It was more than half a century ago, but since his father's assassination in 1975, he has not turned the page. For this to happen it would be necessary for "the matter to be resolved, for the truth to be affirmed, to be officially recognized, for there to be no more ambiguity". Francis Renaud tirelessly denounces the failure of the police and justice, powerless to elucidate this crime, and he continues to fight to know the truth.
Who killed Judge Renaud, shot dead by three hooded killers, in the middle of the street, at the foot of his building in Lyon, on the night of July 2 to 3, 1975? The whole of France is in shock: this is the time, under the Fifth Republic, that a magistrate has been assassinated.
Was the one nicknamed "the Sheriff" executed by those he was tracking down with muscular, sometimes unorthodox methods? Against the underworld of "Chicago-sur-Rhône", the Lyon of the 1970s, he waged a relentless war, not hesitating to detain the wives of prisoners to make their husbands talk. “The thugs hated Judge Renaud,” confirms former police commissioner Georges Nicolaï, who often collaborated with him.
Vengeance from the middle or an affair of state?
The non-conformist judge stood out in the austere world of the judiciary, but his effectiveness was recognized. Among the enemies she had earned, the formidable “Lyonnais gang”. But by attacking these figures of organized crime, would Judge Renaud have represented a threat to another environment, a political one? Was he very close to uncovering a system of secret financing of political parties thanks to the loot from robberies? His son is convinced of it.
“My father “understood this link [between organized crime and political networks], wanted to establish it, and it was so that he would not officially establish it that he was assassinated.”
Francis Renaud, son of the judge assassinated in 1975 in “Sensitive Affairs”
Two years after the assassination of Judge Renaud, the leader of the Lyon thugs will also admit to working for a political organization... It is not named, but everyone understands that it is the SAC, the sulfurous Civic Action Service of the Gaullist power often described as a parallel police force.
Seventeen years of investigation, and a judicial failure
Does the SAC, and behind it the political power, have any responsibility in the assassination of Judge Renaud? The question seems to be of little interest to investigators. From the end of the 1970s, the case got bogged down, the murdered judge was even denigrated, for example by the Minister of Justice Alain Peyrefitte on a television set in 1979, for his "manners more common in the bush than in mainland France".
In total, six investigating judges succeeded one another, without significant progress. The last of them, Georges Fenech, future UMP deputy, claims to have "tried everything" "for ten years", both on the SAC track in which he did not believe, and on that of the Lyon environment, without success. And to draw this conclusion: “The police have failed. Justice has failed. We have to recognize that.”
“A file like that must not die”
In 1992, Georges Fenech signed an order dismissing the case, definitively closing the case. Since 2004, the case has been time-barred, and no one can any longer be convicted for the assassination of Judge Renaud. A conclusion far from satisfying the specialists of this affair.
“We should have continued to keep this emblematic issue alive by all means possible. We are talking about an investigating judge with integrity, someone who took a lot of risks. The Republic is targeted.”
Benoît Collombat, journalist (Radio France) in “Sensitive Affairs”
In any case, we can count on Francis Renaud to “never give up”. Tirelessly, he calls on the authorities to relaunch the investigation, convinced that one day someone, among the gangsters, former SAC or even the judicial police, will end up speaking. Caught up in its criminal excesses, the SAC disappeared in 1982... but not its secrets. And among them, perhaps, that of the assassination of Judge Renaud.
