Robert Boulin

Robert Boulin   (politician)
Born	20 July 1920
Died	30 October 1979 (Age 59)
Cause of death	"drug overdose, drowning"
Nationality	French
Victim of	premature death
French politician who died a sudden and irregular death. It was ruled a suicide.

Robert Boulin was a French politician. In 1979 he was being tipped as a successor to the unpopular Raymond Barre as Prime Minister of France.

Sudden death

On 29 October 1979, Boulin had lunch with his son Bertrand, and subsequently disappeared. Police found his body on the morning of 30 October in a pond in the forest of Rambouillet. Next to his car, which was parked nearby, was an empty container of barbiturates. In the car were envelopes addressed to Boulin's wife and to his colleagues at the Labor Ministry.

Investigation

Shortly after his death, the Boulin family declared that they did not accept the verdict of suicide and began waging a campaign in the press and the courts to re-open the case, which they believed was murder. On 22 October 1983, his body was ordered to be exhumed for an additional autopsy.

The irregularities of the case were widely covered: that the lake in which he allegedly drowned was apparently nowhere more than one foot seven inches in depth; that Boulin's face had been badly battered and a cheek bone fractured, which went unmentioned in the official autopsy report; that the local doctor who signed the certificate was only allowed a hurried glimpse of the body which had already been transferred, on orders by high officials, to a waiting helicopter; that the jars containing Mr Boulin's lungs, necessary to confirm a death by drowning, disappeared mysteriously after someone broke into the laboratory fridge.

At a press conference on 17 January 1984, the family accused the Versailles prosecutor of "wanting to hide the real cause of the death of Robert Boulin" and of "shielding the assassins from the law". The family was then prosecuted by the minister for justice for defaming a magistrate, and fined 800 francs; they were pardoned personally by François Mitterrand on his ascension to the Presidency a few weeks later.

In September 1991, the Paris Public Prosecutor announced that he was closing the dossier opened in 1983; the family continued to accuse the Gaullist party of a cover-up, and possible implication in Boulin's death itself. The issue was re-ignited in January 2002 by a series of investigations televised on Canal Plus, in which Juliette Garrat, the doctor who performed the autopsy, said she was now sure that Mr Boulin's death was a "murder disguised as suicide" and the substitute prosecutor at the time also came forward to say "orders were given" by the authorities to stick to the verdict of suicide.

On 21 June 2007, shortly after Jacques Chirac, also a Gaullist, handed over power to Nicolas Sarkozy, the Paris Public Prosecutor met with Boulin's daughter, Fabienne Burgeat, and announced that he was considering re-opening the investigation as "new evidence" had come to light.

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