More than half of the murders committed in France are never solved, There Is No Justice, a book released here this month reveals. Its authors criticise French police for slow and sloppy investigations - ironically, the same accusations made against Irish authorities by French lawyers in the Toscan du Plantier murder case this week.
Two French journalists, Patrick Meney and Jacques Pradel, wrote the book based on four years as co-anchors of the popular television programme Temoin Numero 1, the French equivalent of Crime Watch. Some 1,500 people are murdered in France every year, yet fewer than 650 killers are brought to trial. Unsolved cases include those of two Irishmen, Trevor O'Keeffe, who was murdered in 1987, and Shane McCartan, who died in mysterious circumstances in 1994. And police have not found the Paris serial killer who raped and murdered three French women and a female Dutch student in the past three years.
"The main problems with the French police are technical and ideological," Mr Meney told The Irish Times. "They are often careless; they don't protect the scene of the crime, and clues like footprints are destroyed. Secondly, they take very little account of witnesses' testimony, because witnesses are viewed as informers. It's an ideological obstacle to crime-solving."
French investigators are also reluctant to use DNA testing, considered a violation of civil liberties. By contrast, Britain has a DNA databank.
In the case of Caroline Dickinson, the English schoolgirl murdered in Brittany last year, systematic DNA testing was carried out only at the insistence of the dead girl's family, and more than a year after the crime.
The true number of unsolved murders in France is far higher, Mr Meney says. The Ministry of the Interior reports that 15,000 people go missing every year. Most have run away, but about 10 per cent - 1,500 people - are never found. Again, misplaced ideology helps the criminals. "If you disappear in France, no one looks for you," Mr Meney says. "The police say if the person is an adult, he or she has a right to disappear. But very often the person is kidnapped or murdered and no one tries to help them."
Murders in France are often recorded as suicides or car accidents. "The police tend to be satisfied with the most obvious explanation," Mr Meney says. "They don't look any further. In Britain and Germany, for example, they are better trained and have a different attitude."
There Is No Justice concludes, chillingly, that thousands of murderers are at large in France. Mr Meney and Mr Pradel criticise police for failing to make the connection between similar cases.
Among many examples cited are the disappearances of at least 10 young women on National Route 90, between Grenoble and the Italian border. When the journalists interviewed local authorities, they learned that only four of the disappearances were classified as suspect.
"There is no overall supervision, despite glaring similarities in all these cases. Worse yet, the police refuse to link these affairs, none of which has been solved.
"In other countries like Britain," they continue, "the authorities would have made comparisons. They would have created a joint investigation cell and grouped the files. In France, there is nothing like that. In some of the [Route 90] cases, no inquiry has been opened, as if these young women just went off on holiday."
French officials long held a similar attitude towards the "disappeared of Mourmelon" - who include Irishman Trevor O'Keeffe. Seven French conscripts vanished in the same region near an army base, yet despite evidence that a serial killer was at work, authorities persisted for years in claiming the missing French soldiers had simply deserted.