Killer Lies: Chasing a True Crime Con Man (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

1
[sirens]
[Lauren Collins] If you're
an expert on serial killers,
the first thing people
ask you is, why?
And Stéphane Bourgoin
has this incredibly
compelling backstory,
that he had a companion who
was murdered by a serial killer
in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
[Lauren Collins]
This was a quest for him.
It was kind of a way for him
to look the worst of humanity
in the face.
It was a personal catharsis.
It was the confrontation
with these forces of evil
[sinister laugh]
that had wreaked
havoc in his life.
[prison buzzer]
[Stéphane Bourgoin] You know
my girlfriend was murdered.
[Tommy Lynn] I wanna
tell you sorry,
but I don't believe
in the word sorry.
[Lauren Collins] And the story
went a long way to establish
his credibility in
the public's eye.
He's got a profile in
the media, fervent fans,
and even the police
are asking, you know,
"Tell us about serial killers."
But there are a lot of people
that Bourgoin betrayed.
Like, I know that he knows
how much pain he caused people.
And he doesn't seem to care.
[sirens]
[birds singing]
[speaking in French]
[Maât] I should have
maybe have been a cop,
or a detective maybe.
But the 4th Eye, we
are not professionals.
None of us is in
the field of crime.
[Maât] But, the
truth is the truth.
And at the time when
we started to investigate
Stéphane Bourgoin, we just
want for him to admit that he
was lying all these years.
[Maât] But then we
start to realize that he
took advantage of people,
like Micki Pistorius.
People who were
not in a good place,
promoting himself
on her disadvantage.
He wants more fame
and more people,
more conferences, and so on.
Even if he didn't have
the material to make them.
For me it's unacceptable.
It's not really something you
can just brush aside and say,
"That's no big deal."
Because he will hurt more
people in the process.
[siren]
[Lauren Collins] At some point,
Stéphane Bourgoin
aligns himself with
The Serial Victims
Association.
This is an organization,
a community really,
made up of survivors and
of families who have lost
loved ones to serial killers.
And one of the most active
members of this association is
a woman named Dahina Sy.
[reporter] For his murderous
trail across this region of
France and Belgium,
he is known as the
Ogre of the Ardennes.
[Valak] At some point
during our investigation,
we notice that Bourgoin is
doing a lot of media-focusing
on the victims
of serial killers.
But just like everything else,
something feels off.
[Maât] The victims,
he used them as props
to promote himself.
And at the same time,
he was saying that,
"Yeah, my wife was
murdered by a serial killer."
[Maât] I think that he really
used that as an advantage.
Because in the French media,
nobody dared to critically
probe anything because
of the "poor guy".
[Maât] But, with Bourgoin,
of course,
it's a never-ending story.
A never-ending story of lies.
So his dead wife's story.
What if his wife was not
murdered by a serial killer
or other?
What if the murder is a lie?
[overlapping French news audio]
[Maât] My father was
really doting and loving
and really warm.
My mother was more like
the exact opposite.
She tend to have a
really quick hand when it came
to physical violence.
And she pushed me
through a window once.
But she was clever
because she never did it when
anybody was around.
[Valak] I started in the
military when I was 19.
I went to war.
I saw the sadness
of that destruction.
[Maât] Generally, you tend
to repeat what you have been
dealt with in life.
Or you take the exact opposite
and you became a really
advocate against it.
The Fourth Eye is exposing the
lies of someone who used those
lies to abuse and cheat people.
And we couldn't let
somebody profit from the
suffering of others.
[Maât] I mean, if you want
to protect the family,
you don't show the
picture at all.
[Maât] His story, it sounded
like a broken recorder.
Except for, there was always
a little detail changing,
which is a bit weird
when you think about it,
that the story was
never consistent.
[Valak] One day it's his wife,
the next day
it's his girlfriend.
The next day it's a friend,
it's never the same.
[Lauren Collins] The 4th Eye
had a hunch that the
Eileen story was the
foundational lie of his career.
It gave him credibility.
But not only
professional credibility,
it gave him
emotional credibility.
Here's someone in this
very sensitive space,
whom people can trust,
because he's been there.
And so the 4th Eye
knew that if they could
prove Eileen was a lie,
they could cut down
Bourgoin's legitimacy.
[various keystrokes]
[Valak] So, from that moment
on, we said to ourselves,
we're going to try to
find what we can find out
about this killer.
[Valak] Bourgoin always said
the killer of his girlfriend
was on death row in California.
[Valak] That he
killed sometimes ten.
[Valak] Sometimes
12 other people.
[Valak] We had been
working on this for months.
The conviction we had was
that this Eileen story was
just another Bourgoin lie.
We soon realized,
the only way we
could end his legitimacy,
was to expose his
lies to the press,
by contacting the media.
[Valak] So we wrote them,
the most popular ones in France.
[Maât] And also, we contacted
journalists that invited him
over all the time.
Pradel, Jacques Pradel.
[Valak] The goal, in fact,
was to stop him from taking
advantage of more victims.
[Maât] Everybody brushed us off.
Everybody.
[Lauren Collins] The
4th Eye felt betrayed,
they felt shunned.
The 4th Eye's been like
living and breathing this
story for months.
Here they thought,
"We're, like,
delivering this amazing thing
on a silver platter.
It's so important, like,
stop the presses."
Whereas for a journalist
on the other side of that,
people didn't
receive it that way.
I mean, they kind of
came out of nowhere.
And they were anonymous.
I mean they were
using pseudonyms.
It's not the ideal
scenario for somebody coming
to you with a story.
[Valak] Obviously, we
weren't editing pros.
We knew if these videos fail,
so does the 4th Eye.
[dramatic music playing]
[sirens]
[Lauren Collins] After
reaching out to the media and
being totally ignored,
the 4th Eye had to regroup.
I mean, in their world,
Bourgoin was like the king.
It felt personal to them.
And so, they decided they
were gonna take it to YouTube.
[Valak] Our title
is a bit provocative.
We called it Serial Mytho,
which means Compulsive Liar.
[Valak] We posted it at night.
[Valak] We say to ourselves
if tomorrow we get 100 views,
we'll be happy.
The next day, it starts
to go up, 500, 600, 700.
Not bad.
[Maât] And we were, like, wow,
it's spreading
like a drop of oil.
[Valak] So, we went
back to our files,
with all the lies
we've documented.
[Valak] We're going to try
to make a video once a week.
[Maât] It was like, wow.
People going,
"They are nobodies.
You are jealous.
You just want money."
[Lauren Collins] There's no
formal mechanism to punish
somebody who crosses
lines in this field.
I mean there's no disbarment,
there's no losing
your medical license.
It's up to the
audience really, the fans.
[Lauren Collins] Once people
start to kind of smell there's
blood in the water,
it's kind of a pile-on,
and there are all these
fans who are like,
combing through his
stuff, looking for clues,
trying to figure out
what he's covering up.
One of the kind of
most tantalizing clues in
some fans' eyes,
was his pseudonym,
Étienne Jallieu.
So Étienne Jallieu is a
pseudonym that Bourgoin used
for years on some
of his, kind of,
boundary-pushing books about
some really disturbing stuff.
A group of fans realized
that Étienne Jallieu was a
near-anagram for
"J'ai tué Eileen,"
which is "I killed Eileen"
in French.
And that seemed to
some people, like,
just way too much
of a coincidence.
[Valak] The biggest platform
that Stéphane Bourgoin had
was his Facebook.
So when he closed his page,
that cut off
communication with his fans.
[Maât] We had people submitting
to us that Étienne Jallieu
is the anagram of
"I killed Eileen."
For me, it was a
bit far-fetched.
I said, let's try not to be the
guy who is in the basement of
his mother, going,
"Ha, ha, ha, I'm gonna get you,
ha, ha, ha."
No.
That was not the goal of it.
[Maât] We never called him.
It was always in public.
And we were always
asking people on our page
to not harass him.
We wanted the facts
and only the facts.
[Valak] Every time
we published a video,
we hope it would create a buzz.
And when there's a buzz,
the journalists notice.
After months of work,
it paid off.
-We just went like
[sighs]
finally.
[Valak] Then, the
media took over.
[Valak] It was Stéphane Bourgoin
who became the story.
[Maât] The attention
of the media,
articles, and stuff,
once we got one,
it became a deluge.
[Sven] When the media
realized what we have done,
we felt relief and joy.
But we were angry because
the journalists had turned
a blind eye.
It's frustrating to have
given him so much viewership
when he didn't deserve it.
[Maxime Chattam] Some
friend of mine sent me a
text message and told me,
"Have you seen the
video about Stéphane Bourgoin
telling he is a liar?"
And I was like, "Nope."
And I went on the Internet,
and I watched it,
and I said, "Wow."
And I had to face the
truth that Stéphane Bourgoin
is probably a liar.
And I think a lot of people
felt this personal failure
because they knew him.
And actually, the truth
came from YouTube, you know,
it's not the journalists.
What I do remember,
is that I thought,
what is he going to do now?
[Lauren Collins] In
the spring of 2020,
you have a flurry of articles
come out about Bourgoin's lies.
And Bourgoin kind of lies
low and isn't really in the
public eye for a while.
Nobody's really sure, like,
how he's gonna respond to this.
And then, in May of 2020,
Paris Match,
which is like People Magazine,
combined with something like
what News Week used to be.
They drop their big, you know,
Stéphane Bourgoin exclusive.
And Paris Match has
this huge readership.
It's kind of the first time
that your average reader with
his café and croissant
in the morning,
is like hearing the
Stéphane Bourgoin story.
And it's Bourgoin for the first
time answering questions about
what exactly happened.
[Valak] When we saw the article
in Paris Match, we were happy.
It's a big deal.
We thought, it's done,
we've reached the goal.
It was our research and
evidence that forced him to
talk about his lies.
He definitely doesn't
admit to everything,
but he admits to a lot.
He admits to faking
FBI credentials.
[Valak] When he talks about
claiming he had parts of
Schaefer's body at home,
he says it's a joke.
For Eileen, he says
he invented the name,
but that someone he
knew really died.
With regards to Eileen, we said
we may never actually know.
We thought it's done.
[Sven laughs]
[Maât] The very
same evening, he posts.
And he said that he never
actually met that journalist
from the Paris Match.
I'm like, what?
[sarcastic chuckle]
What, what?
[Lauren Collins]
Once the story gets picked up
in the media,
the 4th Eye felt like they
delivered this bombshell.
But as soon as he
makes the confession,
he then kinda tries to unwind
it and walk it back by claiming
Paris Match has wildly
misrepresented him and can't be
trusted as a source.
It was all kind of fine points
of semantics rather than
anything of substance.
But nonetheless, to cast doubt
over the entire conversation.
[Valak] We looked at
each other and said,
"So he didn't get it at all."
[Maât] He's trying to climb
back under the limelight.
[Valak] We thought it would
be suicidal for the media to
invite him on again.
[Valak] He's done, he's gone,
we won't see him again.
[Valak] But I'm always
a pessimist when it
comes to Bourgoin.
[Lauren Collins] This is a
really serious inflection point.
His sense of responsibility,
or accountability,
or contrition doesn't seem
to have progressed at all.
And right in the
middle of, you know,
all of this stuff
being adjudicated,
he releases a new book.
I mean, he's doubling down.
[Valak] For me, it's the most
disgusting thing he's ever done.
[somber music playing]
[cell phone buzzing]
[sirens]
[Lauren Collins] After
Bourgoin's lies had become
public, he's still defiant.
But then, the story starts to
hit the international press.
An article comes out.
It's no longer this parochial
French culture story,
but an international
true crime affair.
You have pieces on CNN, VOX,
The New York Post,
Daily Mail, Fox News.
"French serial killer expert
admits his career is
built on lies."
"French serial killer
expert admits serial lies."
"Serial expert exposed."
I'd click, wouldn't you?
Bourgoin gets sidelined.
People start to distance
themselves from him.
Publishers drop him.
Media invites dry up.
Bourgoin is effectively
persona non grata.
And so the 4th Eye
feels vindicated.
[humming]
[Maât] Come on, yep.
That's one.
I hope that the fact that
we did what we did
Mm-hmm.
will prove to victims that
somebody cares about them.
Voila.
Which, I'm hoping it's
finally finishing.
Ah! Mmm.
When this all started
to get really serious,
I had just been diagnosed with
relapse of my breast cancer
that I had in 2012.
And I had to find a
way to occupy myself.
So maybe it carried
me a bit as well.
[Valak] It was a game.
24 hours, it was only Bourgoin.
Only Bourgoin.
My wife, I'm the first
to say it, she suffered.
There were tensions.
[Maât] I don't know how
the balance is exactly between
the good and the bad.
But I think I have been useful
because I love to be useful.
I don't have a crystal ball,
so I don't know
what the future holds.
But I think he knows
we are watching.
[in French] Sound, speed.
Quiet, please.
[in French] Interview, take one.
[Lauren Collins] Hello.
-I actually think it's a true
crime story about true crime.
Bourgoin was a voleur de vie,
a life thief.
He took every role in
the true crime repertory.
Victim, law enforcement, media.
[Lauren Collins]
Investigator, perpetrator,
and he was playing every single
one of them at the same time.
And the reason why this was
such an attractive scheme,
and the reason that
he got found out,
was because there was
such a devoted audience.
And that's why this story is
the perfect vehicle for getting
into some of these deeper
questions about true crime.
Like, why are so many people
obsessed with these stories
about murder and suffering?
And how did true crime
turn into the massive industry
that it is today?
-It's tragedy porn,
it's disaster porn,
it's violence porn.
And I think it relates to
the overflow of content in
the last ten years.
[Sarah Koenig] From This
American Life and WBEZ Chicago,
it's Serial.
One story told week by week.
I'm Sarah Koenig.
[Sarah Weinman] 2014
[Sarah Koenig] Here's a
case I've been working on.
[Sarah Weinman] the
first season of Serial aired.
And, I mean, it was such a
massive phenomena that did
introduce people to true crime,
who had never
thought that they would care
or be captivated.
There was The Jinx.
[Robert Durst] Nobody
tells the whole truth.
[Sarah Weinman] Then
came Making a Murderer.
And because all the episodes
were available at once,
[reporter] What do
you wanna say today?
[Steven Avery] I'm innocent!
-It paved the way for
bingeable content.
True crime.
This is not a new
phenomenon by any stretch.
All that has changed is how
people consume true crime,
or how they get obsessed.
[speaker] I think
like everyone else,
Making a Murderer,
The Jinx on HBO,
that whole time period made
me wonder why we weren't doing,
like, a comic con type
of thing for this genre.
[Sarah Weinman] Especially
in more recent years,
you end up with conventions
that cater to fans.
'Cause, let's face it,
it's not just about the
cases of the people,
but the genre
is a commodity.
[promo voice] So
many twists and turns.
Anything could happen.
My, my, my.
Introducing the ID Wine Club.
-Well, we are the
Wine and Crime Gals,
our podcast is Wine and Crime.
We chug wine, chat true crime,
and unleash our worst
Minnesotan accents.
-I also think people
are desperate for connection
and community, because there
is so little of it in real life,
that they go seeking
it out on the Internet.
[Sarah Weinman] True crime
becomes part of their identity
and becomes such fodder
for online sleuthing.
-Internet sleuths.
-Online web sleuths.
[Sarah Weinman] Fans that
come up with all sorts
of conspiracy theories,
alternate suspects.
[host] Some of these groups
have upwards of 20,000 members
and lots of theories.
-Citizen detectives
can be incredibly effective.
[Aja Raden] But, the 4th Eye,
if they'd been honest about it,
they would have admitted they
were entertaining themselves
and each other.
They acted it out.
-Alright, camera set.
[Aja Raden] That they were
these great investigators.
They redeemed it as a sort of
truth in the same way Bourgoin
wanted to be this famous
expert on serial killers,
so he told everyone he was.
Everybody in this story pretty
much told themselves a story
and then told it to
everybody else and,
like all good stories,
you tell them often enough,
you tell them long enough,
and most importantly,
you tell them to enough people,
and they just have a
funny way of becoming real.
Not true, but real.
[Lauren Collins] It's
been a year since the videos
the 4th Eye created
were published.
The reason the story won't die,
this kind of zombie
nature of the story,
is because Bourgoin
won't come clean.
I just felt like I needed
to pull out all the stops
to hear what he had
to say about it all.
I felt like he deserved
the right of reply.
Especially to survivors
and victims like Dahina Sy.
I tracked down the village
that I thought he lived in.
I took the train from Paris.
When we got there,
he was waiting outside.
He had this little storybook
cottage with, you know,
fruit trees in the garden.
And gingham curtains.
And there was just this
dissonance of
am I about to step
into this chamber of horrors?
[suspenseful music playing]
[Stéphane Bourgoin] What
would be your first question?
[director] Where do
you prefer to be?
Do you prefer to be in
that chair, or in this chair?
[Stéphane Bourgoin] I
prefer to be in your place.
Doing the interviews than
being interviewed myself.
Yes.