There’s still nothing believable about the apparent ‘suicide’ of French regional police commissioner, Helric Fredou, right after the Paris attacks last month.
I mentioned his death at the time and noted the complete absence of media coverage of it, expecting that some media coverage would eventually follow. It didn’t though; remarkably, the mainstream media has maintained a complete black-out on this element of the story.
A recent friend of this blog (a student of criminology, no less) who lives in France and likes to identify herself as ‘Intellecteur’, spoke to me about this subject. Says ‘Intellecteur’; “Helric Fredou had no wife, nor kids. His only family left are his mother and sister, who can’t believe his suicide. The interesting things I learnt (in this article); His family won’t have access to his autopsy, whereas it’s written in the penal code that in case of suicide or strange death conditions, the family can ask for a judicial autopsy. Also, his mother asked the 1 million dollar question: her son’s gun didn’t have a silencer, so how come, if he shot himself in his office at the police station, none of his colleagues heard anything? Their answer: “his office was well insulated.””
Intellecteur continues; “Helric’s family doctor doesn’t confirm that his patient was suffering depression, having a burn-out or anything; he claims the opposite. But I think the weirdest thing in this story is that the one and only journalist who talked to his family, is the one in the link above. Meanwhile France was commemorating the people who died the 7, 8 and 9 January – why did no one, NO ONE, talk about this man?“
How is it that a major related suicide less than a day after the Charlie Hebdo attack hasn’t attracted more coverage, particularly when those events were being used to mass-deploy armed troops into public places and radically revise surveillance and anti-terror laws in France, as well as severely restrict freedom of speech?
One rare report in French media even tried to portray Fredou’s suicide as being completely unrelated to the Paris attacks, despite the fact that he was directly investigating the Charlie Hebdo shootings and that his death occurred on the very day Saed and Cherif Kouachi were gunned down. It is reported officially that he shot himself while in his office, which in itself is highly unusual for even someone severely depressed.
More to the point though, where are all France’s investigative journalists? How perverse that an event that was framed by the politicians and the mass media as an issue of journalistic freedoms and general freedom of expression appears to have led to media censorship concerning this key aspect of the case; while of course at the same time resulted in everyone else’s freedom of expression and opinion being severely policed and censored by law-enforcement, hence the mass arrests of people in France simply for expressing opinions deemed to be ‘defending terrorism’.
As ‘Intellecteur’ says, describing the atmosphere now in France; “We’re all afraid to talk about this subject on social media because, as you may have heard, the French government is arresting so many people for not thinking the way they want/need us to. We’re even afraid to talk about it with our friends, in case someone else is hearing or reading this, because every doubt is a step to jail. They tried to make us believe in the “freedom of speech”, but arrested a french humorist, Dieudonné (you may have heard of him), for “anti-zionism” as soon as he gave his feeling on the situation.”
Further information on the curious case of Helric Fredou is covered in this article on the Veterans Today site, translated from the original French-language article here, though it is essentially the same thing Intellecteur has told us.
In another curious recent case, the creator, director and producer of a controversial movie about the encroaching police state and alleged FEMA camps in America, David Crowley, was found dead with his wife and young daughter over the weekend. The police are calling it a murder-suicide, though not ruling out anything suspicious. The movie was currently in production and Crowley had recently received a contract of $30 million to complete the project. His friends and co-workers have stated that the official story is highly unlikely. His movie-in-the-making, Gray State, had acquired a cult following, drawing nearly a million views of the You Tube trailer.
Shotgun suicides in general (as well as ‘murder suicides’) are a not uncommon event when it comes to people investigating things they shouldn’t be; for example, with the Pullitzer prize-winning writer Gary Webb, who famously exposed the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade. Webb, according to the official story, somehow managed the remarkable feat of being able to shoot himself in the head twice.
French Police-Commissioner Helric Fredou is simply the latest occurrence of the phenomenon.
Meanwhile, the apparent epidemic of banker deaths or suicides makes for curious reading. 52-year-old Belgian Geert Tack was added to this substantial list at the end of last year, with this even more curious case of a husband-wife ‘murder-suicide’ having just emerged; no guns in this latter case, but rather bizarrely both died from stab wounds. Now it’s fair to say there has for a long time been a view that ‘banker suicides’ are a fairly common phenomenon, even to the point of being a cliche; from the video to Radiohead’s ‘Just’ to various fictional retellings of the ‘miserable banker’ idea, the notion of finance and banking being an area that often induces imbalanced or melancholy states of mind is a well-known one.
Whether this apparent depression is a result of stress from a very high-pressure job or whether it’s more to do with remorse for some of the kinds of operations people involved in high finance are party to, I’m in no position to speculate.
But highly suspicious deaths and possible false cover stories put out to gloss over them are a matter we should all be looking at very seriously. This piece from Hang the Bankers recalls almost forty bankers who died suspicious deaths last year.
It begs the question again, as in regard to the case of Helric Fredou: where are all the investigative journalists in the mainstream media?
To answer your question, they don’t want to “commit suicide”.
And in the murder-suicide cases in particular where apparently happy, well-adjusted people allegedly murdered their family members too… well, let’s just say it seems unlikely and it stinks of organised killings.
And those that have to make the decision to put not just themselves, yet their family’s safety at risk would rightly be hesitant to put themselves in that situation.
By the way, thanks for the frequent attention you afford my blog, I appreciate it 🙂
No problem, I enjoy the stuff you are writing.