The sex war and others
Rayner Heppenstall

The sex war and others; a survey of recent murder principally in France.

The crimes recounted range broadly from 1950 to 1973, and many of them were sexually motivated. Among the cases discussed are those of the murderous priest, the Cure d’Uruffe, who killed his mistress and mutilated her unborn child, Pauline Dubuisson (known as ‘the mask of pride’) who shot an ex-lover on his engagement to another woman, the Mayor of Peuplingues, whose plot to kill his wife was tape-recorded by a neighbour, the Puyricard case of a hired hit-and-run driver, and the case of Denise Labbe, who drowned her daughter to prove her love to the sadistic Jacqaues Algarron. The author also discusses gang shootings and the collapse of the Guerini empire in Marseilles, two cases involving minors tried in camera, one a consequence of the May 1968 student riots in Paris, and growing trends in violence such as hijacking and kidnapping for ransom money.