French serial-killer 'expert' admits he made up his experience — even the murder of his nonexistent wife

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A famous author in France known as a serial-killer expert, according to reports, divulged that most of his life and work are fake — including the murder of his nonexistent wife.

“I have reached the moment of coming clean. My lies have weighed me down,” 67-year-old Stéphane Bourgoin told Paris Match magazine. “Sometimes I make films in my head.”

An online investigation from an anonymous forum 4ème Oeil Corporation discovered his lies, the Guardian reported.

His name was attached to more than 40 crime books; he had claimed that he interviewed more than 70 serial killers.

Describing himself as a mythomaniac, he admitted he had no training with the FBI, never interviewed Charles Manson and not played professional soccer for the Parisian team Red Star.

Stéphane Bourgoin in 1997. (Louis MONIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

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The story of his fake wife was based on Susan Bickrest, who he fleetingly knew before serial killer Gerald Stano murdered her in Florida in 1975.

“It was bull—t that I took on,” Bourgoin told newspaper 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.”

He confessed his lies were driven by his desire to be popular.

“I am profoundly and sincerely sorry. I am ashamed of what I did, it’s absolutely ridiculous,” he told Le Parisien.