Édouard-Jean Empain
The Empain-Schneider group included companies such as Framatome (nuclear boilers), Creusot-Loire (metallurgy), Jeumont-Schneider, Cerci, Citra and Spie Batignolles (construction).
[Note 2] On Monday, January 23, 1978, at approximately 10:30am, Édouard-Jean, 3rd Baron Empain, was picked up as usual from his home at 33 Avenue Foch, a prestigious address in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, a stone's throw from the Arc de Triomphe.
[9] Empain's driver Jean Denis, who was released close to Porte Maillot,[11] told investigators that he had been handcuffed at gunpoint and thrown into the back of a van,[12] and as such had not seen the faces of the kidnappers.
He overheard one of them speaking in German, however,[12] which led the authorities to think that the crime might have been committed by an extreme-left group affiliated with the Red Army Faction.
[10] French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who was close to Empain at the time, advised Interior Minister Christian Bonnet and Attorney General Alain Peyrefitte to put together a crisis team.
The call, which came from the Rue Anjou, close to the headquarters of the Schneider group, demanded that someone go to the Gare de Lyon to collect a message left in locker 595.
[11] At the same time, the kidnappers sent a further letter to the Baron's eldest daughter Patricia, who was married to American oil and ranch heir Terrell Braly.
Written in the Baron's own hand and dictated by the kidnappers, the letter specified the procedure for the transfer of the ransom and reminded the family not to alert the police.
[19] After much discussion, the group allowed themselves to be convinced by the police to pay a fake ransom, which was a great disappointment to the family, especially the Baron's wife, Silvana Empain, who feared it would put her husband's life in peril.
[20] Four weeks after the kidnapping, on Monday February 20, 1978 a telephone call placed by the kidnappers to the Schneider group's headquarters indicated that the ransom had been reduced to 40 million francs without further negotiations.
[15] Inspector Jean Mazzieri, a skilled martial artist,[21] was chosen to carry out the ransom delivery under the guise of Mr. Mazo, a fictitious aide of the Baron.
[9] He had with him two holdalls containing a mix of bank notes and paper designed to mimic on cursory inspection the ransom of 17 million Swiss francs.
Seven weeks after the kidnapping, on Friday March 17, 1978, Pierre Salik [fr], a Belgian businessman who was close to the Baron, received a telephone call at his Brussels office.
[9] The kidnappers wished to contact René Engen and had called Salik to avoid the telephone surveillance that the French police had put in place.
Engen immediately returned from a business trip to Luxembourg and went to the arranged rendezvous at the Hilton hotel in Brussels where he was to await a telephone call.
[9] The letter which he received, written by Empain at the behest of his kidnappers, warned Engen that it was "life or death" for the Baron if the police were involved.
[9] The police were nonetheless informed and rapidly organised an operation to oversee the new rendezvous, which was to take place on Thursday March at 15:00 at Fouquet's restaurant on the Champs-Élysées.
[9] The map instructed Mazzieri to proceed to a third café, Le Rond Point, in Porte d'Orléans and defined a precise route as well as a maximum speed of 50 km/h.
[9] A second road map hidden at Le Rond Point sent Mazzieri to Antony where he was to enter a car park and exchange his vehicle for one left by the kidnappers.
[9] The glovebox of the car contained the address of a new meeting place, the Les Trois Obus café, situated near to the Porte de Saint-Cloud metro station.
Here, after six hours of travel around Paris and its suburbs, he received a call from the kidnappers who, using the darkness as a pretext, told Mazzieri that it was too late to undertake the exchange and rescheduled it for the following day.
[9] In the early evening of the following day, Friday March 24, 1978, while waiting at the bar of the Orly Hilton, Mazzieri received a telephone call instructing him to fill up his petrol tank and prepare for a further excursion.
[9] Upon his return to the bar, Mazzieri received a second call telling him to head on to the A6 motorway in the direction of Paris and stop on the hard shoulder at emergency telephone point B16.
[22] The kidnappers stopped the car a few hundred metres further down the hard shoulder next to a service door in the 20m high soundproofing wall which lines the motorway.
Hooded and wearing a blue jogging suit with white stripes, he was abandoned on a vacant lot in a street in Ivry-sur-Seine, near Paris,[11] with a ten-franc bill.
However, the names of the tenants and some investigative work enabled them to find the people involved, who, to the surprise of the police, were by no means major figures in organized crime.
[11] He confessed to having been pressured not to speak to the press before this date, and acknowledged that this event had changed his way of seeing things, concluding: "Deprivation of liberty is an unbearable state.
[11] A "different man", he explained that he forgave his kidnappers, but not the police, for having smeared him by suggesting that it could have been an organized self-kidnapping to pay off his debts, and for having revealed his extramarital affairs to his family.
[35] His habits, his precise and regular schedule and his stronger physical constitution, enabling him to better withstand detention, as well as the side alley of his home, making it easier to abduct him, determined the choice of his kidnappers.
[16] Then the owner of a small business with fifteen employees,[11] he recounted his ordeal with modesty and dignity,[33] without seeking to accuse the defendants[9] and refusing to give "the sordid details".
