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THE RANUCCI
CASE
Who are we?
We are four Parisian students, following
different ways and studies, but bound by the same feeling of
injustice in front of the Ranucci case. We began to work on this
project in 2001. We also organized a conference at the Institut
d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in 2002.
Since the beginning of this action, we have
received many messages of support from all kind of people, from
students who study the case at school, from older people who
remember the case, even from foreigners who can draw some
parallels with other domestic affairs.
What is our objective?
We do not assert Christian Ranucci is
innocent. Our aim is to allow him, even twenty five years after
his death, to have a fair trial. Behind every action stands the
need to make his memory live. Sinking into oblivion would be the
second death of Christian Ranucci.
Summary of the Ranucci case:
On Monday, 3rd of June, 1974,
Marie-Dolores Rambla, a little girl, is kidnapped by a man in a
housing estate of Marseille. She is found two days later, stabbed,
between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence.
Christian Ranucci, a twenty-year-old man who
took flight after a car-accident near the place where the body was
found, is arrested after the testimony of a man and his wife.
After twenty hours of questioning, he admits to
have murdered the child but then retracts.
From now on, the judiciary clockworks are at
work but many facts are swept aside, and only the elements
consistent with his guilt are taken into account for the inquiry.
At the end of his trial - marked with popular
anger and after a press campaign supporting his execution -
Christian Ranucci is sentenced to death.
President Giscard d’Estaing refuses to pardon
him and his head his chopped off, guillotined, on the 28th
of July, 1976.
In 1978, Jean-Denis Bredin, a great French
lawyer, asks a famous writer -also former lawyer- to cast an eye
on the Ranucci case. At first sceptical, Gilles Perrault discovers
and highlights some striking facts concerning the murder and the
inquiry. To quote some examples:
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The witnesses of the
kidnapping did not recognize Christian Ranucci;
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The car of the man who
kidnapped the child (a Simca 1100) wasn’t Ranucci’s;
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A red pull-over
discovered near the place of the crime and which allowed the
police dog to find the body is not Ranucci’s;
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A man with a red
pull-over and driving Simca 1100 had been seen in the days before
the crime trying to force children to get in his car. And that man
was not Christian Ranucci
Gilles Perrault’s book has upset a generation
of French people, opposed to death penalty and believing in the
right for a man in a republic to have a fair trial.
Many attempts asked and pushed for a new trial,
many people from different horizons have tried to stress the wrong
functioning of the inquiry and of the trial, but all these efforts
remain without reward.
We do believe that Justice finds part of its
strength in admitting its weaknesses. We do believe that even
today, Christian Ranucci and his mother deserve attention from the
French Justice. We do believe that if Christian Ranucci was
guilty, nothing allows to be certain of his guilt. A young man
might have been killed while innocent because the police, the
media, the government needed a culprit.
We invite you to support the campaign for the
revision of the trial of Christian Ranucci.
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