He Killed a Boy and Sent Taunting Letters — Then Claimed He Did It for a Disturbingly Personal Reason

• Luc Tarron, 11, was murdered in 1964
• In the subsequent weeks, his killer taunted police and the boy’s family signed by “l’Etrangleur” — or “The Strangler”
• As he was being escorted to jail, the accused killer yelled out to a crowd, “They’re right! I am a monster!”

In 1964, the parents of Luc Taron thought they had already lived through their worst nightmare when their 11-year-old son was found murdered in the woods near their suburban Paris home. But when the killer began taunting both them and the police with dozens of letters, it became clear their nightmare had only just begun.

Luc, an 11-year-old boy from the south suburbs of Paris, abruptly left his family’s home the night of May 26, 1964, after getting into an argument with his mother over 15 francs he had secretly taken from her. Assuming the boy had simply run away from home, the Tarons expected Luc to be back soon. 

But early the next morning, the 11-year-old boy’s body was discovered mutilated in the Verrières-le-Buisson woods in the Paris suburbs.

Then, for nearly two months after Luc was found dead, the boy’s killer taunted police and the boy’s family with dozens of letters, according to Time, Le Monde, and L’Express. PEOPLE is looking back at the 1964 case and how police say they ultimately tracked down the man who became known locally as “The Strangler.”

Letters from ‘The Stranger’

After Luc’s body was discovered, his killer began bombarding local police, the media, and the boy’s parents with dozens of letters, according to L’Express, which revisited the once-front-page case in 2005. Investigators were unable to link him to any additional murders, leading authorities to believe he had falsely claimed responsibility for more crimes than he actually committed, L’Express reported.

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

The notes were always signed off as “l’Etrangleur”, or “The Strangler,” according to Le Monde. And soon, news reports began identifying him as such while police searched for answers.

An Arrest — and a Retracted Confession

Time reported that later in 1964, police arrested 27-year-old Lucien Léger and charged him with Luc’s murder after he made multiple phone calls boasting about the killings. French authorities brought Léger, a student nurse, in for questioning and searched his apartment during the interview, Time reported. Inside, police found newspaper clippings about the case, as well as a “rose-tinted” notepad matching the one used for the killer’s letters.

Léger confessed after 24 hours of police interviews, according to the outlet, and as he was being escorted to jail, the accused killer yelled out to a crowd, “They’re right! I am a monster!”

But later on, according to Le Monde, Léger retracted his statements about the killing and said he had only written a few of the messages to police. Still, Léger was convicted of the boy’s murder in 1966, according to the European Court of Human Rights, which posthumously reviewed Léger’s argument that he should have been released from prison. Throughout his nearly 40-year prison sentence, Léger claimed he had a “memory loss” during the events of the night Luc was killed and filed several appeals for a retrial and resentencing. 

Léger was ultimately released from prison in October 2005 and lived three years before he was found dead in his home in 2008, according to the European Court of Human Rights’ case.

Why Luc?

The 1964 Time story about Léger portrayed the convicted murderer as a ”disappointingly” normal man with a hobby of “banal” writing – despite once being heralded in the press as a criminal mastermind who Le Monde said had “haunted” Paris with his braggadocious letters about Luc’s murder for several weeks.

When police asked Léger why he went after Luc, the killer said he picked the 11-year-old boy to abduct and murder because “he seemed as unhappy as I was when I was his age.”