The following is a chronology and brief history of the Mourmelon Triangle murders.

January 1980

French conscript Patrick Dubois disappears while hitch-hiking near his base at Mourmelon, Champagne. The army calls it desertion and does not investigate.

February 1981

Serge Havet, a conscript, disappears while hitch-hiking to his parents' home in Reims. Havet has only three months more military service and his fiancée is pregnant; the army calls it desertion.

August 1981

Manuel Carvalho and Pascal Sergent, both conscripts at Mourmelon, disappear at two-week intervals, in conditions identical to Dubois and Havet. The army says they deserted.

October 1982

The body of conscript Olivier Donner is discovered near Route Nationale 77 in Champagne, strangled to death. He is the fifth serviceman to go missing in two years.

August 1985

Patrice Denis, a civilian, becomes the sixth young man to vanish in the "Mourmelon Triangle" since 1980. French authorities search fields and woods, dredge ponds and wells. No bodies are found. The gendarmerie asks the army for immediate notification of any further disappearances.

July 1987

The family of conscript Patrick Gache receives a telephone call from one of his buddies seeking news; Gache has been missing since April. Yet the army notified no one, and again alleges desertion.

August 1987

Irishman Trevor O'Keeffe's body is found near Saint-Quentin, 100 kilometres from the "Mourmelon Triangle". His mother Eroline waits in vain for news from the gendarmerie officer who promises to find the killer.

September 1987

Seven and a half years after the first soldier's disappearance, the French army finally warns conscripts not to hitch-hike in the region and provides transport to the train station for weekend leave.

August 1988

Warrant officer Pierre Chanal is arrested and charged with kidnapping and raping Palasz Falvay, a Hungarian student.

October 1990

Chanal is convicted in the Falvay case and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The Mourmelon and O'Keeffe investigations are shelved.

1992

A former waitress from a bar in Mourmelon tells gendarme Jean-Marie Tarbes that Chanal confided in her: "The disappeared - it's me. But they'll have to prove it."

June 1995

Chanal is released on parole and moves in with his sister.

1996 - 1999

Judge Pascal Chapart is the seventh magistrate assigned to the case. He merges the Mourmelon and O'Keeffe files, retrieves "lost" material evidence from storage and demands DNA tests on hair found in Chanal's van in 1988. Scientists obtain positive results for the hair of Denis, Gache and O'Keeffe.

2001 - 2002

Judge Chapart completes his case, charges Chanal with three murders and refers him to an assize court for trial by jury. Chanal files his last possible appeal, on procedural grounds, in May 2002. The appeal is expected to be turned down in December.

2003

Twenty-three years after the first conscript went missing, 16 years after O'Keeffe's murder, Chanal should at last come to trial for three of eight unresolved serial killings. There is insufficient evidence to pursue him for the other five.