The Judge the Mob Killed - Palais de Justice
On 21 October 1981 Pierre Michel, the Marseille investigating magistrate who worked inside this courthouse dismantling the French Connection heroin trade and the local milieu, was shot dead from a passing motorbike as he rode his own moped home; two men, Charles Altieri and Francois Checchi, were later convicted of the killing and sentenced to life.
Sobre este lugar
The Palais de Justice of Marseille is a grand neoclassical courthouse of the eighteen sixties, its tall columned portico looking out over a quiet square in the sixth arrondissement. For most visitors it is simply an elegant public building, but in the late nineteen seventies it was the command post of one man's war on organised crime. Pierre Michel was an investigating magistrate here, a judge with the power to run his own criminal inquiries, and he went after the Corsican networks that had made Marseille the heroin capital of the Western world, the operation the Americans called the French Connection. He raided laboratories, pressured traffickers and refused the comfortable silences that had long protected the underworld. On 21 October 1981, as he rode his moped home for lunch, two men on a motorbike drew alongside and shot him dead. The city was stunned that a magistrate could be executed in broad daylight, and the crime became a symbol of how deep the rot ran.
Datos clave
- 1981 year — Judge Pierre Michel was assassinated on 21 October 1981 as he rode his moped home from his work in this courthouse.
- 3 bullets — He was cut down by a burst of three 9mm bullets fired from a passing motorbike, and died almost instantly.
- 2 life sentences — Two men, Charles Altieri and Francois Checchi, were later convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.
📍 Place Monthyon, 13006, Marseille