François Renaud was a French judge whose murder in 1975 led to much speculation, but was never solved. He was the first judge in France to have been assassinated since World War II. His death inspired the French film Le Juge Fayard dit Le Shériff (1977), directed by Yves Boisset

Yves Boisset

Yves Boisset is a French film director and scriptwriter.French director Yves Boisset began his career as an assistant director. After working with such directors as Hossein, Cioampi and Clement, he began directing short films until the late 1960s when he made his feature film debut...

.

Life

Renaud was born in Hao Giang, Tonkin

Tonkin

Tonkin , also spelled Tongkin, Tonquin or Tongking, is the northernmost part of Vietnam, south of China's Yunnan and Guangxi Provinces, east of northern Laos, and west of the Gulf of Tonkin. Locally, it is known as Bắc Kỳ, meaning "Northern Region"...

, Vietnam. The son of a doctor, and descendant of an aristocratic lineage one of whom was physician to King Louis XV, he studied first in Toulouse

Toulouse

Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

 and then in Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

, before joining the French Resistance

French Resistance

The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...

 in Laives

Laives

Laives is a town and a comune in South Tyrol in the Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, located about 45 km northeast of the city of Trento and about 8 km south of the city of Bolzano.-Coat-of-arms:...

 in 1943. After the war, he served in the colonies before returning to Lyon in 1966, where he was appointed principal judge of the palais de justice in 1972. He was married with two sons.

Death

He was shot with three bullets from a Geco.38 special (two into the neck at close range) by three killers in a car on 3 July 1975 at 2:42 in the morning, before his house, la Vigie, located at 89 montée de l'Observance, in 9th arrondissement of Lyon. The crime was investigated by Georges Fenech

Georges Fenech

-Biography:Born to a Maltese father and Italian mother in Sousse in Tunisia, in 1963 Fenech's family was repatriated in France, where they settled in Givors. After studying for a law degree, he started a career as a judge...

. The killers have never been formally identified though strong suspicions exist.

His tomb, located in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, was desecrated in April 2007.