Nadir Sedrati

In May 1999 a fisherman discovered a human right foot in the Canal de jonction de Nancy. He immediately informed the river police, who at first thought that the foot had been severed by a boat propeller. The next day, a putrefied human head was retrieved 500 meters away from the spot where the foot had been discovered.

A few days later bones, a sternum, ribs and a third patella (that is to say, there was a second victim) that were fished in the vicinity of the canal. The next day a hand was discovered near the Nancy canal; finally, one week after the discovery (the right human foot), the left foot was retrieved by the River Police. The medical examiner responsible for collecting the various pieces of the human body found that the limbs were sectioned surgically and excluded the hypothesis of an accident: it was therefore a homicide.

The police could not take fingerprint from the found hand because it was too badly decomposed. The River Brigade Police sent their hand to be analyzed in Paris where the only section of research are able to solve this type of problem. A few weeks later the laboratory managed to put a name to the found hand: Hans Gassen, a German who had served a prison sentence and who had been released a few months previously.

Police learned that Gassen was living in the house of another German who was also a former prisoner named Hans Muller. Muller had reported Gassen's disappearance on May 21, 1999, one week before the discovery of the dismembered body in the canal.

At the same time, the police learned that Gassen received a lot of phone calls from two locations: a house in Nancy and an apartment near Nancy. During a search of both places the authorities discovered that a certain Philippe Grossiord regularly called Gassen and that Grossiord was an alias used by a man called Nadir Sedrati to avoid apprehension. Nadir Sedrati was known to the police since he had been arrested for fraud and identity theft and had shared a cell with Gassen and Muller. Sedrati was released from prison in March 1999, after both him and Gassen were both arrested for a confrontation. Muller declared that Hans Gassen left his home at 4 AM because he had an appointment on May 21. Gassen had to call back, but he never did. The phone calls proved that Muller was at home at the time of the disappearance of his friend, clearing him as a suspect. As for Sedrati, he said that it was Muller who killed Gassen during a dispute that went wrong: he declared that Muller, Gassen, two Dutchmen and two Moroccans were at home to discuss business (a supposed trafficking) and that he had left because that affair did not concern him; he then supposedly heard Gassen and Muller argue violently and saw Muller kill Gassen.

French and German police did not believe him and searched Sedrati's house. In his apartment they discovered a woodchipper, a kitchen knife, a butcher's saw and several brownish spots on the floor, the sink and woodchipper. The police thought it was blood but had no proof of it. And by digging deeper into the apartment they realized that a bag is hidden in a cushion. The bag contained a jar filled with white powder and police believed it was drugs (either cocaine or heroin). A few weeks later the police learned that the white powder collected from Sedrati is cyanide, which suggested that Sedrati poisoned Gassen with cyanide (the police also discovered that Sedrati bought 20 kg of cyanide under the identity of a certain Joel Royer). The police began to catch a glimpse of what happened to Sedrati: Gassen had an appointment with Philippe Grossiord but it was Nadir Sedrati who received it. Sedrati had to tell Gassen that he had to wait for Grossiord; this last coming Sedrati have proposed to Gassen to have a cup of coffee mixed with cyanide. Gassen suffocated, fainted and somebody (presumably Sedrati) dismembered his body, whose various pieces were thrown into the canal.

But what puzzled the authorities is that Gassen's head was in a state of advanced decomposition. They thought that the head was thrown into the canal 6 weeks ago while Gassen had died 2 to 3 weeks ago. Digging again in Sedrati's apartment they discovered in the basement lime and learned that the lime can delay the identification of a body when a part of the body was immersed in it, whereas Gassen's head seemed more rotten for the others.

Nadir Sedrati was brought before the investigating judge and was subsequently imprisoned. He claimed he was innocent and the police discovered that Sedrati had no apparent motive to kill Gassen if not for the money, because Sedrati had stolen the victim's bank card to make some withdrawals (300 francs).

Police now had to solve the mystery of the third patella found at the same time as Gassen's pieces. They learned that Gérard Steil and Norbert Ronfort, two other killers who knew Nadir Sedrati, have been missing since spring 1999. The police thought that either Steil or Ronfort was the second victim found in the canal. For this, they decided appeal to the family of the missing men to take a DNA sample. This was complicated, but the police still managed to collect the DNA of two people (a close friend of Steil and a close friend of Ronfort). Pending the results, the investigation showed that Gérard Steil was released from prison in October 1998 and that he found work for six months in Strasbourg as a delivery driver and housed in a home in the city.

His contract soon expired, but Steil still planned to work under a certain Philippe Grossiord, who had contacted him for work within his company Inter Europe Diffusion. Gérard Steil made the trip by train from Strasbourg to Nancy for the job interview, where he must have been with Grossiord and had to be back in Strasbourg on Monday morning. Steil arrived at the company, which turned out to be a fictional company invented by Grossiord (AKA Sedrati). The company's headquarters were located in a room at the back of Nadir Sedrati's apartment.

Then Sedrati called the home in which Steil lodged and that he would not come back because he started work in society. The police quickly concluded that Sedrati killed Steil. However the motive for the crime was unknown but the police believed that only interest for Sedrati to kill Steil was the poor pension that affected the victim. Moreover, the second patella belonged to Steil, so the police and the River Brigade of Nancy decided to drain the whole canal to find possible remains. In November 1999, remains were recovered in the canal and actually belonged to Gérard Steil.

Moreover, Norbert Ronfort, another acquaintance of Sedrati who disappeared just like Steil, left prison in early 1999 and had a goal: get in touch with his family and buy a motorhome. The police also learned that Ronfort had told Nadir Sedrati about his plans and that he received a phone call from Inter Europe Diffusion. The company boasted about selling motorhomes and, attracted by the offer of a certain Philippe Grossiord, Ronfort had agreed to meet him to acquire the motorhome. Since this conversation, Norbert Ronfort disappeared and his body still hasn't been found.

Nadir Sedrati was indicted in the murder of Hans Gassen, Gérard Steil and Norbert Ronfort, even though his body was never found.