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Chalhoub Michel Demitri (b. 1932-04-10 / d. 2015-07-10) alias Omar Sharif
He was an Egyptian actor. He began his career in his native country in the 1950s, but is best known for his appearances in both British and American productions. His films included Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Funny Girl (1968). He was nominated for an Academy Award. He won three Golden Globe Awards and a César Award. Sharif had a triple heart bypass in 1992 and suffered a mild heart attack in 1994. Until his bypass, Sharif smoked 100 cigarettes a day. He quit smoking after the operation. In May 2015 it was reported that Sharif was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. His son Tarek Sharif said that his father was becoming confused when remembering some of the biggest films of his career; he would mix up the names of his best-known films, Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, often forgetting where they were filmed.
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77
Born 1931-06-14. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Age
He was an executioner in the last years of French Algeria. He acted as an executioner from 1947 to 1961 and executed more than 200. He inherited the job of executioner from his father Maurice Meyssonnier in 1947 when he ended compulsory education. His ancestors had been executioners from ages ago. When Algeria became independent from France in 1961, the guillotine was replaced by execution by firing squad.
86
Born 1899-08-09. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Age
André Obrecht was the official executioner of France from 1951 until 1976.
Born in Paris Obrecht was the nephew of the chief executioner Anatole Deibler. He learned of his uncle's job at ten, when a series of postcards depicting an execution were published in September 1909. Following the death of his own son, who was born only one month after Obrecht, Deibler had a father-like relationship with young André, and the affection between the two men never ceased.
Obrecht joined the executioners' team on April 4, 1922, as second assistant. By day, he worked in a factory as a machine operator. He remained as second assistant until 1939, when Anatole Deibler died. Due to financial obligations Deibler's widow allowed Obrecht's cousin Jules-Henri Desfourneaux and not Obrecht to succeed Deibler despite her late husband's indication that he would prefer Obrecht as his successor. Obrecht subsequently took Desfourneaux's former place as first assistant.
Obrecht and Desfourneaux disliked each other. Obrecht thought his cousin too slow and badly organized. In late 1943, after having executed many French resistance fighters, Obrecht and his colleagues and friends, the Martin brothers, quit. Obrecht resumed his job in 1945, but his animosity towards his cousin had grown. After an execution in 1947, the cousins fought and Obrecht decided, for the second time, to quit.
When Desfourneaux died in 1951, Obrecht wrote to the ministry of Justice, proposing his candidature as chief executioner. This was agreed and on November 1, 1951, he was officially nominated. On November 13 he performed his first guillotining as chief in Marseilles when he executed the police killer Marcel Ythier.
As time passed by, the number of executions decreased. In the early '70s, Obrecht learned he had Parkinson's disease. Though his health was poor, he guillotined four men, Roger Bontemps and Claude Buffet in Paris on November 28, 1972 (murder of a nurse and a jail warden), Ali Benyančs in Marseilles on May 12, 1973 (murder of a 8-year old girl during a hold-up) and finally, also in Marseilles, Christian Ranucci on July 28, 1976 (for the kidnapping and murder of a young girl). Many think Ranucci was in fact innocent.
On September 30, 1976, Obrecht resigned his job. The next day, his title was handed to his nephew by marriage Marcel Chevalier who had been his assistant since 1958. Chevalier performed the final two guillotinings in France
Obrecht died on July 30, 1985 in a Nice hospital. Four years later, reporter Jean Ker, who interviewed him many times, released a book called "Le Carnet Noir du Bourreau" (The Executioners' Black Diary), a biography. Obrecht left an image of himself as a normal man albeit a womaniser, quite authoritative at work and, more than anything else, lonely because of his job.
28
Born 1949-00-00. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
He was the last person to be guillotined in France, at Baumettes Prison in Marseille. He was a Tunisian immigrant who had been convicted of the torture and murder of 21-year-old Elisabeth Bousquet, his former girlfriend, in Marseille. Marcel Chevalier served as chief executioner.
Born in Tunisia around 1949, Djandoubi started living and working in Marseille, France in 1968, as a packer. He lost his job in 1971 after a workplace accident removed two-thirds of his right leg.
In 1973, a 21-year-old woman named Elisabeth Bousquet filed a complaint against Djandoubi, who was her lover, for illegal confinement and cruelty, claiming that he had tried to force her into prostitution.
After his arrest and eventual release from custody during the spring of 1973, Djandoubi drew two other young girls into his confidence and then forced them to "work" for him. The idea of taking revenge on his accuser never left his mind, however, and in July 1974 he kidnapped Bousquet and took her into his home where, in full view of the terrified girls, he beat the unfortunate woman mercilessly before stubbing a lit cigarette all over her breasts and genital area. Despite this Bousquet survived the ordeal, so Djandoubi took her by car to an outskirt of Marseille and there strangled her.
On his return Djandoubi warned the two girls to say nothing of what they had seen, and it was not until Bousquet's body was identified one month after its discovery in a shed by two children on 7 July 1974 that the girls finally found the courage to take their story to the authorities.
After a lengthy pre-trial process, Djandoubi eventually appeared in court in Aix-en-Provence on charges of torture-murder, rape and premeditated violence on 24 February 1977. His main defence revolved around the supposed effects of the amputation of his leg six years earlier which his lawyer claimed had driven him to a paroxysm of alcohol and violence, turning him into a "different" man. It was all to no avail, however: on 25 February he was condemned to death. An appeal against his sentence was rejected on 9 June, and in the early morning of 10 September 1977, Djandoubi was woken to be informed that all hope of a presidential reprieve had failed. Shortly afterwards, at 4:40 a.m., he was executed.
38
Born 1939-00-00. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
He was born in 1939.
He is the penultimate person to be guillotined in France.
22
Born 1954-04-06. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
He was executed by guillotine at Baumettes prison in Marseilles by André Obrecht. In his last words to his lawyers, who were witnessing the execution, he said "Rehabilitate me". There has been some controversy regarding Ranucci's guilt. A book by Robert Badinter, entitled Le Pull-over rouge, disputed his involvement in the crime. The title of the book refers to an article of clothing, a red sweater, found near the victim's body similar to that worn by the abducter, who drove a car that did not belong to Ranucci, if the witnesses to the abduction identified the vehicle correctly. The sweater was not Ranucci's. The book became a film by Michel Drach in 1979. In 2005, new claims were made that Michel Fourniret, a serial killer, had something to do with this case and could have been the real murderer.
39
Born 1933-05-19. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
In 1971, convicts Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems took a nurse and a prison guard hostage, then murdered them. They were captured. Bontems, whose defence counsels included Robert Badinter, contended that the murder was Buffet's idea, while Buffet affirmed that he now desired death. Both were sentenced to death by the "assises" court in June 1972 and were guillotined.
27
Born 1930-04-06. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
Fesch's father was a wealthy banker of Belgian origin, an artist and atheist, distant from his son and unfaithful to his wife, whom he ultimately divorced. Jacques was an idler; brought up a Roman Catholic, he abandoned religion by the age of 17. At 21, he married his pregnant girlfriend Pierrette in a civil ceremony. He gave up a position at his father's bank, lived the life of a playboy, left his wife and their daughter, and fathered an illegitimate son with one of his mistresses. Disillusioned with his life, he dreamed of escaping to sail around the South Pacific Ocean, but his parents refused to pay for a boat.
On 24 February 1954, to fund the purchase of a boat, he went to rob Alexandre Sylberstein, a money changer, of gold coins. Sylberstein was struck but not unconscious, and raised the alarm. Fesch fled, losing his glasses, and shot wildly at Jean Vergne, a pursuing police officer, killing him. Minutes later he was arrested. Murdering a police officer was a heinous crime and public opinion, inflamed by lurid newspaper reports, was strongly in favour of his execution. The Cour d'assises of Paris condemned him to death on 6 April 1957. An appeal for clemency to President René Coty failed, and he was guillotined.
30
Born 1926-06-12. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
He was the only pied noir among the 198 supporters of the FLN who were executed (as opposed to being killed in battle) during the war in Algeria. He was guillotined in the yard of Barberousse prison in Algiers on 11 February 1957.
61
Born 1891-01-12. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
On the evening of 4 August 1952, while on holiday in France in their green Hillman estate car, the Drummonds stopped by the side of the N96 main road, less than 200 metres from a picturesque farmhouse called La Grand'Terre. The site is marked by a milestone as exactly 6km south of Peyruis and 6km north of La Brillanne. A footpath leads from the site down to the banks of the river Durance.
La Grand'Terre was the home of the Dominicis, a family of Franco-Italian peasant farmers: the patriarch Gaston, his wife Marie, their son Gustave, Gustave's wife Yvette and their baby son Alain. It was Gustave who claimed to have found the three dead bodies around 5:30am on the morning of 5 August, and who flagged down a passing motorcyclist, Jean-Marie Olivier, telling him to fetch the police.
Anne's body was found near the car. Jack's lay on the other side of the N96, covered by a camp bed. They had both been shot by a Rock-Ola rifle. The body of 10-year-old Elizabeth was found 77 metres away, down the path leading to the river, on the other side of the bridge over the railway. Her head had been brutally smashed in by the stock of the rifle. The barrel of the murder weapon was soon found in the river, with the stock a short distance downstream. It is likely that the force of the blow or blows used to kill Elizabeth had also broken the stock off the rifle.
Gaston Dominici was convicted of the murders in November 1954, and sentenced to the Guillotine. However, both the police investigation and the conduct of the trial had been widely criticised, and after two inconclusive inquiries, President René Coty commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Coty was succeeded in 1959 by President Charles de Gaulle, who ordered Dominici's release on humanitarian grounds, but did not pardon him, nor grant his request for a retrial.
The Drummond are buried in the classified cemetery of the well-known touristic town of Forcalquier, about 25 km East of Lurs. As Sir Jack had no more family, and the mother of Anne, Mrs Wilbraham didn't ask for the bodies, exceptionnally three British citizens are not buried in the UK. On the site of the drama near the stone bridge over the railway, there is a cross with childish votive offerings to mark the place where Elizabeth was found.
The murders remain a subject of hot dispute to this day in France, where they are referred to as L'affaire Dominici. Alain Dominici, a baby at the time of the murders, has spent a lifetime campaigning for the innocence of his grandfather.
49
Born 1897-01-17. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
He was a French doctor who was convicted of multiple murders after the discovery of the remains of 26 people in his home in Paris after World War II. He is suspected of killing more than sixty victims during his life.
During World War I, Petiot was drafted into the French infantry in January 1916. In Aisne he was wounded and gassed and exhibited more symptoms of mental breakdown. He was sent to various rest homes, where he was arrested for stealing army blankets and jailed in Orleans. In a psychiatric hospital at Fleury-les-Aubrais he was again diagnosed with various mental ailments but was returned to the front in June of 1918. He was transferred three weeks later after he shot himself in the foot, but was attached to a new regiment in September. A new diagnosis was enough to get him discharged with a disability pension.
Petiot went on trial on March 19, 1946, facing 135 criminal charges. René Floriot acted for the defense, against a team consisting of state prosecutors and twelve civil lawyers hired by relatives of Petiot's victims. Petiot taunted the prosecuting lawyers, and claimed that various victims had been collaborators or double agents, or that vanished people were alive and well in South America under new names. He admitted to killing just nineteen of the twenty-seven victims found in his house, and claimed that they were Germans and collaborators - part of a total of 63 "enemies" killed. Floriot attempted to portray Petiot as a resistance hero, but the judges and jurors were unimpressed. Petiot was convicted of 26 counts of murder, and sentenced to death.
On May 25, Petiot was beheaded, after a stay of a few days due to a problem in the release mechanism of the guillotine.
28
Born 1913-09-29. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
André DALMAS was employed at the Central Telegraphic PTT in Paris, 103 rue de Grenelle since February 1, 1938. He was born in Thomery in Seine-et-Marne. He made brilliant studies, obtained the baccalaureate of philosophy and two certificates of license in law. As a student, he was already participating in a political activity, in particular by joining the Communist Students in 1934 during his studies at the Faculty of Law in Paris. He was also a member of the Federal Union of Students. He took part in demonstrations to defend a law professor attacked by the Croix-de-Feu and the Patriotic Youth in 1935 and 1936. He did his military service from 1936 to 1937 in Mourmelon, section of military nurses. He was mobilized from August 1939 to August 1940. He married on December 5, 1939, to Aimée Pannetier, a former student in philosophy and member of the Socialist Youth who then campaigned for the Federal Union of Students. After their marriage, they will live in Maisons-Laffitte in Seine-et-Oise. Very quickly, André Dalmas will join the underground Communist Party then the FTP. On May 31, 1942, rue de Buci in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, a revolt of a significant number of women broke out. They were exasperated by the hardships, by the endless queues, by the worry about ration tickets. Women grab goods from nearby grocery stores and distribute them. The police arrived very quickly and charged the demonstrators but run into a group of FTP. André Dalmas was responsible for protecting Madeleine Marzin. Arrests were made made. Among them, André Dalmas, Madeleine Marzin, a steelworker Edgar Lefébure, and students. The judgment by the Special Section of the State Court was expeditious. No recourse, officially appointed lawyers defended them by presenting them as lost. The next day, Edgar Lefébure and André Dalmas were guillotined on July 25, 1942 in the courtyard of La prison de la Santé. The name of André Dalmas appears on the stele of the PTT Telegraph Center at 103, rue de Grenelle. In 2005, the building having been sold, this stele was removed and reinstalled in one of the France Telecom-Orange halls, 6 place d´Alleray in the 15th arrondissement. The management of this company has left this place. Madeleine Marzin, born July 21, 1908 in Loudéac, died May 27, 1998 in Paris. She joined the Resistance very early on, participating in the constitution of the National University Front. She and other women lead the demonstration in rue de Buci. At the mock trial, she was sentenced to death, a sentence commuted to hard labor. During her transfer to Rennes prison she managed to escape. She became Municipal councilor of Paris, elected Member of the Communist list in 1951, then re-elected in 1956.