'I went quite mad and nobody knew it'

The murder of Trevor O'Keeffe in France in 1987 led his mother on a search for justice that helped other families, writes Lara…

The murder of Trevor O'Keeffe in France in 1987 led his mother on a search for justice that helped other families, writes Lara Marlowe

1980-1987 Seven young Frenchmen, six of them conscripts, go missing in the "Mourmelon Triangle" in the Champagne region. The defence minister dismisses as "a ridiculous joke" rumours that a serial killer is at work.

August 1987 The body of 19-year-old Irishman Trevor O'Keeffe is found in a shallow grave 100km from the "Mourmelon Triangle".

August 1988 Gendarmes arrest French army warrant officer Pierre Chanal (below) for the kidnapping and rape of Paläzs Falvay, a Hungarian hitch-hiker. Chanal serves six and a half years of a 10-year prison sentence.

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1990s Chanal is placed under investigation for the missing young men of Mourmelon, four of whom were under his orders. Eroline O'Keeffe is convinced Chanal killed her son. Under seven magistrates, the case goes nowhere.

1996-1999 DNA tests of 457 hairs found in Chanal's van in 1988 establish that at least three of the eight dead or missing men, including Trevor O'Keeffe, were kidnapped by Chanal.

November 2000 Caroline Lee, Trevor O'Keeffe's cousin and the daughter of Eroline's sister Noeleen Slattery, dies in mysterious circumstances in France.

October 2003 Chanal kills himself hours after his murder trial opens in Reims. He had attempted suicide twice before.

January 2005 Eroline O'Keeffe wins her case against the French state for "grievous error" and "denial of justice".

Over the years, the image has become so familiar: Trevor O'Keeffe in the summer of 1987, leaving for a holiday in France. He wears a knitted cap, jeans and jacket, a rucksack on his back. There's a gentle, slightly amused look in his eyes. His mother Eroline insisted on taking the snapshot, because she had so few pictures of her 19-year-old son, the one she still calls "my baby". It was the last photograph of Trevor alive.

"I remember seeing him going off all dressed up in his camping gear," Eroline recalled in Trevor: a Mother's Battle for Justice, broadcast by RTÉ in 1998. "I was laughing at him, saying, 'You'll never get a lift dressed up like that'. He said goodbye. He was as happy as Larry. 'Love you'. That's the last words I always say to any of them. When we finish a phone call, or going anywhere. It's always, 'Bye. I love you.' Those would have been my last words to him. Short and simple. 'Mind yourself. Be good. Don't get into trouble'."

WHEN INTERPOL TRACKED down the O'Keeffe family in Naas, Co Kildare, a few weeks later, Eroline couldn't believe that the strangled body found in a shallow grave in Picardy was her son's.

"I suppose I went quite mad and nobody knew it; only myself," she said. "You never think it happens to you. It only happens to other people."

Because her older sister Noeleen Slattery had a daughter living in France, Eroline enlisted Noeleen's help. The sisters became inseparable. Noeleen accompanied Eroline to Saint Quentin to identify Trevor's body from police photographs. Eroline remembers his staring eyes, how she wanted to close them.

When Eroline learned that a former French army warrant officer named Pierre Chanal had been arrested after kidnapping and raping a Hungarian hitch-hiker named Paläzs Falvay, she felt certain Chanal had killed Trevor. Chanal used his commando training to overwhelm Falvay, then sexually abused him for 20 hours, filming his own crime. Had gendarmes not happened on Chanal's VW van in a country lane, Falvay believes Chanal would have killed him.

Eroline and Noeleen were subjected to unbearable horrors: the exhumation of Trevor's body, when the digging machine broke the coffin and his decaying remains fell out in a torn plastic bag; being shown Chanal's pornographic video of the torture he inflicted on Falvay, knowing that Trevor probably endured similar abuse before he was strangled.

I first met Eroline O'Keeffe in 1997, for a report about Irish murder victims in France. I would write close to 20 articles about the Chanal case, often meeting Eroline and Noeleen in courtrooms, where invariably another postponement was announced.

Eroline had a powerful sense of dignity, thanking me once because this newspaper referred to her dead son as "Mr". She was furious with a colleague who erroneously reported that she'd cried. Through countless disappointments and setbacks, I never saw her weep. The passing years increased her self-confidence and resolve. In November 2000 I received a call from Eroline. "Caroline is dead," she announced.

Caroline Lee, Noeleen's daughter, was a jockey who spent her adult life in France. Noeleen has dark suspicions about a married couple who were close to Caroline, but has made little progress in seeking an investigation. Now Noeleen's grief was newer, more raw. It was Eroline's turn to help Noeleen.

Their brother Val and sister Daphne both died of cancer in March 2004. Noeleen walked with pain before and after a hip replacement operation. Yet for all their suffering, the sisters remained delightful company. Both women were generous, with a sharp sense of humour.

Over many meals together, we laughed often, rarely discussing their troubles.

The sisters' stamina and courage endeared them to the informal support network they met through tragedy: Dominique Rizet of Le Figaro; their French lawyers Eric Dupond-Moretti, Chérifa Benmouffok and Micheline Le Bochet; court-appointed interpreter Nicole Colne; volunteer translator Eamon O'Ciosáin from the French department at Maynooth College; and myself.

EROLINE'S DETERMINATION THAT Chanal be convicted was matched only by Chanal's determination to avoid facing the families of his victims in court. Early on the morning of October 15th, 2003, the second day of Chanal's murder trial, I turned on the television in my hotel room in Reims. Chanal had bled to death after cutting his femoral artery with a razor blade he'd hidden between his dentures and palate. I telephoned Eroline, knowing how devastating the news would be for her.

"We strove for truth and justice, and he robbed us of that, just as he robbed me of my son," she said calmly.

FOR MORE THAN a year after Chanal's suicide, Eroline continued chipping away at the French legal system, suing for miscarriage of justice. Thirty-five relatives of Chanal's French victims piggy-backed on her lawsuit. Had it not been for her, he would never have been brought to trial; had it not been for her, the French system would never have recognised its errors.

When the court finally found in Eroline's favour, on January 26th, 2005, we drank champagne in the bistro across the street from the Palais de Justice. The families of Chanal's seven other presumed victims also received compensation - tacit recognition that the court believed the dead army officer killed them.

Eroline once told me that after Chanal's trial she hoped to "close the book". Another son, Liam, gave up work in a bank and joined An Garda Síochána "because of what happened to Trevor". This summer, Eroline received a cheque for damages from the French government. It covers only a tiny portion of the thousands she spent in the quest for justice, but the symbolism was satisfying.

Eroline's book about Trevor's murder will be released next week. Now Mother Courage is steeling herself for a blitz of television and radio interviews. Reliving her son's death will always be excruciating, but after what Eroline and Noeleen have been through, a stint on the Late Late Show is nothing. If there is an after-life, their dead son and daughter know their mothers could not have done more for them.