Joseph Marie Guillaume Seznec was born in 1878, in Plomodiem in Finistère, France. He was the head of a sawmill at Morlaix. He was also at the centre of one of France’s greatest controversies and most mysterious cases.
In May of 1923, Seznec set off with Pierre Quéméneur on a trip to Paris. Quéméneur was a wood merchant and conseiller général (general councillor) for the community of Finistère. Seznec and Quéméneur were on their way to meet a man by the name of Boudjema Gherdi in order to inquire about the sale of 100 Cadillacs left behind by the American forces after WWI. They set off by car.
According to Seznec, the car repeatedly broke down, leading the two men to travel by train from Brittany to Paris in order to conduct the transaction. “Quéméneur did not arrive in Paris and was never seen again.” He disappeared on the night of May 25th, or May 26th, 1923. The body was never recovered.
A month after the disappearance, Quéméneur’s suitcase was found at Le Havre. The contents of the suitcase included documents stating that he promised to sell his land to Seznec. The police thought this was pretty good motive to want Quéméneur to disappear. Seznec was also the prime suspect, as he was the last person to see him alive, and he kept claiming he had no idea what had happened to the man.
In late 1924, Seznec was arrested and tried for the murder of Pierre Quéméneur, despite the lack of evidence, or having found the man, or his body. The prosecution argued that the man by the name of Boudjema Gherdi had never existed – he’d been made up by Seznec to lure Quéméneur on a fool’s errand in order to attain his land without having to pay for it.
Seznec was found guilty of murder on November 4th, 1924, after an 8 day trial and the presentation of over 120 witnesses. He was sentenced to hard labour for life, and taken to the prison of St-Laurent-Du Maroni in 1927. From there, he was transferred to the Îles du Salut penal colony in Guyana, South America in 1928.
In May 1947, Seznec was granted a presidential pardon, and he returned to Paris in 1948. Over the years, Seznec never once stopped proclaiming his innocence. In 1953, a van ran him over on the street, claiming not having seen him at all. On February 13th, 1954, Guillaume Seznec died of his injuries at 75 years of age. His family continued to attempt to clear his name. In doing so, they discovered a lot of interesting things.
And here’s where it all gets a little tricky, and into conspiracy theory territory.
In trying to clear the Seznec family name, it was discovered that Boudjema Gherdi did, in fact, exist. He worked primarily as a police informer, but was fired when his work with Inspector Pierre Bonny turned out to be less than just.
Bonny was known for falsifying evidence in order to make things go his way. He also defected from France and joined the Gestapo during the German occupation of France in WWII. A resistance worker also confirmed that Gherdi colluded with the Gestapo. In 1945, he was shot by firing squad. Before his execution, he claimed that he’d helped convict an innocent man. Further confirming Bonny’s alleged involvement in framing Seznec, in 1993 an elderly woman corroborated Bonny’s last words by retracting her original witness statement, claiming she’d been coerced to testify against Seznec by the police investigating the Quéméneur disappearance.
In 2005, the Seznec family were successful in gaining a retrial, hopeful that the family name would finally be cleared. The main issue at hand was proving that the “police had framed Seznec in 1923 to over up a racket involving the sale of US vehicles” to the Soviet Union. The family was unsuccessful, however, and the judges upheld the original guilty verdict.
Backtracking a little, a note from 1978 led to the most recent discovery in the case. The note, from Seznec’s son, Petit Guillaume, who was 11 at the time, mentioned seeing Quéméneur in the family home in 1923 at his mother’s feet.
In February of 2018, with the consent of the Seznec family, a search of the original Seznec family home in Morlaix was conducted. “Denis Langlois, a former lawyer for Seznec’s family, and author Bertran Vilain carried out their unofficial dig in the cellar of the unoccupied house on the theory that the victim, Pierre Quéméneur, may have been accidentally killed by Seznec’s wife as she resisted his advances.”
During the excavations of the cellar and old cellar, bone fragments were found. Investigators are still waiting for official results from an anthropological analysis, though it’s been claimed that the bone fragments are animal in nature, not human.
Without those results, we may never know the truth behind what happened to Pierre Quéméneur. As is, the case, and Guillaume Seznec’s guilt or innocence, remain one of France’s greatest mysteries.
— — —
Like what you’re reading? Follow me on Twitter or Facebook for the latest updates!
Or, Buy me a coffee!
Sources:
A century-old French murder mystery remains a mystery after ‘animal’ bone found – thejournal.ie
Seznec affair Wikipedia page
The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes – Robin Odell