Jérôme Carrein

Who was Jérôme Carrein?

Jérôme Carrein was the second-to-last convicted criminal to be executed by guillotine in France.

On 27 October 1975 in Arleux, Northern France, Jérôme Carrein, father of five children, often of no fixed abode, an alcoholic and a tuberculosis sufferer, met Cathy Petit, an eight-year-old local girl. Petit was the daughter of the owner of a bar that Carrein frequented. He enticed the girl to follow him into nearby marshlands to search for fish bait. Having arrived there, Carrein attempted to rape the child before strangling and drowning her.

Carrein was arrested the next day and quickly confessed to his crime. He was tried before the Pas-de-Calais criminal court at Saint Omer, found guilty and sentenced to death on 12 July 1976. Christian Ranucci, also sentenced to death for a child murder, was guillotined at Marseille's Baumettes prison sixteen days later.

Carrein appealed against his sentence and was retried on 1 February 1977 at the criminal court in Douai. Two weeks before the second trial began, Patrick Henry, another child murderer, had narrowly escaped a death sentence at the criminal court in Troyes thanks to the skill of his lawyer, Robert Badinter, and public outrage in France was particularly strong. Carrein was found guilty again and sentenced to death a second time.