Joseph-Thomas "Tommy" Recco (born 1934), nicknamed "Geronimo", is a French serial killer. He was sentenced to criminal imprisonment in 1962 for murdering his godfather two years earlier. Released in 1977, he killed three cashiers in Béziers in December 1979 and three other people, including an 11-year-old, in Carqueiranne in January 1980. He was sentenced in 1983 to life imprisonment without parole for these two triple murders. An inmate since 1980, Tommy Recco is one of the oldest detainees in France.
Crimes
Disappearance of three German tourists
More than half a century ago, the trial on the disappearance at sea of three young German tourists whom he would have walked near on the Ajaccian coast led nowhere.
First murder
In 1960 in Propriano, Corsica, Tommy Recco and his younger brother Pierre were fishing with dynamite. Suddenly, they were spotted by a marine guard, Casabianca, who happened to be Recco's godfather. For the fear of being caught poaching and fired, Tommy Recco panicked, rushed to the beach and shot his rifle at his godfather; and to make sure he was dead, he beat him several times with the butt of his rifle, taking a big stone and violently hit his head with the latter. Once back at the boat, Recco refused to explain himself to his younger brother who saw blood on his hands and on the rifle.
Propriano police went to the beach after discovering the body. They found green debris near the corpse, suggesting it came from the butt of a rifle. This green debris could come from a rifle belonging to fishermen or poachers, according to the police. Then a rumour spread that Recco had something to do with the murder. The police decided to interrogate him and realized he was the godson of the victim. Recco denied any involvement in the murder. Recco's family, led by his mother (already bereaved by the death of one of his brothers in a car accident and an infant's death), believed strongly in his innocence.
But a few months later, Pierre, Recco's brother, denounced the latter to the police by stating he heard the cries of the godfather on the day of the murder. Recco was questioned again and denied, but after several hours confessed to being the perpetrator of the murder. He said he did not want to pay a fine because of the dynamite fishing practice and he totally snapped. He rushed to the beach to kill the sea guard.
Following his confession, Recco retracted it. His trial took place on December 8, 1962. Sentenced to death but pardoned by Charles de Gaulle, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1977.
Triple murder of Mammouth cashiers
During his incarceration, Recco learned that many dramas had affected his family: one of his brothers, Toussaint, was killed in 1973 by his brother-in-law who had a dispute with him. Pierre, his younger brother, was killed in 1976 by two hooded men while anchoring his boat. One of his sisters, Francine, the wife of Toussaint's murderer, fell down the stairs and died a few months later.
Released on parole in November 1977, Recco moved to Marseille to start a new life and began working in a shop that sold diving suits. In December 1979, a massacre occurred at the Mammouth shop in Béziers, where three cashiers under the age of 30 were executed in the counting room of the store's recipe. In addition, 700,000 francs was stolen. The investigation proved difficult for police, as nobody had seen or heard anything. The police found that the victims had all been shot in the back of the neck and assumed that the killer(s) responsible were not afraid to act. The Béziers police brigade was unable to identify the perpetrator, and the investigation was halted.
Triple murder in Carqueiranne
Three weeks later, in January 1980 in Carqueiranne in the Var department, an 11-year-old girl heard her father arguing with another man. She decided to call her mother at work (a children's home) but the mother had already left. The little girl then spoke to the director of the home, who immediately warned the girl's closest neighbours. M. Coutrix, a neighbour of the girl, went to see what was going on. Worried about her husband not returning, Mme. Coutrix went to the girl's house where she discovered the body of her husband and the girl on the floor. She warned the gendarmes and once there they discovered, in the basement of the house, the father's corpse. The gendarmes gathered a preponderant clue: the girl reported to her mother's director that her father was arguing with "René's cousin".
The gendarmes conducted research to determine who was "René's cousin", discovering that a certain Tommy Recco had a cousin called René and that he knew the girl's father.