 1988 and February 1989, along with a group of friends, he carried out numerous burglaries in Var. They broke into homes, attacked the residents and stole their valuables, earning the nickname "The Wild Horde" by the press and the media. Finally, the gang was arrested and imprisoned at the Baumettes Prison. Salameh was accused by his accomplices of being the only violent member, but Patrick denied those claims.

On May 10, 1996, he was put on trial before the assizes in Draguignan, accompanied by his three accomplices. At the end of the trial, the jurors deliberated for four hours about the sentences. The prosecutor requested a 20-year sentence for Patrick Salameh, and he was later convicted for armed robbery, sequestration, torture and indecent assault. He was later released after 16 years behind bars.

During his years in prison, Salameh wrote and painted, revealing real talent in the latter. His painted canvases were exhibited in several galleries, and often portrayed tortured characters. Upon his release in 2005, he resumed living a normal life, forming a family, exhibiting his works while also working as a site manager.

Case summary

Victims

In 2008, in the span of a little more than a month, three prostitutes mysteriously disappeared in Marseille.[1] They were the following:

  • Iryna Sytnyk (42) - Ukrainian. Disappeared on the evening of October 5th.[2]
  • Cristina Bahulea (23) - Romanian. Vanished without a trace two weeks after Sytnyk, on October 22nd.[3]
  • Zineb Chebout (28) - Algerian. Left her house to visit a fair on the evening of November 7th, but never returned.[4]

The key witness

The investigators suspected early on that a serial killer was rampant in Marseille, as he kidnapped and killed victims fitting the same profile - foreign prostitutes. However, they had no clues, and no potential suspects.[5]

However, a revelation soon disrupted the course of investigation. A Moroccan prostitute, Soumia El Kandadi, named a man whom she suspected could be responsible for the killings - Patrick Salameh, who on the night of October 5-6, abducted and raped her in his home. When he finished with her, El Kandadi noticed that a lifeless body lied in her attacker's bathtub, with Patrick informing her that "this is the fate [he reserves] for women who don't obey [him]."[6]

Soumia's statements put investigators on the trail for Salameh. Soon after, another clue reinforced their suspicions. The telephone of one of the prostitutes continued to transmit a signal after her disappearance. The police located the signal's source in Marseille: it was a child, which claimed to have been given a SIM card by a certain Patrick Salameh.

Patrick Salameh took his victims' SIM cards and later gave them away, a technique which made the police believe that the missing were still alive, since their telephone numbers continued to emit a localizable signal.

The investigators, in an attempt to locate the bodies, searched Salameh's residency in Saint-Mitre, in Marseille's northern districts. They were aided by Soumia, whom guided them to the place where she had seen the corpse of a woman, leading them to Patrick's studio apartment adjacent to his main home. Although investigators couldn't find any bodies, they found DNA from all three missing women, as well as some of their personal possessions such as jewelry and underwear. Prostitutes often frequented the apartment, but no traces of blood were discovered.

During the pre-trial hearings, Salameh denied killing the prostitutes and remained silent. The bodies were never recovered.

The investigators, whom wondered if there were other possible victims, expanded their search for any women fitting their criteria. Eventually, they linked Salameh to the disappearance of 20-year-old Fatima Saiah, a student who had vanished a few months earlier from the main murder series. Unlike the victims that followed, she was not a prostitute.[7]

Fatima had published an offer online as a babysitter, and was later contacted by a divorced man on Saturday afternoon, May 7th. The two met at 3 PM, at the Malpassé Metro. The man refused to tell his name, but specified that his wife would pick Saiah up in a gray Volkswagen at the metro's exit, which was not far from Salameh's studio apartment.

Initially, Fatima's boyfriend accompanied her to the scene, but later left shortly before she met with the man, agreeing to message each other in a few hours. Two hours later, he received a strange text message saying "I met an old friend, I will be back this weekend." Finding this suspicious, they boyfriend started worrying and tried to contact Saiah, but failed, as her phone had been turned off. The next day, both Fatima's family and boyfriend went to the police station to report her disappearance.

The investigators later traced the phone call Fatima had received for the babysitting offer. It had been made from a telephone booth at Gare de Marseille-Saint-Charles, but that was the only lead they had in the case. A homeless person who was questioned during the investigation later recalled that on that day, he recognized the man using the phone booth as Patrick Salameh.

Arrest

On the evening of November 15, 2008, Patrick Salameh was arrested. Immediately after he was jailed, the disappearances in Marseille seized. Salameh's criminal past played no favors on his part. He had recently been released from prison, after serving a 16-year sentence for theft, carrying of illegal weapons, kidnapping and torture.

The trial

Salameh's first trial took place in March 2014, before the assizes in Aix-en-Provence. He was found guilty of kidnapping, forcible confinement and rape causing death in the cases of Sytnyk, Bahulea and Chebout, as well as kidnapping and raping El Kandadi, the main witness in the trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.[8]

In October 2015, his second trial was held before the assizes in Bouches-du-Rhône. He was again found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Fatima Saiah, whose body was also never found.[9] He received another life imprisonment term, as well as 22 years of preventive detention.[10]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Florence Nicol, Karl Zéro (2007). "L'éventreur de Marseille". le replay d'Orange, rediffusion de Crime District, chaîne de télévision luxembourgeoise.
  2. ^ "La condamnation à perpétuité de Patrick Salameh confirmée en appel". LExpress.fr (in French). 2016-05-19. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  3. ^ à 07h00, Le 17 avril 2009 (2009-04-17). "Le ravisseur présumé de prostituées encore mis en examen". leparisien.fr (in French). Retrieved 2020-03-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ à 07h00, Le 5 janvier 2013 (2013-01-05). "La justice l'accuse d'avoir enlevé trois prostituées". leparisien.fr (in French). Retrieved 2020-03-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ "L'inquiétant profil de Patrick Salameh jugé pour un crime sans cadavre". LCI (in French). Retrieved 2020-03-25.
  6. ^ "Disparition de prostituées: "Si tu cries, je te tuerai", menaçait Salameh". LExpress.fr (in French). 2014-03-20. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  7. ^ "Perpétuité requise à l'encontre du tueur en série Patrick Salameh". LExpress.fr (in French). 2015-10-21. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  8. ^ "Patrick Salameh, "le tueur en série de Marseille", de retour devant la justice". Europe 1 (in French). Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  9. ^ Henry, Simon (2015-10-22). "Meurtre d'une lycéenne: Patrick Salameh condamné à la perpétuité". Le Figaro.fr (in French). Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  10. ^ "Patrick Salameh: perpetuity confirmed" (in French). France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Retrieved March 25, 2020.

Bibliography

  • Patrick Salameh, The Marseille Disappearances - The Three Prostitutes, Auto-Edition, Marseille, 2015 (1230000499958).
  • Patrick Salameh, The Marseille Disappearances - The Fatima Case, Auto-Edition, Marseille, 2015 (1230000643757).
  • Stéphane Bourgoin, Killers - The murderers who marked history, Points, Paris, 2012 (275782810X).
  • Véronique Chalmet, In the minds of killers. Profilers' Portraits, Point, Paris, 2015 (2757856316).
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