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Villagers set up lottery to help killer

The village of Vezet, north of Besançon, has set up a lottery to help electrician Charles Beau, who was convicted for killing a disabled neighbour.

Published: 18 July 2012 11:05 CEST

The murderer has already served a year in jail but still has to pay €80,000 to the relatives of the victim, Le Parisien reports.

In July 2008, Charles Beau was convicted of deliberate unpremeditated assault resulting in death and required to serve a suspended sentence of five years in jail. Beau had caught his neighbour Frederic Badet breaking into a shed and stabbed him. The 35-year-old Badet, who is partially physically disabled, had committed several offenses in Vezet.

Beau was released early and required to pay the victim's family €80,000 in damages.

That’s when the villagers stepped in. The members of a local charity group, T’huits printemps, have been organizing lotteries and selling sweets to help Beau and his family, a move that has distressed the relatives of the victim.

"My son is dead, I’ll never see him again, whereas Mr. Beau, who is a killer, is free and supported by Vezet," she told the AFP newswire.

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French court convicts 8 for stealing Banksy from Paris terror attack site

Three men in their 30s who admitted to the 2019 theft were given prison sentences, one of four years and two of three, although they will be able to serve them wearing electronic tracking bracelets rather than behind bars.

Another man, a 41-year-old millionaire lottery winner and street art fan accused of being the mastermind of the heist, was given three years in jail for handling stolen goods after judges found the main allegation unproven. His sentence will also be served with a bracelet.

Elsewhere in the capital, the defence was making its final arguments in the trial of the surviving suspects in the 2015 Paris attacks themselves, with a verdict expected on June 29.

‘Acted like vultures’

British street artist Banksy painted his “sad girl” stencil on the metal door of the Bataclan in memory of the 90 people killed there on November 13th, 2015.

A white van with concealed number-plates was seen stopping on January 26, 2019 in an alleyway running alongside the central Paris music venue.

Many concertgoers fled via the same alley when the Bataclan became the focal point of France’s worst ever attacks since World War II, as Islamic State group jihadists killed 130 people at a string of sites across the capital.

On the morning of the theft, three masked men climbed out of the van, cut the hinges with angle grinders powered by a generator and left within 10 minutes, in what an investigating judge called a “meticulously prepared” heist.

Prosecutor Valerie Cadignan told the court earlier this month that the perpetrators had not sought to debase the memory of the attack victims, but “being aware of the priceless value of the door were looking to make a profit”.

She said the thieves “acted like vultures, like people who steal objects without any respect for what they might represent”.

During the trial, Bataclan staff said the theft sparked “deep indignation”, adding that the painted door was a “symbol of remembrance that belongs to everyone, locals, Parisians, citizens of the world”.

Investigators pieced together the door’s route across France and into Italy, where it was found in June 2020 on a farm in Sant’Omero, near the Adriatic coast.

Three men involved in transporting the door were each jailed for 10 months, while a 58-year-old Italian man who owns a hotel where it was temporarily stored received a six-month suspended sentence.

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