Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more!
French Serial Killer Expert Admits To Being A Serial Liar, Even Making Up His 'Wife's' Murder
For years, Stéphane Bourgoin would tell people his wife was murdered by a serial killer, but now he says he fabricated that story based on an acquaintance who was slain by American murderer Gerald Stano.
A self-proclaimed serial killer expert from France, with dozens of books under his belt, has now been exposed as a serial liar.
Stéphane Bourgoin, 67, was widely viewed to be one of France’s top serial killer experts. He claimed he had been trained by the FBI and interviewed 77 serial killers over his career. He even said that his own wife had been slain by one.
However, the 4ème Oeil Corporation, an anonymous French collective, pointed out earlier this year that the Bourgoin may have been lying about his past. A post questioned many of Bourgoin’s claims and asked for evidence to prove several of them. It also pointed out that other experts in his purported field have seemingly ignored him or called him an impostor. The group also questioned his claim that he was a professional football player, noting there was no record of such. They also found inconsistencies in his books and television interviews.
"His television interviews convinced us that he was truly making it all up," a spokesperson for the group told CNN.
Bourgoin began responding to the allegations last week.
“My lies have weighed me down,” he told Paris Match. “I have arrived at the balance-sheet time.”
On Tuesday, he told Le Parisien, “I completely admit my faults. I am ashamed to have lied, to have concealed things.”
Turns out, he only interviewed about 10 of the 77 serial killers he claimed to have, and, as a result, many of his 40-plus books the product of work carried out by actual criminal profilers, Le Parisien reports. He was never a footballer either, according to the report.
“I am profoundly and sincerely sorry. I am ashamed of what I did, it’s absolutely ridiculous,” he told the outlet.
He also confessed to making up the story that his wife was murdered by a serial killer. She never existed, he told the outlet. That story stemmed from his brief acquaintance with a Florida woman named Susan Bickrest, who was killed by serial killer Gerald Stano in 1975, he said.
“It was bulls--t that I took on,” Bourgoin told Le Parisien. “I didn’t want people to know the real identity of someone who was not my partner, but someone who I had met five or six times in Daytona Beach, and who I liked.”
