France reopens notorious 1994 murder case that hinged on message written in blood — with a glaring grammatical mistake

A Moroccan gardener convicted of murdering a French heiress three decades ago has won his bid to reopen one of the country's most notorious criminal cases and try to clear his name, his lawyer said Thursday.

Omar Raddad was sentenced to 18 years in jail in 1994 despite his claim of innocence in the killing of Ghislaine Marchal at her villa on the French Riviera.

At the scene of the grisly stabbing death, police found a message scrawled on a door in Marchal's blood which read "Omar killed me," which prosecutors seized on to secure Raddad's guilty verdict. 

Yet the message contained a glaring grammatical mistake, using the infinitive verb ("Omar m'a tuer") instead of the past participle ("Omar m'a tuee") for "killed."

Defense lawyers argued it was highly unlikely that Marchal, a wealthy and educated widow, would make such a mistake, fueling intense speculation that Raddad was framed.

Raddad, who was freed in 1998 after his sentence was partially commuted by former president Jacques Chirac, lodged a new appeal last June seeking to reopen the case, in view of a potential retrial.

It was based on new evidence, a DNA report dating from 2019 that claims that fingerprints from four unknown people had been identified at the crime scene.

Using updated technology, an expert also found that some of this DNA was in a second incomplete message written in blood at the crime scene.

"This ruling is a step towards a retrial," Raddad's lawyer Sylvie Nachovitch said of the decision by the court's investigative committee to reopen the inquiry. "The battle is not over."

In a Facebook post, Nachovitch wrote that she hoped the reopened case will "rectify one of the biggest judicial errors of the 20th century."   

"Omar needs everyone's support to get to the truth,"  she wrote.

The case has long captivated France because of its lurid details, but also because of claims that Raddad, an immigrant described as gentle and calm during his trial, was a victim of discrimination.

It is one of the best-known murder cases in France, and has become the subject of several books and a popular film.