Jeanclaude Romand

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French homicide; a man who lived by deception. In 1975 he failed his second year in medical school, time passed and he decided not to tell his parents, following courses without taking the exams. At the appropriate moment he announced that he was indeed a doctor, and carried on, living the lie for 18 years, pretending to his family and community to be a doctor. He said that he was a consultant to the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. On 9/19/1980, he married his cousin, Florence Crolet, and settled in the village of Provessin-Moens, near the Swiss border. The couple had two children and seemed to be living a typical middle-class life. "Dr. Romand" was a respected figure in the community. To fill his time from morning to evening, he spent his time in bars, public libraries, car-parks and truck stop restaurants in the outskirts of town. Romand ‘’earned a living’’ by persuading members of his family to entrust large sums to him which he invested in a Swiss bank. He assured family and friends large returns for their investments in Switzerland. By the autumn of 1992 he was running out of money and, with a dangerous overdraft, he found himself facing demands for the repayment of around a million francs from his mistress, Chantal Delalande, whose funds he had also milked. On 1/08/1993, fearing exposure, he beat his wife to death with a rolling-pin and suffocated and shot his children. The following day he went to visit his mother and father and killed them - after he had lunch with them. On the 10th he went to Paris and tried to murder his mistress but bungled the attempt. He returned home where he locked himself in the house with the dead bodies of his family. On January 11 at about 3:00 AM, he swallowed pills, set fire to his house and lay down on the bed beside his dead wife. He was saved at the point of death by firemen. Brought to trial early in July, he was sentenced to 21 years without parole. He gave his evidence with the articulate precision of a medical lecturer. His explanation of his deed? "I killed Florence to protect her from the intolerable pain she would have suffered after my suicide. Then I had to kill the children. Where would they have been without their parents?" Link to Wikipedia biography