Helric Fredou
 Helric Fredou  (policeman) | ||||||||||||||
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| Died | January 8, 2015 | |||||||||||||
Cause of death | gunshot | |||||||||||||
| Victim of | premature death | |||||||||||||
| Interests | Charlie Hebdo | |||||||||||||
A French policeman who reportedly shot himself just after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
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Helric Fredou was a French policeman. Number 2 in the regional judicial police service of Limoges, he was working on an important lead in the context of the Charlie Hebdo attack the day before, when he "committed suicide" by shooting himself in the head. The family did not get access to the autopsy report.
Official narrative
Helric Fredou was working on a mission of the judicial police in the context of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. This suicide comes a little more than a year after the death of another official of the regional service of the judicial police of Limoges. In November 2013, number 3 of this service had also killed himself and it was the commissioner Fredou who had discovered it.[1][2]
No access to autopsy report
The magazine Panamza summed up seven facts about the case:
1 According to Helric Fredou's mother, the police officers who interviewed her expressly informed her that she would not have access to the autopsy report. However, the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that in the event of a judicial autopsy (for suicide or suspicious death), any family member may request it from the Prosecutor's Office. "But it would be useless": this is the message already sent to a bereaved mother who "wants to know the truth".
2 Helric Fredou's service weapon was not equipped with a silencer. So his mother asked his colleagues an elementary question: "Why didn't you hear anything when it was about midnight?". Laconic answer: "His office was well isolated".
3 According to his mother, Helric Fredou wanted to make an important phone call after having done two things: debrief "three investigators" who went to interview the close family of a victim of the Charlie Hebdo attack (in this case, the parents of Jeannette Bougrab -self-proclaimed companion of Charlie Bougrab - and then consult "social networks". It was at that moment that Fredou might have realized a deduction so important that he "wanted to continue working". Important clarification: the "commander" on duty that evening (unidentified) might have wanted to take care of the debriefing of the investigators himself and the drafting of the report but Fredou would have insisted by replying to him "It's my job". Helric Fredou's direct superior is Gil Friedman, director of the regional judicial police service of Limoges.
4 According to the police, Helric Fredou put the barrel of his revolver on his forehead and the bullet would have remained inside the skull.
5 Helric Fredou's attending physician, with whom his mother spoke on Thursday, January 22, refuses to validate the portrait sketched by the few articles published about the policeman, reporting an alleged "depression" and some kind of "burn-out".
6 The mother wanted to know to whom her son's last call was addressed. The police replied to her "We can't know" before finally stating that no phone call had been made.
7 "Four directors" of the police came expressly from Paris, to meet Helric Fredou's mother to send their condolences and convince her that it was a "suicide".
Finally, a subsidiary piece of information deserves to be reported here: apart from the author of these lines, NO journalist has contacted - since January 8, 2015 - Helric Fredou's mother or sister to clarify the case.[3]
