French scandal: I am ashamed

Stephane Bourgoin (67) is a famous writer, television profile, and murder expert in France. Now, however, the scandal is a fact, and the credibility of the profile’s numerous books and television documentaries and his own reputation has been shattered.

On his own instagram account, he apologizes, but at the same time writes that the scope of the criticism is surprising.

“I don’t understand this wave of hatred, the lynching and the complete lack of objectivity,” he writes.

The career that he built over several decades in the French public is based, among other things, on the following:

• He has interviewed more than 70 serial killers, including Charles Manson.
• He has training at the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.
• That his wife was murdered in the United States in 1976.
• He has written 50 books, according to his own website.
• Well used as an expert in television crimes.
• Former soccer professional.

Police conference

Bourgoin’s reputation as a forensic expert must have been so great that even the French National Police College used him as a visiting professor for aspiring police officers for many years. He also traveled to France on conference tours.

The card house collapsed

The pressure on Bourgoin increased, and in several interviews with French newspapers, he now admits that:

• The wife has never existed. Her story is based on a woman named Susan Bickrest, whom she met in a Florida bar. Bickrest was killed in 1975 by serial killer Gerald Stano.
• He never trained with the FBI.
• The contents of many of the serial killer books he has “written” are stolen from American research and serial killer literature.
• He has never interviewed Charles Manson and has encountered far fewer serial killers than he claims, only around ten, according to Le Parisien.
• He has never been a soccer professional.

Ashamed

Bourgoin has conducted numerous interviews in recent times in which he expresses shame and remorse.

– Lies have been a heavy duty on my shoulders. It’s time to settle down, Bourgoin said in his first interview with Paris Match last week.

In an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien on Tuesday the Bourgoin plane again. He described himself there as a mythomaniac.

– I admit everything and I am ashamed to have lied and covered things up. That my wife was murdered is nonsense. She was never my lifemate, but one I liked once and met five or six times in Daytona Beach, she said.

For Le Figaro newspaper, Bourgoin says he needs psychological help. He also believes that lies are ridiculous.

– If you look at all the work I’ve done, it should have been enough. I exaggerate and lied about my life because I always felt that I had never really been loved, he says.

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