Markovic affair

 Markovic affair (deep event,  assassination,  sexual blackmail)

Stevan Marković with Alain Delon's wife Nathalie
Date	1968 - 12 January 1976
Location	France
Description	Sexual blackmailer killed in 1968. May have had compromising pictures of wife of future French President Georges Pompidou, or the pictures might have been forged.

The Marković affair was a sexual blackmail operation in France in the late 1960s, involving future French President Georges Pompidou, his wife, and movie star Alain Delon

The affair started when one of Delon's bodyguards, Stevan Marković, was found dead on 1 October 1968. It soon turned out a possible motive was that Marković filmed wealthy participants in compromising situations with hidden cameras at drug and sex parties he organized, and then extorted them. The house where this took place belonged to Ambroise Roux, one of the mightiest businessmen in France.

Both the French movie star Alain Delon and his longtime friend François Marcantoni were questioned by the police. Marcantoni was originally charged with the murder, but after further questioning by the police, he was released. Marković's murder is still unsolved.

In a further development, sexually explicit photos allegedly of Claude Pompidou, Pompidou's wife, were found in Marković's car after his death. A former police chief and spook Lucien Aimé-Blanc, involved in obtaining the photos, stated that they had been planted by Gaullist factions who were opposed to Pompidou. The veracity of the pictures were then challenged.

Stevan Marković and Miloš Milošević

Stevan Marković was born on 10 May 1937 in Belgrade, Serbia (then Yugoslavia). In the 1950s Marković and his cousin Milos Milošević (aka Milos Milos) were low-level criminals in Belgrade.

Marković left Yugoslavia in 1958, slipping over the border. He headed to Italy first and then over the Alps into France, where he settled into the immigrant community in Paris. Struggling for money, he spent seven years in poverty, taking occasional jobs as a photographer, living a transient lifestyle, sleeping in boarding houses, and occasionally being on the street. Eventually, he put the skills he'd learned in Belgrade to use, becoming involved in low-level crime and ending up in a Belgian prison after acting as a getaway driver for a robbery gone wrong.

Miloš Milošević met the movie star Alian Delon in 1962 when he was making a film in Belgrade in co-production with Yugoslavian studios. The film would never complete production, but during his stay in the country, Delon would hire Miloševićas a bodyguard (and possible lover). They went to Venice for the filming, then to Paris, where Milošević would stay until 1964 when he decided to try and find fame in Hollywood, having introduced Delon to his future wife, Nathalie Barthelemy.

With Milos leaving, Delon needed a replacement bodyguard. Remembering his cousin, Milos would suggest his cousin Stevan Marković. Delon helped get him out of prison, and Marković was suddenly thrust into a new world of money and connections, with Delon knowing the kind of career criminals that Marković liked.

Milošević whad a similar trajectory in Hollywood, marrying showgirl Cynthia Bouron who was notorious for affairs with several prominent Hollywood names of the era. By 1965, Milošević was having an illicit liaison with actress Barbara Ann Thomason, the estranged wife of Mickey Rooney. Both Milošević and Thomason were found dead at Rooney's Los Angeles home in 1966, with the official inquiry finding that Milošević shot Thomason with Rooney's revolver. However, rumor and context would suggest the two had been murdered. On October 20, 1973, Bouron's was found dead, stuffed in the trunk of a car parked outside a grocery store in Studio City, California. She'd been tied up and beaten to death, with her killer never being found.

A heavy gambler who was often suspected of cheating, Marković was known for his high-class parties, where he would set up secret cameras throughout the house, especially in the bedrooms. He thus collected many compromising photos of the guests that could have damaged their social status.

While he most likely did this on behalf of a greater network, he the pictures for blackmail, especially since he approached several newspapers trying to sell them. Surprisingly, some of these photographs would be alleged to be directly targeting Delon and Marcantoni themselves. However, the most important photos that Marković supposedly possessed were scandalous shots of Pompidou's wife. That was a major concern to Pompidou, who was preparing to run for president.

On 1 October 1968, Marković's body was found in a public dump in the village of Élancourt, Yvelines, west of Paris. A first autopsy indicated that the victim succumbed to blows to the head and neck by a "blunt, bulky and heavy object". On October 28, a new autopsy of Marković's body is performed. It shows that the victim was killed by a 6.35 mm bullet fired in the back of the neck. Although many people had a reason to kill him, his murder is still unsolved.

Alain Delon and François Marcantoni's involvement

It was alleged that Delon became acquainted with "some highly dubious French gangland characters," and was a close friend of François Marcantoni. When Delon's bodyguard Marković mysteriously died, Marcantoni and Delon came under investigation in part due to a letter written by Marković to his brother Aleksandar, in which he implicated Alain Delon and François Marcantoni as guilty, should any harm come to him. Marcantoni was initially charged with the murder. However, after being questioned by the police, the charges were eventually dropped, and the crime remains unsolved.

Involvement of the Pompidous

Claude Pomdiou, the wife of future French President Georges Pompidou

The death of Stevan Marković provoked many rumours, many suggesting the existence of group sex photos with Madame Pompidou. Pompidou was then running his campaign for presidency and wanted to dispel them as soon as possible. He formally told the public that all the talk concerning the Marković affair were rumours. Pompidou himself accused Louis Wallon and Henri Capitant of using the French espionage service SDECE to set him up. He admitted that he and his wife had been at parties with Marković and Delon. Some claimed that Pompidou ordered Marković's murder in revenge for the supposed photos of his wife. Even though he claimed the woman in the photos was a prostitute who simply greatly resembled his wife, the rumours would still hurt his campaign. After he nevertheless won the 1969 election, he named Alexandre de Marenches as the head of the SDECE with an order to reform it.

According to some, the Marković affair was merely a ploy to damage Georges Pompidou's reputation by attacking the public image of his wife. Later, information conveniently claimed that it was not Madame Pompidou in the photos but a prostitute who had been hired by a former police chief, Lucien Aimé-Blanc, who had long been involved with the SDECE. Aimé-Blanc claimed in his memoirs that an anonymous friend asked him to produce a prostitute who was blonde and in her forties, who was then used as Madame Pompidou's lookalike and photographed in compromising positions with another woman.

Rumour

Jean Violet was reputed to have been involved in the Markovic affair.

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References

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