Nicolas Claux and the Murder of Thierry Bissonnier

Most of what has been published about this case is not about Thierry Bissonnier. It is about the man who killed him, and about a nickname, the “Vampire of Paris,” that grew up around that man’s own descriptions of himself. Crime Library itself spells his surname two ways. This file starts with him because the record starts with him: the only crime for which a French court convicted Nicolas Claux is the killing of Thierry Bissonnier.¹²⁶

What can be said about him with confidence is short, and this file does not stretch it. He was a man living in eastern Paris in the autumn of 1994. He had been in contact with his killer through Minitel, France’s national videotex network, which by 1997 had some 25 million users and carried popular chat services. He was killed in his own home. Crime Library, the only source that gives his age, put it at 34.²⁶¹³

Almost everything that made this case notorious comes from Claux himself: his accounts of working in hospital mortuaries, of entering graves, of taking blood and human tissue. A retired investigating magistrate has since said that part of that account checked out. A crime writer who cited the case documents wrote that they mention none of it. According to Crime Library, he was never convicted of any of it.²⁶⁷

So this file keeps two registers apart. In its own voice it states only what a court decided. Everything else is attributed to the person who said it, with the date and the publication, so a reader can weigh each claim by where it came from.

Two French publications name him and place the killing in a flat in the 11th arrondissement, in eastern Paris. Both date it to 1994. Le Nouveau Détective adds that his killer had been in contact with him through Minitel before that day.¹²

That is the verified core. It is not much, and the thinness is itself part of the story. Even Crime Library, the fullest English-language account, conceded that “reports on the life Thierry led are rather sketchy.” No reporting from the time of the killing or the trial surfaced in the archives TDSH searched, and nothing the family may have said publicly was found. The rest of what is known about him comes from a single English-language feature, which this file credits each time it is used.⁶¹⁶

Le Parisien called the killing « un assassinat homophobe » (“a homophobic assassinat”) in March 2025, and Le Nouveau Détective, writing two days later, called it « un meurtre homophobe ». Those are the papers’ characterizations. TDSH has not seen the judgment and cannot say whether the court made any finding about motive. Claux, for his part, has denied it: “I’m not homophobic,” he told an interviewer in 2020.¹²⁷

This matters for how Thierry Bissonnier is remembered. Minitel’s chat services were a common way for strangers in France to meet in the 1990s, and it was through Minitel that his killer reached him. Whatever Claux later said about his reasons, and he has said several contradictory things, nothing in any source suggests that Thierry Bissonnier did anything other than agree to meet someone he had been talking to.²⁶¹³

The criminal case is closed. Claux was convicted, sentenced, imprisoned and released; the sources reviewed for this file do not mention an appeal. He is living. Reporting from March 2025 describes him as 52 and free.²⁴⁵

Nothing in the public record TDSH examined suggests that any other charge is pending against him, and this file connects him to no other death. He was convicted of one killing.¹²

One conviction for assassinat. A 12-year sentence. Release in 2002. These are the facts reported consistently by French publications across two decades, and they are the only facts this file states in its own voice about what Nicolas Claux did.¹²³⁴⁵

Crime Library, which says it drew on the case documents, adds the other counts in the verdict: armed robbery, fraudulent use of a cheque, falsification of a driving-licence photo and an attempt to defraud a retailer. Those are credited to Crime Library because no French source TDSH could open lists them.⁶

The childhood, the hospital mortuaries, the graves, the blood, the tissue he says he ate, the motive: all of it comes from Claux’s own narrations, written for Crime Library, and from interviews he gave later. These are statements by a convicted man about himself, they have changed over time, sometimes within a single account. This file reports them only as his words.⁶⁷

According to Crime Library, Nicolas Claux was born in 1972 in Cameroon, the son of a French bank employee whose work took the family abroad for long stretches. Crime Library says the family moved to London when he was about five and to the southern part of Paris when he was seven. Le Nouveau Détective gave his age as 52 in March 2025, which fits a birth in 1972.⁶²

Beyond those outlines, the story of his early life is his own. It reaches readers through two channels: the written narrations he supplied for Crime Library’s feature, which its author says were edited and arranged for flow, and interviews he gave much later. Neither is independent of him.⁶⁷

Claux has said that he joined the army at about 18 and, on returning, decided on a career in the funeral trade. He has said that he worked in “a couple of morgues” in Paris hospitals when he was about 20. In the same 2020 interview he said that during that period he cut tissue from bodies in an autopsy room and ate it, and that while also working for a blood bank he took bags of blood home. “All these activities took place within a year,” he said.⁷

Those are his statements. Le Nouveau Détective reported in March 2025, in the conditional, that while working in a hospital mortuary Claux « aurait récidivé en prélevant des « tissus humains » pour les manger » (“allegedly did it again, taking ‘human tissue’ to eat it”), and wrote that those acts earned him the « Vampire de Paris » name. No source TDSH reviewed reports a conviction for any act in this card; Crime Library says he was never convicted of grave robbery or of stealing blood.²⁶

Thierry Bissonnier was killed in his flat in the 11th arrondissement in 1994. Le Parisien reported that Claux shot him several times with a .22 Long Rifle firearm. According to Crime Library, the date was October 4, 1994.¹²⁶

This file does not reconstruct the killing beyond those facts. The only detailed description of what happened inside the flat comes from the man convicted of it. It is not independent, it is not needed to understand the case, and repeating it would give his voice the last word over the victim’s death.

The penal code that came into force in France on March 1, 1994, distinguishes two kinds of intentional killing. Meurtre, « le fait de donner volontairement la mort à autrui » (“intentionally causing the death of another”), carried up to 30 years of imprisonment. Assassinat is meurtre committed with préméditation, and carried life imprisonment. The code defines premeditation as « le dessein formé avant l’action de commettre un crime ou un délit déterminé » (“the intention, formed before the act, to commit a specific crime or offence”).¹⁰¹¹

A conviction for assassinat therefore means the court found that the decision to kill was made before the act. It says nothing, in itself, about the reason. The motives Claux has offered over the years are set out in Section 12, and they do not agree with one another.¹⁰

According to Crime Library, in mid-October 1994 Claux tried to pay for an electronics purchase with one of Thierry Bissonnier’s cheques. Asked for identification, he produced the victim’s driving licence, into which he had inserted his own photograph. The clerk compared the signatures and noticed the fraud, and Claux left before police arrived. Crime Library reports that the verdict included fraudulent use of a cheque, falsification of the licence photograph and an attempt to defraud the retailer.⁶

Claux’s own later account adds one detail: that the shop had photocopied the licence, and that police enlarged the small photograph on it and circulated it to police stations across Paris.⁷

In France, an investigation into a crime as serious as murder is led by a juge d’instruction, an investigating magistrate. The government’s legal guide explains that such an investigation is mandatory for crimes, that the judge investigates « à charge et à décharge » (gathering evidence both for and against the suspect), can order psychiatric assessments and a reconstitution of the events, and ends by deciding whether to send the case to the cour d’assises for trial.¹²

The juge d’instruction in this case was Gilbert Thiel, who had become a judge in Paris in August 1994. In July 1995 he joined the anti-terrorism section of the Paris court, where he remained until his retirement on July 1, 2014. Crime Library reports that he chose to keep the Claux investigation after that move. Crime Library calls him a Brigade criminelle investigator; that is wrong. He was a magistrate, not a police officer.²⁶¹⁴¹⁵

Gilbert Thiel described the interrogations in 2025. As quoted by Le Nouveau Détective from his interview with Le Parisien, he said: « Quand il a commencé à raconter ça, je surveillais ma greffière qui était sur le point de tourner de l’œil (…) Au début, je ne le croyais pas trop, je pensais qu’il faisait ça pour se faire passer pour un fou. Mais ce qu’il avait dit était vrai. On a trouvé des mausolées fracturés et il manquait des morceaux de cadavre. »²

In English: “When he started telling that, I was watching my clerk, who was about to faint (…) At first I didn’t really believe him; I thought he was doing it to pass himself off as mad. But what he had said was true. We found mausoleums that had been broken open, and pieces of bodies were missing.”

This is the strongest corroboration of any part of Claux’s account, and it comes from the man who ran the investigation. It is also a recollection given about three decades after the events, quoted second-hand, and it does not say what charges, if any, followed.²

The two statements are not as far apart as they first look. Thiel says investigators found damaged tombs and missing remains. Lohr says the case documents he saw do not mention grave robbing, and that Claux was not convicted of it. Both could be true: an investigation can establish a fact that never becomes a count in the verdict.

Where they pull apart is on whether any of it is documented in the case file. TDSH has seen neither the file nor the judgment and cannot settle the point. What is certain is the limit both men agree on: the conviction was for the killing of Thierry Bissonnier and the crimes connected to it.²⁶

Claux himself has written that the search of his flat turned up a .22 handgun and human remains. That is his narration; this file does not repeat its detail.⁶

French law has its own offence for interfering with graves. The 1994 penal code, Article 225-17, punished « la violation ou la profanation » (“violation or desecration”) of tombs and graves with one year’s imprisonment, raised to two years where it was accompanied by an attack on the integrity of a body. Had such a charge been brought and proved, it would appear in the verdict as its own count. Crime Library, which lists the counts, says it does not.¹⁰⁶

Published sources disagree on the year in which Claux was tried and sentenced. TDSH searched for the judgment and for reporting published at the time of the trial and found neither, so this file does not state a year.¹⁶

The disagreement is not a small one. French publications writing between 2006 and 2025 mention one year in passing, in sentences about other things. A French crime weekly’s summary line gives a different year. Crime Library’s chronology of the investigation, if accurate, rules out the year the French papers give. None of these sources was written at the time of the trial, and none cites the judgment. Until the judgment or a contemporaneous report is found, any single year would be a guess presented as a fact.¹²³⁴⁵⁶

Crime Library reports that, according to Claux, a court-appointed team of psychiatrists and psychologists examined him and found a “borderline psychotic personality disorder.” The feature then adds that the experts “did not detect any psychic or neuropsychic disorders, which could have interfered with his discernment or control of his actions.”⁶

Claux has told a different story about the same evidence. In his narration of the trial he said that “psychosis was established,” and that he “could benefit from Rule 242, concerning diminished responsibility.” In 2020 he said his sentence was the result of “psychology,” and that he was, “according to them,” not able to fully understand what he was doing. Crime Library’s answer is direct: “the documents in the case do not confirm this.”⁶⁷

Assassinat carried a maximum of life imprisonment. Claux received 12 years. No source TDSH could verify explains how the court arrived at that figure. Claux attributes it to a finding of reduced responsibility; Crime Library says the documents do not confirm one. This file leaves the question open rather than repeat either explanation as fact.¹⁰⁶⁷

According to Crime Library, Claux was held after his arrest at Fleury-Mérogis, a remand prison south of Paris, and remained there until February 1999, when he was transferred to the Maison centrale de Poissy, a maximum-security prison northwest of Paris.⁶

By his own account, Claux adjusted his explanation of the killing at least once to improve his position in court. He told Crime Library that he gave the cemetery story because he could benefit from a plea of diminished responsibility. A narrator who says he once invented a motive for tactical reasons cannot be taken at his word on motive afterwards, and this file does not.⁶

The same caution applies to the more lurid parts of his account, in both directions. They may be partly true, as the magistrate’s recollection suggests. They may be partly invented, as Crime Library’s author suspected. What they are not is part of the judgment. The only motive a court is known to have found is the one built into the word assassinat: the decision to kill came before the act.²⁶¹⁰

In English the name is best known as the title of Crime Library’s feature, “Vampire of Paris: The Story of Nico Claux.” In French, Le Nouveau Détective wrote in March 2025 that the mortuary claims « lui vaudront le surnom de « Vampire de Paris » » (“would earn him the nickname ‘Vampire of Paris’”). TDSH has not established who first used it.⁶²

The French press has also attached harder labels. Le Télégramme described him in 2025 as « nécrophile et cannibale surnommé « le vampire de Paris » », and Le Parisien as « auteur d’actes de cannibalisme ». Those are the newspapers’ words. They describe what Claux has claimed and what has been alleged; no source TDSH reviewed reports a conviction for any such act. This file quotes them so readers can recognize them, and does not repeat them as its own.³¹⁶

“Vampire” is not a diagnosis either. As TDSH’s explainer on criminal vampirism sets out, the term is not a recognized psychiatric or legal category.

« (…) en 1994, l’année où Nicolas Claux a abattu de plusieurs tirs de 22 long rifle Thierry Bissonnier dans un appartement du XIe arrondissement de Paris. Un assassinat homophobe pour lequel il a été condamné à douze ans de prison. »¹

Translation: “(…) in 1994, the year in which Nicolas Claux shot Thierry Bissonnier dead with several .22 Long Rifle rounds in a flat in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. A homophobic assassinat for which he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.”

« Condamné à douze ans de prison (…) pour meurtre et libéré en 2002, accusé de profanations de sépultures suivies de mutilations et d’actes de cannibalisme (…) »⁴

Translation: “Sentenced to 12 years in prison (…) for murder and released in 2002, accused of desecrating graves followed by mutilation and acts of cannibalism (…)”. Note the verb: accusé, accused. The magazine does not say he was convicted of those acts. The elision removes a year this file does not state.

« Alors qu’il travaille au service mortuaire d’un hôpital (…), Nicolas Claux aurait récidivé en prélevant des « tissus humains » pour les manger. Ces faits lui vaudront le surnom de « Vampire de Paris ». »²

Translation: “While working in a hospital mortuary (…), Nicolas Claux allegedly did it again, taking ‘human tissue’ to eat it. These acts would earn him the nickname ‘Vampire of Paris’.” The verb aurait is the French conditional, the form used for an unproven allegation. The elision removes the hospital’s location.