Scamfluencers - Serial Killer Grifter | Part I

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

 In the late 1970s, a French horror fan named Stéphane Bourgoin becomes obsessed with serial killers. He manages a used bookstore specializing in crime fiction and begins writing articles on the topic, fashioning himself into an expert on all things morbid. And his career really takes off when he scores the opportunity of his dreams: to interview actual serial killers in prison. But the more influential he becomes, the closer he’ll get to being found out: as the ultimate fanboy and a total fraud.Please support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, Prime members, you can listen to ScanFloonsers' ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. We are pleased to have all-state identity protection as our presenting sponsor for this episode of ScanFloonsers. Stay tuned a little later in the show for a conversation with Madeline Nusser, vice-president of Creative Content and Digital Experience at all-state identity protection, about all the ways that AIP can protect you from identity theft and fraud. [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background, [♪ music playing in background story, True Crime. When I was 15, I found all of the Annie serial killer documentaries on YouTube, and I watched them several times

over and over again. OK, well, around the same age, I read Halter Skelter for the first time. It's like a right of passage for women who are like have a higher likelihood of being murdered. Yeah, everyone does love a good, trashy, true crime story. But I guess the question I have is like,

who gets to tell those stories? And how were those stories told before podcasts? Which I guess, Halter, Skelder and A&E on YouTube? Yeah, and cops. I mean, cops and prosecutors got to control the stories. Okay, I have a story about the prototype for all true crime podcasts.

A weird nerd with questionable qualifications who turned his morbid obsession into a shockingly successful career. Is it me? Hey, it does sound like us. It's 1991 and Carol Caringer is far from home. She's a young, ambitious French TV producer and she's in Florida working on a documentary about serial killers.

It's a perfect time for it. The silence of the lamps has just come out and it's a huge global hit. What do you think he removes their skin, his agents' agents darling thrown me with your acne? Serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, who was caught just a few months earlier, have been terrorizing the country. People are both horrified and fascinated. They're desperate for insight into the twisted minds

of people who kill again and again. We all think we're gonna be able to make sense of it somehow. Well, Carol sits down to review some sensitive footage that one of her collaborators, again. We all think we're going to be able to make sense of it somehow. Well, Carol sits down to review some sensitive footage that one of her collaborators, Stefan Borgon, shot at a nearby prison. Stefan's a stalky, pale French guy in his 30s, and he's an expert on serial killers. He's read everything and has an encyclopedic memory for the details of every case. Carol and Stefan have known each other for a long time

and Carol thinks that they share the same approach. They've agreed that their documentary will give insight into the psychology of these murders, not sensationalize the details of the crimes themselves. But when Carol hits play on the tape, she is shocked by what she sees. Defan sits across from a serial killer named Gerard Schaeffer at Florida State Prison.

He's a former sheriff's deputy convicted of murdering two women and suspected of killing dozens more. With his round face, thick 70s glasses and vacant smirk, he's a perfectly unsettling subject for Carol's documentary. He also kind of looks like a malicious mirror image of Stefan. The interview is a big deal. Carol sees it as an opportunity to delve into Sheifer's psyche and understand a serial killer. But that's not exactly what happens.

Instead, Stefan has Sheifer describe the murder in lurid detail. Sheifer tells him about his time with Ted Bundy, swapping stories about their horrific crimes. Shaefer recounts taunting Bundy about which one of them had killed more people. Listen to this from their interview. He told me that he had followed my case and that he had killed two girls in Washington as a copycat crime, so to speak.

I discerned that he was concerned about the number and that was my own way of needleing him back by saying, I'm the best, Ted. You're going to fry, and I'm going to be here, and I'll be the best. Oh God. It's messed up, eh? I'm stressed. So Stefan asks question after question about killer fiction, Schaefer's book of supposedly fictional descriptions of murders.

And he listens with excitement as Schaefer describes all the family he got, so much that he decided to write a second book beyond killer fiction. People were writing and saying, wow, this is so terrible, this is so disgusting. Can I get some more? After the interview, the two men pose together for a photo. They're grinning, arms around each other.

And Carol has a sinking realization that's to fan for supposed guide to the world of serial killers. Isn't an expert at all. He's a fanboy. Celebrity beef, you never know if you're just gonna end up on TMZ or trending on Twitter or in court. I'm Matt Bellasife. And I'm Sydney Battle.

And we're the hosts of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell. Each episode explores a different iconic celebrity feud, from the build-up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? We're starting off with a pretty messy love triangle between Selena Gomez and Justin and Haley Beaver, a seemingly innocent TikTok of Selena talking about her laminated eyebrows. It snowballed into a full-blown alleged feud. But it doesn't seem like fans are letting up anytime soon. Despite both Selena and the Bieber's making public statements denying any bad blood,

how much of this is teen jealousy and lovers quarreling, and how much of it is a carefully crafted narrative designed to sell albums. Follow this and tell wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondry app. From Wondry, I'm Sarah Haggi, and I'm Sachi Cole, and this is Scamful Insurs. This is a story about our collective fascination with violent graphic murder. All the books, TV shows, movies, and podcasts that have ballooned into the massive and very lucrative true crime industry. They all capitalize on humanity's need to look, and I'm not excluding us from that category.

Sarah, you know how much I love a car crash. I know. We're Robert Neckers. Today, I'm going to tell you the story of a guy who managed to build a decades-long career out of a morbid fascination. He got in on the true crime wave at exactly the right moment. He convinced people that he can make sense of serial killers and never shied away from any of the very gory details.

This is the serial killer grifter, part one. Alright, Sachi, let's leave Florida behind and take a trip to Paris in the 1960s. Charles De Gaulle is the president. French New Wave Cinema is influencing artists all over the world. And Stefan is a teenager on his way home from school, the prestigious Lise Carnot. He's walking home alone because he doesn't have many friends. He is a pretty do-e-be kid.

He's shy, wears glasses, and he's a little intense, and he mostly keeps to himself. This defend makes it back to his family's apartment in a posh part of Paris's 17th Arondie small. He enters a building and is approached by a stranger. She's almost a decade older than this defend and she tells him she's been waiting for him. It's all very mysterious and noir. Wow. Her name is Claude Marie-Dougay and she drops a bomb on Stefan. She says she says half

sister and that for years, Stefan's father Jean has kept a secret family with the mistress on the other side of Paris in the same city, same city, baby. Stefan's taken a back, but maybe not as shocked as you'd think, because though this kind of deception should be earthshattering, having a secret family might actually be the least shocking thing about his dad's extraordinary life. Get this. Jean was a hero of the French resistance in World War II

and served in the French government in exile. Later, he was an engineer who helped UNESCO literally pick up and move Egyptian temples away from the Nile to avoid flooding. He's well known and very fancy, which is why Stifan grows up with live-in servants. But his globetrotting job also means he's away from his family all the time. There's even a rumor that he was a high-level intelligence officer after the war. Okay, so he's a spy? Um, maybe. But honestly, Jean might not even be the most impressive member of the family.

Sir fans' mother, Francisco, also resisted the Nazis, probably. Probably, you need to be sure. This is not a probably situation. Well, okay. Francisco was a high-powered interpreter at the German military base on the French port of St. Mallow. German forces suspected her of acting as an informant, and she actually was tried for treason, but she was acquitted.

And newspaper called her the Mata Hari of St. Mallow. Okay, normal stuff, normal family, normal shit. And just like our families, okay, go on. Yeah, I mean, his parents are so accomplished, and it hasn't always been easy for Staphane to live up to their expectations. He confides in clod Marie about his insecurity, and they stay in touch. They write letters and meet up every once in a while. Staphane wants to find his passion,

so he sets out to pursue the first major love of his life, movies. He's determined to make his mark on that world, no matter who he has to cross along the way. Fast forward a decade to 1975. This is when, according to the Guardian, a young film enthusiast named Alain Shlokoff is building a niche empire. His magazine, LeCron Fantastique,

has been around for six years. And the film festival he founded, the Paris International Fantastic Film and Science Fiction Festival, is gaining traction in its third year. Sachy, I couldn't find a picture of Alain from that time, but here's what he looks like today. I mean, this is exactly what I would picture

for a film festival guy. He's wearing a fedora. Yeah, this is a kind of guy you see at any Q&A at the end of like a screening. Yeah, he doesn't have a question, but he does have a comment. Yeah, NLA has a new assistant, a recent high school dropout named Stiffan Borgon. Stiffan's made a name for himself in this subculture by writing for Elaine's magazine. The magazine and the film festival focus on fantastic, a blend of science-fiction,

fantasy, and horror. Stiffan is decidedly on the horror end, and like any good nerd, he has several odd collections to prove it. He keeps photos of mutilated dead bodies and collects news footage of disasters. And he tells anyone who will listen that his mother's first husband, a German man, was decapitated by the Nazis. Okay, cool.

So textbook weirdo shit. Yeah, it's like normal small talk, you know? And he has an encyclopedic knowledge of movies and a trick he uses to see them for free. He takes a razor blade and glue and painstakingly repairs old tickets so he can scam his way back into the theater. It's clever, but unnecessary.

It's to fans' family is super rich. You can probably afford as many movie tickets as you want. This is like the thing that we always find in these scammer stories where it's like, just telling the truth is actually less labor than the scam itself. I know it's actually so stupid, but Alain's focused on setting up this year's film festival.

He's in London having a meeting with a director, and the director mentions he's planning to send over the film reel, Elaine requested. But Elaine hasn't requested that film. He actually hasn't asked for any movie. The director's confused. He runs off to his office and brings back a letter. It's a request for the film written on Elaine's letterhead,

but signed by Stefan. Oh my God, see, it's so much work! It's so request for the film written on Elaine's letterhead, but signed by Stefan. Oh my God, see, it's so much work! It's so much work! So when Elaine returns to Paris, he finds out that Stefan has been trying to organize a competing film festival behind his back. Needless to say, Elaine distances himself from Stefan. And Stefan's festival is a failure. But Stefan is determined to find his way

into the movie business however he can. So he pivots to a new subculture. For a while, he works in the adult film industry as an on-set assistant and a writer for movies like Extreme Close Up and Johnny Does Paris. Those sound like great films. They sound like classic films. Yeah, Oscar-winning pictures.

And he's about to find himself thrust into something darker, bloodier, and even more provocative than the most out there, fantastic. It's a late 1970s. The year is a little hazy, but I guess it's probably a year or two after Stephane's falling out with LA. Stephane has just gotten back from living abroad in America. And now he's in Monaco hanging out with his half-sister, Claude Marie.

She lives there now, and her balcony looks over the street where Formula One race cars speed along in the Monaco Grand Prix. Claude Marie and Stephane catch up. And Stephane says that during his trip to America, he had a whirlwind romance, with a woman named Ellen, like Helen in English. But this romance ended suddenly and tragically. He tells Claude Marie that Ellen was brutally murdered and dismembered. Oh boy.

Claude Marie is obviously shocked, and she tells Stefan that she's sorry. But what else can she say? She doesn't probe any further, and Stefan doesn't offer any more details. But he's plagued with this horrific tragedy, because, and then wasn't murdered by just anyone. She was the victim of a serial killer. Stefan hadn't realized that serial killers even existed. But after this, he sets out to learn everything about them.

And he's not alone. The concept of serial killers is still fairly new, and the world sees it as a very American phenomenon. Around this time, the son of Sam is plastered across newspaper headlines, and Ted Bundy is awaiting trial and plotting his infamous escape from a Colorado courthouse. God, the 70s were lousy with serial killers. It's amazing anybody made it out of that decade alive.

It was a true moment in time. Stephens' tragic loss turns into a driving obsession, and this fixation will set Stephens on the course of coming face to face with the real deal. Convicted, serial killers. After his trip to Monaco, Stefan is back in Paris. It's the late 1970s, and he's hired to manage a used bookstore called Otois-Yem-Oi. That translates to the third eye. It's exactly what you picture when you think of a tiny used bookstore in Paris,

a narrow space packed to the ceiling with first editions, pulp novels, rare fanzines, how romantic. It's not romantic actually, because the third eye focuses on crime. So nonfiction accounts of crime and crime fiction with a dash of mystery and science fiction. And it's the hub of true crime obsessives in Paris, readers and writers too. In other words, it's the perfect place for Stefan. All right, well, a lot of people like consuming this stuff, but do his co-workers know about his real life experiences with serial killers?

No, it doesn't seem like he talks much about Elen during this period of his life. The woman he casually mentioned was dismembered? Yeah, Ellen, his lover in America who was killed and dismembered by serial killer, got it. Yeah. It's kind of like he's finally found his place. And he spends the next decade making the bookstore his world. He continues writing, and in an article for a small crime literature publication,

he identifies serial killers as a new kind of cultural phenomenon, and uses all the knowledge he's gained to fashion himself into a self-taught expert. We're familiar with this kind of bookish true crime nerd now, but Stefan was one of the first to ever actually do it. And over the years, he's become an almost mythic character at the third eye. Inside the cramp store, he's impossible to miss. One client later compares his presence at the bookstore to a spider sitting at the center of its web.

I picture him as basically living in his own sitcom, chatting up Francis crime writers and other super fans. And for the next decade, Safan becomes the center of the French true crime scene. And he's even immortalized on the page. A few French crime writers actually add characters to their books, who are clearly based on him. Sachi, you're an author. Why haven't you put me in a book yet? Oh, you simply are an uncompaling character. Okay, that's fair.

Yeah, maybe just put me in an acknowledgement. I would, but I just can never remember your name. Okay, okay, whatever. Well, one of these characters is a bookstore owner with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure books, which he uses to expose another character's lies. Another is an amateur detective who's more competent than the pros. Years later, Staphane adopts his character's name,

at San Gellier. It becomes a pseudonym when he writes about grizzly subject matter. Like, and phantoside, is he often writing about and phantoside? I don't know about often, but it seems like there's nothing gross he won't touch, right?

So Staphane is dedicating his whole life to the gory and grizzly, and he's turned into something of an expert, but he's about to step out from behind a bookshelf and become the author of his own true crime. Looking for love? I'm Jujube, and on this season of Queen of Hearts, we're going all the way down to sunny sexy Miami. I'm setting up the hottest singles in South Florida.

Maybe I can find them their perfect partner or someone to fulfill their sexiest fantasies. A man who unconditionally loves me and is a raging feminist and then ties me up, rubbing oils on me, then surprise get some girl to lick my Another guy to put it in my and as a huge But remember there's a twist no one can see each other until the very end cameras on oh Got me blessed. And I feel like a... Okay, Sachi, it's 1991. Huge year, because that's when we were born.

And Stefan is hosting a dinner party at his home in Paris. He holds court going off on his favorite subject. Serial killers. He answers questions and even teases gruesome details. What a great host, huh? Yeah, it sounds like a terrific party, wish over there. Yeah, just being cornered by this guy who can't stop telling you the most disgusting shit

you've ever heard in your life. Hey, did you know that a lady I knew was dismembered? Let me tell you about it. Right? Well, at this point in time, the world's starting to resemble the inside of Stephans' head. Serial killers like Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, Ted Bundy,

and John Wayne Gacy have become household names. The novel, The Silence of the Lambs, is a huge hit, so people know of Serial killers, and now they want to know more about them. One of the guests who's particularly interested is Carol Caranger. She's a documentary filmmaker, and she is fascinated by Stephane. One of the guests who's particularly interested is Carol Caranger. She's a documentary filmmaker and she is fascinated by Stefan.

She's actually known him since she was a kid because he's over a decade older and he's friends with her parents. She's seen how intense and compelling Stefan can be when he gets going. She's early in her career and eager to make a splash. And she thinks that with Stefan's help, she to make a splash, and she thinks that, with Stephane's help, she can make a great documentary about everyone's newest obsession, serial killers, both to advance her career and to tell a deeper, more thoughtful story about killers who've mostly been the subject of gory pulp.

So Carol tells Stephane, we should make a documentary together. But little does she know that she's opening the door to a decades-long scam. Later that same year, Stefan and Carol bring a documentary film crew to Quantico, Virginia, the headquarters of the FBI. They're here to interview John Douglas, an FBI agent in his late 40s

with piercing deep-set eyes and an impressive comb over. He's made a name for himself interviewing some of the country's most prolific killers, like Ted Bundy, Edmund Kemper, Charles Manson, and Richard Speck. Ever heard of them? They're kind of the bad boys of serial killers. All the classics. Yeah, they're big deals.

The FBI even uses some of these interviews to create a serial killer database. And then Douglas goes on to create a criminal investigative analysis program, which uses aspects of psychology and forensics to draw conclusions about potential subjects. He basically invented the idea of criminal profiling, which, I'm sure, is a great thing to have on your conscience as you get older. Yeah, I truly love that.

But that also kind of sounds like he has kind of like helped invent true crime, right? Yeah, that is actually very true. And Douglas has been far more successful than Staphane and making himself into a Hollywood big shot. Douglas actually consulted on the silence of the Lamb's book, and were closely with the movie's director. And he's a few years away from publishing

his own book that will eventually become the Netflix series Mine Hunter with its own character based on him. When we know who the criminal is, we can understand what's set him off. In a homicide situation, we do the inverse. So it's not surprising that as a documentary crew gets ready to film, Douglas is a bit distracted. He's a busy guy and he doesn't have time

to waste with these French noobs. So he's showing off, talking about a case from decades earlier, when Stefan interrupts and corrects Douglas on some of the basic facts. That stops Douglas in his tracks. He's been at the FBI for 20 years, and now here's this pale French nerd who knows his stuff better than he does.

They're basically two crime fanatics spouting trivia at one another. And Douglas is impressed. Game recognized, game I guess. I mean, you're proud of this? You're proud of this information base? Yeah, and after that, the shoot goes really well. Douglas opens up to Stefan and gives an enthusiastic interview

about what else himself and his own work. Carol is thrilled. The documentary is really moving, but this interview is basically a warm-up because once her don at Quantico, Carol, Stefan, and the rest of the crew head to Florida for the hard part, interviewing actual serial killers.

A few months later in Florida, Carol watches to fans overly friendly interview with Gerard Schafer. But she also has to watch to fans interview with Otis Toul. Toul is a drifter who's been convicted of six murders and is likely responsible for many more. Well, Sarah, I don't know if you know this, but Otis Toul is the reason America's most wanted exists as a TV program.

Are you serious? Yeah. So Otis kidnapped John Walsh's kid and he killed him. And so then John Walsh started the show because of it because he wanted regular people to know who was on this list. So that if they saw them, that they could call law enforcement.

That's crazy. I knew something happened to his son. I just didn't know it was like a serial killer. That's insane. I know. And you know what? All these men would love to compete with me about the things that, like,

we all know about true crime, but I will win because I am a woman. And I have to watch this stuff as a protective measure. So I know a lot about Otis, including that he was a cannibal. Yes, he claims to have eaten his victims with, like, a homemade barbecue sauce he made with human blood. And watching the footage, Carol learns that Stefan

has gotten a hold of the recipe. Your recipe for the barbecue sauce, and I must tell you that I tried it. What's the meaning of that? Yeah, it was very good. Although I didn't try it from the same kind of meat that you did. I'm sorry.

Whom's blood? You know what? I have really been thinking about that. Like who did he use his own blood? Because that's the only ethical answer to that question. Even then, I'm gonna assume it was his blood. Let's hope for the sake of our sanity. Okay.

Carol is very upset. Like she is beyond upset. So she confronts Stefan and Stefan apologizes and promises that he'll get it together for their next and last interview. He says that this time, he'll only ask the questions they agreed to. Carol has reason to be cautiously optimistic

about this last interview. Not because of Stefan, but because of the serial killer. This killer actually shows remorse. Ed Kemper is nearly seven feet tall, and he's got a mustache. He's responsible for murdering 10 people, including his grandparents and his mother. And while doing time in a maximum security facility

years earlier, he actually worked in a psychological testing lab. More importantly, Kemper reportedly regrets his crimes. Surely, Carol thinks this reformed killer will be able to give them the more serious footage they need. So they fly to California to visit Kemper at a psychiatric prison called the California Medical Facility. Carol stays behind for the interview, but once she reviews the footage, it's clear to her that,

Stephane, once again, has gone too far. Listen to this. And what were those more of the games that you played with your sister? Oh, good. Well, the one I remember someone talking about in a book was one that was playing gas chamber or electric chair or something.

The funny thing about this interview is when you listen to it, it almost sounds like Ed Kemper is reluctant to tell the details about what he did in his life, which is kind of a rarity for serial killers once they got caught. A lot of them like to talk. Yeah, it is weird to hear like a serial killer be like, okay, yeah, it's like Stefan is asking too many questions and wants too much detail. Yeah, and in the interview, Stefan doesn't just listen

to a killer recount their crimes. He actively pushes Kemper to go into more detail. He also encourages Kemper to spell out his violent fantasies. He totally throws out the questions Carol's approved of, and instead goes for satisfying his own morbid curiosity. What was your fantasies at that time? More big fantasies? About age eight or nine?

Or later on when you said you were thinking all the time about this. Carol's had enough. She turns off the tape and stops speaking to Stefan altogether. But they've already got the footage, so the crew completes the documentary. It's called An Investigation into Deviants, and it's set to air on the French TV channel FR3. When it's broadcast in 1992, the French public can't get enough. So Van has lost Carol, but he's finally gained a whole new audience.

And this audience is about to make him even more influential and a whole lot more reckless. And I feel like I like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like, to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, like to, As long as he's talking about serial killers, people will believe pretty much whatever he says. He starts doing other documentaries, and he's all over French TV. He claims to have once done 84 TV appearances in a single month. Bonjour, c'est Fadmour Goin, je travaille depuis miff, frédameur, et probablement à l'aiseau. On se qu'on appelle des sociopathiques.

C'est Rie n'est pas un psychotic. Honestly, his work ethic is one of the more sympathetic things about Stefan. The content grind is real. I mean, is this work ethic or does he just really like attention? And I'm saying that as someone who really likes attention and works really hard for attention, it's a snake eating its own tail. He also starts publishing a truly staggering number of books, including individual books

on killers like Jack the Ripper and Jeffrey Dahmer, and in 1993, Stefan publishes his Magnum Opus, serial killers. It exhaustively documents all of the killers in his own mental Wikipedia. The book blows up. He updates it with several different editions. Some of them are a thousand pages long. Each one contains new information and new killers. It reportedly sells a million copies in France and has been translated in 15 different

countries. Wow, it's like a farmer's almanac for murderers. It is exactly that. And at this point, even the French government wants to ask him for advice. Jacques de l'Est, a French general prosecutor, gets interested in Staphane after he publicly talks about how serial killers aren't an exclusively American

phenomenon. He invites Staphane to speak at a highly selective prestigious school that trains French judges. All right, so he talked his way into becoming an expert who is now training judges? Yes, it's crazy. And it's not just lawyers who are fighting to talk to Stefan. One of France's national police forces actually cites Stefan in its publications to explain their approach to profiling. Staffan even lectures at a police training academy for years, molding the young minds of France's next generation of cops.

The story is kind of giving me the feeling that nobody knows what they're doing. Like, everyone's just in this weird echo chamber of criminal justice and they're all making it up as they go. Yeah, and with the stamp of state legitimacy, Stefan has actually started to influence real investigations. But it's not enough. He doesn't want to settle for being near the John Douglas's of the world. He has to be one of them. Mika Pistorius is South Africa's first criminal profiler.

She's a former journalist with Auburn Hair and Blue Eyes, and Miki uses Freudian psychology in her work. When Stafan goes to South Africa in 1999 to make a documentary about her, she talks about her philosophy of avoiding sensationalizing serial killers in the media. Zero killers are very, very normal. And they have a lot of pain inside them that compel them to do what they do. I am afraid of the answer to this question. Is she related to Oscar Pistorius? She is! Oh my god. I know, right? So Mickey's nephew is Oscar Pistorius, a world champion sprinter famous for being the first

double leg amputee athlete to participate in the Olympics, and for murdering his girlfriend, quite the Wikipedia entry. Well, Mickey's family issues don't stop there. Her marriage literally fell apart because of the constant pressure from her work as a profiler, which is basically a plot from criminal minds. And Mickey also claims to have cryptidesthesia,

which basically means that she has psychic powers that allow her to detect serial killers. So, Fan can only dream of being this interesting. Okay, well, that is a literal plot from Law and Order SVU. Man, a lot of inspiration here. While making the documentary, Mickey gives to Fan a manuscript of her autobiography. It's called To Catch a Killer and it hasn't been published yet.

The two keep in touch when they talk on the phone every few months. And on one of these calls, Stephen casually mentions that his latest book is about Mickey. Mickey is stunned. She had no idea that Stefan was writing about her. In English, the book is called Mickey Pistorius, a woman on the trail of serial killers. But here's a thing, Mickey can't read the book because she doesn't speak French.

Oh, oh no. Yeah, it's the kind of thing Stefan could only get away with pre-internet. One Google translate and Mickey would have figured out that Stefan's book was largely plagiarized from hers. So now Stefan isn't just lying about his own credentials. He's actively stealing other people's work. And he's desperate for the public to pay attention to him,

even if it means pulling back the veil on the darkest chapter of his life. By the early 2000s, Stephane's an established French expert on serial killers and a prolific author, but people are starting to ask why this socially awkward awkward intense guy is so interested in serial killers. So he goes public with his origin story. Or at least one version of it, here he is on France's equivalent of 60 minutes. For me, with my friend Eileen, who decides...

He's saying that in 1976, he discovered that his girlfriend had been raped, brutally murdered, and practically decapitated by a serial killer. And I should mention here, Sachi, he's a little inconsistent with how we were first to her. In some interviews, he calls her his wife, in other interviews, he says that they were close friends. He says her name is Eileen, and he shows the camera of photo of himself with a young blonde woman. Sachi, take a look.

I mean, they look like they're in love, they seem happy. They're a young couple gazing at each other. Yeah, it's a photo you'd seen like a documentary or something. Yeah, you can read whatever you'd like to into this photo, I think. In other interviews, he says that after realizing that there were no books or resources for understanding these criminals, he decided to learn everything he could. And that's how he set off on the path to becoming an expert. It seems sort of fishy that he didn't mention any of this earlier.

I mean, the story of Avaline comes to defiance to fan in the French media and further propels his rising star. How many days have you been to the Borgon? The first campaign was not easy for the kids. The psychology of criminology or something like that. 66, my sister is a mutilated in 1936. Once he's able to frame himself as a victim of serial killers, he starts gaining the trust of crime victims

and their families, not just serial killers and law enforcement. He gets involved with a victim's advocacy group, and these stories bring to fan even more fame and attention. While Stephane's story is compelling, it's also packed with details. Details that can be fact checked. That's important because almost everything we've learned

so far is only a version of the truth. A group of amateur detectives raised on Stephane's work are about to discover that Eileen isn't quite who Staphane claims, and that lots of his other work doesn't stand up to real scrutiny. Pretty soon, Staphane is going to get exactly what he wanted. He's about to become the obsessive focus of true crime fans. This is episode one of our two-part series, The Serial Killer Grifter. I'm Sarah Haggi, and I'm Sachi Cole.

We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were what lies beneath the secrets of France's top serial killer expert expert written by Scott Sair and the Guardian, and the unraveling of an expert on serial killers written by Lauren Collins in the New Yorker. Eric Thurm wrote this episode, additional writing by us, Saty Cole and Sarah Haggie. Jen Swan is our senior producer. John Reed is our producer. Our Associate Producers are Charlotte Miller and Tate Buzzby. Sarah Enne is our Story Editor.

Our Senior Story Editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Researched by Chisone Peter Job, fact checking by Gabrielle Jolay. Our Music Supervisor is Scott Velasquez for FreeSohn Sync. Adrian Tapia provided audio assistance. Our sound design is by James Morgan. Our executive producers are Jeanine Cornelot, Stephanie Gens, and Marshall Lui for Wondery.

you