Murder In Marseilles (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

One morning, in January of 1990, a man walked into a police station in Marseille, France, clutching a newspaper that was rolled up in his fist. He went right up to the desk, and he said that he'd seen a sketch of a murder suspect in the paper that morning, and he knew who it was. He then unrolled the newspaper, revealing the composite sketch that was in the paper, and he held it right up next to his own face. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious, delivered in story format, and you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the follow buttons house, and replace all their toilet paper with sandpaper. Okay, let's get into today's story. At 5pm on May 18, 1988, a 71-year-old hospital director named Leon Smoo, carried his briefcase through the halls of the medical clinic that he owned in the city of Marseille, France. He was about to go home after a long, stressful day of business calls and paperwork. As he walked, he passed by various doctors and nurses who were all hard at work, and they all, you know, when they saw Leon's, they would nod at him, and Leon's, he would nod back. And at some point, Leon's turned a corner into the lobby, where he saw several security officers and guard dogs were stationed right by the entrance, and they were screening each person that came inside. Now, Leon's knew that, to some people, the security in this clinic might seem like overkill, but to him, it felt necessary to keep everybody here safe. So, Leon's himself was not a doctor. He was not in healthcare really at all. He was a businessman, and he'd gone into private healthcare because it was very lucrative, but in recent years, it had also become very competitive and cutthroat. There was now a lot of governmental red tape that made it nearly impossible to open new clinics in Marseille, so existing clinic owners actually had to buy other already operational clinics if they wanted to expand their businesses. And over the past few years, one of Leon's primary competitors, a doctor named Jean Shiraki, who owned a lot of other private clinics in Marseille, had become really, really aggressive about trying to buy Leon's. Leon's, though, did not want to sell. He wasn't ready to retire yet, and when he did retire, he'd considered leaving his clinic to his daughter, Catherine. She was a doctor, and she had a head for business, so Leon's thought she might be interested in taking things over, versus, you know, a private sale. But, despite expressing his intentions to Shiraki, Shiraki had continued to pressure Leon's and try to get him to sell, and Leon's was becoming afraid of just how far his fierce competitor would go to get what he wanted. After all, Leon's knew that Shiraki was really powerful and very well connected in town, and there were even rumors that he had ties to organized crime. And so, out of an abundance of caution that really came from this general tension/fear with Shiraki, Leon's had installed all of these security measures, the cameras, the hired guards, the dogs. He'd even replaced the windows in his office, with a one-way mirror, so nobody could spy on it. And so, even though Leon's, to some degree, believed he was doing all this, to protect the people that worked for him, it still caused a lot of tension between Leon's and his employees. It just seemed like he was becoming sort of crazy and paranoid, and because his staff clearly thought he was becoming paranoid and sort of wacky, it made him lash out at his staff, and he distrusted everybody around him. He was sort of like this grumpy old man, and he knew that a lot of the doctors probably wished he would just retire already, that he was becoming sort of a nuisance, even though to him he was just being a responsible business owner. And so, with all this tension going on inside the clinic, Leon's was beginning to get into these sort of awful fights with some of the people he worked with, and just were at odds with what he was doing and how he was behaving. And in particular, Leon's had gotten into a few fairly high-profile public fights, including one, with one of his most high-ranking administrators, a man named Mark Galiazzi, and that fight had basically destroyed their relationship, even though Mark still worked at the clinic. They just now couldn't interact with each other. And so, as Leon's is making his way out of the clinic this day, it's on his mind that a lot of people here are waving and being nice to him, and he's waving back. But he knows that people don't really necessarily like him here. But you know what? He's had a stressful day, and at this point he just wants to get through security, get out to his car, and go home. So, he walked out to his beautiful white Mercedes car, he unlocked the door, and he got into the driver's seat. He said his briefcase down on the seat next to him, and then he started the engine. But, as he pulled out of the parking lot, out onto the road, another car suddenly appeared from a side street. And before Leon's could even react, it veered into Leon's lane, and stopped right in front of his car, blocking his path. Seconds later, a woman walking down the street outside of Leon's clinic, her two loud bangs right behind her. She turned, and she saw a white Mercedes, stopped in the middle of the street, and there was a man standing by its front bumper, pointing a hunting rifle at the windshield of the car. The woman instinctively ducked for cover behind a telephone pole, but also sort of watched as the man with the rifle ran to another car that was stopped nearby, and he climbed into the passenger seat, and they sped away. And once they were gone, the woman slowly stood up from behind cover, and she walked a little bit closer to the Mercedes, and she saw there were two bullet holes in the windshield. And through the shattered glass, she saw there was a man in the driver's seat who was slumped over, and blood was clearly pouring out of his head. At this point, the woman turned, and ran down the street, screaming for someone to call the police. The next morning, Detective Rishar Zardumi of the Marseille Crime Division, sat at his desk, reviewing crime scene photos from a shooting that had occurred yesterday right outside of a medical clinic. Now Zardumi had not gotten to look at the scene in person, but he was told that the victim had already been identified. It was actually the owner of the clinic. It was Leon's move, and the officers who responded, believed this shooting, was a gang hit. And Zardumi agreed that this did seem like organized crime, because at this point in 1988, Marseille was the epicenter of organized crime and corruption in France. And since Zardumi had, by this point, been on the force for decades, he was very tapped in to the city's criminal underworld. So he knew firsthand that gang hitmen would typically ambush their victims with hunting rifles, and then drive away, which according to witnesses that had been interviewed at the scene, that was exactly what had happened in this case. The responding officers had also found a hunting rifle that had been tossed out into the street just a few blocks away from the crime scene, and forensics had confirmed it was the murder weapon. But that was about all they had so far, because while they had found the getaway car nearby as well, it had actually been set on fire, which meant that any forensic evidence that might have been found in the car had burned up. Zardumi knew that when it came to professional hit cases, the victims often turned out to be gangsters themselves, who had gotten into trouble with their associates. But Leon's, the victim, did not seem to fit that profile. He was a successful, upstanding businessman and a well-known name in the healthcare industry. And that was actually what had already turned this case into front-page news in France. Because Marseille's private healthcare industry was notoriously competitive, it was really compelling for people to read about how one of its members had been gunned down in broad daylight. It's like, wow, it's so competitive, they're killing each other now. Even less than 24 hours, multiple news outlets had caught wind of this murder and claimed it was some sort of business feud. They'd even given it a catchy name, the clinic wars. But Zardumi, you know, he had enough experience that he was not ready to simply jump to conclusions here. Now, he was pretty confident that this was a hit based on everything they've been told so far. At this point, anybody could have ordered it. He knew that a ton of high-profile business owners in Marseille had secret ties to organized crime, so it could still be gang-related, or it could be a family issue where some kind of personal dispute. To get to the bottom of this, Zardumi decided the first person and best person to talk to was Leon's own daughter, Catherine, who he'd found out was actually a doctor herself, and she worked at the clinic that Leon's owned. Which meant she not only might be able to tell him about her father's personal life, but also his professional life as well. On the morning of May 19, 1988, so a day after Leon's move was killed, Detective Rishar Zardumi sat down in the living room of Leon's daughter, Dr. Catherine Mue. Catherine was sitting across from him, and her face was visibly red and puffy from all the crying she'd been doing. Zardumi explained what the investigation had found so far, including his theory that Catherine's father's murder appeared to be a professional hit. And when he said that, Catherine just looked confused and said that that did not make any sense to her. And she said her dad had never been involved in anything illegal, so she couldn't understand why gangsters would be after him. But when Zardumi asked if her dad had any enemies, Catherine said that her dad had been involved. eyes grew wide like she just thought of something. And then she said, actually, yes, he did. There was a man named Dr. John Shiraki, who had been trying to buy her father's clinic for years, but she said her dad had always said no. But Shiraki was not taking no for an answer, and there was like this growing tension between them because of this. Zardumi when he heard this, I mean, he perked up because he knew who Dr. Shiraki was. I mean, everyone in Marseille did. He was a very rich and successful business tycoon and sort of a local celebrity. I mean, he was constantly seeking out the media and giving interviews about his health clinic empire. Catherine said that Shiraki had been buying up every private clinic in Marseille, and supposedly he was furious that her dad just wouldn't budge. And so now she wondered if maybe he had killed her dad to just get him out of the way. And furthermore, Catherine said, you know, she was in line to take over her father's clinic now that he was dead. And so was she now at risk of being Shiraki's next target? Like she was scared. And at this, Zardumi paused, because Catherine, she was on to something. It did seem like Shiraki had motivation to want Leon's debt, and he obviously had the money to hire a hitman if he wanted to. But if Catherine was set to inherit the clinic, that gave her motivation too. She had just as much at stake as Shiraki did in some ways. But at the same time, Catherine did not strike him as a very strong suspect. Number one, she seemed genuinely devastated. Plus, she already had a very successful career of her own and didn't seem like she really needed the clinic at all. But Zardumi didn't have enough information to truly eliminate anyone at this point. And so soon after that, he stood up to leave and told Catherine he would be in touch. That afternoon, when Zardumi got back to the police station, there was a crowd of reporters and photographers all waiting for him at the door. And as soon as they saw him, they began immediately peppering him with questions all about the case. And Zardumi, he pushed his way through the crowd without saying a word and went inside to his office. There, he sat back down at his desk and tried to put all the media pressure out of his mind. Now, he still needed to question the clinic's employees to see if any of them might have had an issue with Leon's. And he wanted to call the criminal informants in his own network that he had amassed over the years of being on the force to check if they'd heard about a hit being put out on Leon's. I mean, there were dozens of gang-related murders in Marseille every year. And it was entirely possible that Leon's was maybe living a double life that even his daughter didn't know about. But Zardumi's biggest suspect right now was definitely Dr. Shiroki. Zardumi had been thinking about what Catherine had said. And Shiroki had the most to gain from Leon's death. Shiroki was pretty publicly obsessed with growing his business empire and sort of bragging about it. And he had the money and connections to do basically whatever it took to beat his competitors, like maybe to include hiring a hitman. But despite his intense suspicions at this point, Zardumi knew that bringing such a powerful high-profile suspect in for questioning right now was a bad idea. He had to move carefully and wait until he had solid evidence before confronting him, because the media was going to go wild if they found out Shiroki was a suspect. So he wrote up a request to secretly wiretap Shiroki's phone. Zardumi hoped that if Shiroki was involved in Leon's murder, this would be the best way to catch him saying something that was incriminating and would allow him to bring him in as a suspect. A week later, Zardumi was back at his desk when his phone rang. And when he answered it, the man on the other end said that he had a tip in the murder of Leon's move. And Zardumi was intrigued, because after a week of investigating this murder, he had zero new leads. He'd ultimately decided to rule out Catherine the daughter since he hadn't found anything that connected her to the crime. And after a week of secretly listening to Dr. Shiroki's phone calls, the police had not overheard anything to suggest that he was involved in Leon's death either. Zardumi had also spoken to some of Leon's employees at the clinic, and he'd found out that a lot of his staff didn't like him. He apparently had a temper, and he'd been growing increasingly paranoid and distrustful. But despite that, none of the clinic's employees seemed like serious suspects here. They just didn't necessarily like their boss. And on top of all that, none of the criminal informants Zardumi had spoken to knew anything about Leon's murder. So he didn't seem to have any direct ties to any of the city's gangs. But now, this tipster on the phone said that one, this was a hit for hire, and two, he knew who ordered the hit. It was Dr. Shiroki. And when Zardumi heard this, he just said his pen down to disappoint it, because he'd been hoping for a new lead. But this caller was really just giving him a name, Shiroki, that he had already been very suspicious of, and had already considered him in the whole hit for hire routine. And for the most part, Shiroki had been ruled out here. So this was sort of a useless call. And so Zardumi was about to hang up on the sky. When the caller said, "Wait, I have something else." I also know the name of the shooter that Shiroki hired. And at this, Zardumi paused, and he picked his pen back up again. And then the caller told him exactly who Shiroki apparently had hired, and how the two men had gotten to know each other. And by the time Zardumi hung up with the sky, he was buzzing with excitement. And he finally had a new trail to follow, and he was hopeful that this one would actually lead him somewhere. And even though Shiroki at this point had not said anything and criminating on his personal phone, Zardumi wondered if maybe his hitman, if this was his hitman, would be as careful. So Zardumi immediately ordered another wire tap on this, this new suspect's phone, the supposed hitman, and then he waited. But this tip ultimately went nowhere. The police spent months following up on this lead, and listening to hours and hours of phone calls, and never overheard anything that connected either man to Leon's murder. And the supposed hitman even had an alibi. So even though Dr. Shiroki was still a suspect, Zardumi really couldn't find any evidence to actually link him to the murder. And even though he would continue to keep on searching, after a year and a half, with really no new leads at all, and everything just turning into a dead end, the case got shelved and went cold. On the morning of January 17, 1990, so a few months after Leon's case kind of officially went cold, and now almost two years after the murder itself, Detective Zardumi was at home when he turned on the TV in his living room to listen to the news while he got ready for work. At some point, he went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, and as he was doing that, he could still hear the TV, but he wasn't really paying close attention. Until suddenly, a couple of words from the TV caught his attention. There had been another medical industry-related murder the night before. Zardumi went right back into the living room, and he saw on the TV there were two police sketches of the murder suspects on the screen. The reporter was saying that a local surgeon and city councilman, a man named Dr. John Jacques Pichar, had been gunned down in his car after leaving a restaurant with some of his colleagues, and the killer had apparently shot Pichar with the hunting rifle, and then got in the passenger seat of a getaway car and sped away. Then, the reporter said something else that really got Zardumi's attention. The victim, Dr. Pichar, worked in a private clinic that was owned by Dr. John Shoraki. Zardumi couldn't believe it. This murder happened the same way as Leons' with the same type of weapon, the whole thing was the same, and both victims had ties to Dr. Shoraki. On January 24, 1990, so a week after the second clinic war's murder, Detective Rishar Zardumi was at his desk comparing the newer case file with Leons'. Dr. Pichar had been shot outside of a busy restaurant, so there were a few witnesses that had actually seen the shooter and also the getaway driver, and the police had released composite sketches of those two suspects that so far neither had been identified, and that was about all the investigators had so far. But the fact that both hits were carried out virtually the exact same way, and that both victims had a connection to Dr. Shoraki was enough for Zardumi to feel pretty certain there had to be a link between these two cases. But just then, an officer barged into his office, and he told Zardumi that a man had just come into the station claiming to be one of the suspects in Pichar's murder. A few minutes later, Zardumi walked into an interrogation room where this man with a mustache and graying hair was sitting, and the first thing Zardumi noticed about this guy is he looked really nervous. And the other thing he noticed was that this guy also did look a whole lot like one of the two suspects in the composite sketches, so he figured this was definitely not a prank. But Zardumi couldn't imagine why a professional killer potentially would just walk into the station and turn himself in. So Zardumi took a seat, and he asked the guy why he'd come in. And the man said there'd been this horrible mix-up, and he was here to clear things up. The man said his name was Marcel Long, and he was one of the people in those composite sketches. But he had nothing to do with the murder. He said he was just eating at the restaurant where Pichar was killed that night, and witnesses must have identified him as the shooters are accomplice by mistake. Zardumi was immediately very skeptical, so he just quickly excused himself from the room, and he went down the hall to a computer terminal to look Marcel's name up in their database and when he's saw the results for this guy? His eyes went wide because Marcel had this really lengthy criminal record, meaning he'd served 12 years in prison for manufacturing heroin for a major gang. It was just way too much of a coincidence that a literal known gangster would have been mistakenly identified at a crime scene. Zardumi thought it was much more likely that Marcel realized he was likely about to be identified and was trying to get ahead of it. So, Zardumi simply went back into the interrogation room and told Marcel he was under arrest. Later that day, detectives Zardumi was walking through the living room of Marcel's house, which was being torn apart by a forensics team. They were looking for any evidence that would tie Marcel to Pashar's murder or at least lead them to the person or people who had masterminded the hit, but so far they were striking out. At some point, Zardumi found his way over to a desk and began searching through a pile of papers that were on top of it, and most of them were just bills or junk mail or to-do lists. But, there was one piece of paper he found with a name on it that stood out to Zardumi. Raje Mimoli. Zardumi recognized that name because he'd actually questioned Raje 20 years earlier for a series of heists that Raje was involved in. And so, Zardumi did the math and realized Raje must have gotten out of prison just a few years ago. So, theoretically, Raje would have been hanging around Marseille and maybe looking for work at the time of both Pashar and Leon's murders. A few days later, Zardumi walked down the hallway of the police station toward an interrogation room. The past few days of the investigation had been very intense. Marcel Long, the very nervous man who had shown up at the police station, claiming there was this miscommunication that people were misidentifying him as one of the suspects, while ultimately, in the past few days, he actually had confessed that he was involved in Pashar's murder. But, he said he didn't actually pull the trigger. It was his accomplice, Raje Mimoli. And so, Raje had been arrested too, and while searching through his house, detectives had found some documents referencing Leon's move's health clinic. And so now, Zardumi and, frankly, the rest of the investigation felt really confident that Raje and Marseille were responsible for both Leon's and Pashar's murders. And so now, Zardumi was just hoping that Raje would give him the last puzzle piece that he needed, the name of the person who had ordered the hits. And so now, as Zardumi stepped inside of the interrogation room where Raje was being held and sat down across from him, Raje simply raised an eyebrow and made it a point to seem very unbothered that he was there at all, like this is no big deal for me. But Zardumi remembered Raje from their interactions 20 years earlier, and he also remembered the best way to get him to crack was to just rile him up. So he told Raje exactly why he'd been arrested. That his accomplice Marseille long he'd rat it him out. And at this, Raje was furious, like he hadn't heard that yet, and he sat up and his mouth fell open and disbelief. He was so mad that he just began going off on this tirade and he told Zardumi all about who was really responsible for the murders. And Zardumi just sat back and listened as Raje ranted and raged and told him everything Zardumi needed to know about who had ordered both hits and why. And by the time Raje was done, Zardumi realized that he and his investigators had been half right all along. These two murders, the Leonse murder and the Pashar murder, they were connected, but not in the way they had thought. Based on interviews and forensic evidence, this is what police believe happened to Leonse move on May 18, 1988. A little before 5 p.m., Raje Mimoli and Marseille long waited inside of a car parked across the street from Leonse's clinic. Raje was in the passenger seat and had a clear view of the main entrance. And as soon as he saw Leonse walk out that door and head into the parking lot, he grabbed his rifle and told Marseille to get ready. And when Leonse pulled out onto the street, Marseille zoomed forward and blocked his car. At which point, Raje jumped out of the passenger seat, he raised his rifle and he shot Leonse twice through the windshield. Leonse immediately slumped over and Raje, he rushed back to the car, hopped inside and he told Marseille to go. After that, the killers sped off down the street, tossing the gun out the window as they went and then they eventually parked the car, doused it in gasoline and Raje lit a match and dropped it. And as the car burst into flames, Raje jogged to a pay phone that was right down the block. Meanwhile, the real killer, the one who had masterminded this hit, waited by the phone in their office. In the hallway outside, they could hear various medical machines beeping in a few nurses talking to each other as they pushed a stretcher. The mastermind tried to stay calm, but it was very difficult to do that. I mean, their heart was racing. If all went according to plan in the next few minutes, well, they'd be one step closer to getting everything they wanted. And so the mastermind tapped to pan against their desk nervously and tried to breathe slowly, counting each second as it ticked by. And then finally, their phone rang. They picked it up and they heard Raje's voice come over the line. And he said the job was done. At which point, the mastermind hung up and breathed a huge sigh of relief. And then got back to work. It would turn out that Leon's murder was related to his clinic, but it was not orchestrated by Dr. Shoraki. At least not directly. Shoraki was sort of indirectly involved. The mastermind was one of Leon's own employees, Mark Galliazzi, one of the senior administrators who'd gotten into a big blow-up fight with Leon's about selling his clinic and retiring that, you know, the fight had destroyed their relationship. Well, Dr. Shoraki had asked Mark to help him convince Leon to sell his clinic. And in exchange, Shoraki had promised to make Galliazzi the clinic's new director once he took it over. But no matter how hard Mark Galliazzi tried, he could not change Leon's mind. And he got so frustrated that he went off completely on his own and took care of the problem himself. What he did is he turned to an ex-employee of the clinic, who had recently been hired at the clinic and then also fired at the clinic. It was Raje Mimoli, and he knew that Raje had a criminal record, a bad temper, and was in desperate need of work, so he asked Raje to kill Leon's for him, and he would pay him to do it. And so Raje agrees, he carries out this murder, and coincidentally, Raje Mimoli was also later hired to kill Peshar, but that murder actually had nothing to do with Leon's. It had nothing to do with the clinic wars or Shoraki or anything. It was totally unrelated. Raje had been hired by a political competitor of Peshar, who wanted to take his spot on the city council. And so ultimately, Leon's and detectives are doomy had both been so focused on Shoraki as being this big threat, that they didn't see the real threat hiding right inside of Leon's own clinic. In 1994, Raje Mimoli was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Leon's mou and Jean-Jacques Peshar, and Marcel Long was sentenced to five years as an accomplice. As for Marc Galiazi, the mastermind behind Leon's murder, he was sentenced to 14 years for ordering the hit. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole LaCasio. This episode was written by Kate Gallagher, story editing by Kate Murdoch, research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Huss, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano, research and fact-checking supervision by Steven Ear, audio editing and post-produced by Whit LaCasio and Jordan Stidem, production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kiner, theme song Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast, and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we've put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day, and trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and add free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So, that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.