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