Mamadou Traoré (born May 11, 1973), known as The Bare-Handed Killer, is a Senegalese-born French serial rapist and murderer, responsible for assaulting at least six women, killing two of them, between April and October 1996.
When he was born, it was alleged that he was saved from being a stillbirth through his mother sprinkling blood on him, thus making him a "child of the spirits".
[2] In 1986, his parents separated, and Mamadou blamed the divorce on his father, whom he accused of spending all the money on the home.
Mamadou eventually became a canoe fisherman and football champion, moving to Dakar with his paternal grandmother.
On March 12, 1996, his mother, who had had two children from her new companion (a boy and a girl), kicked him out the house for smoking hashish.
He was rampant in area of Paris, particularly in the 12th and 13th arrondissements, striking his victims so violently that they no longer remembered their aggressor, remaining temporarily amnesiac and, moreover, disfigured.
Before said arrest, he had been sentenced for previous offences a total of three times in 1996 (in March for use and possession of narcotics, a 5,000 franc fine; a suspended year in prison and 240 hours of community service in June for robbery; and finally, on September 17 for assaulting several people in a laundry in the 13th arrondissement, near the highschool where he was educated - the owner of the laundry had called, complaining that his son had been attacked and threatened with a knife by Mamadou Traoré.
On the morning of August 25, around 5 PM, 45-year-old Nelly Bertrand was walking her dog before going to work at the Austerlitz station.
Suddenly, she was attacked by Traoré, whom struck her many times, dragging her into a nearby building's elevator and then down the stairs until he reached the front door of the top floor.
On the morning of October 22, around 4 PM, 20-year-old Marie-Astrid Clair, a modern literature student at the Sorbonne, was attacked by Traoré, whom had been stalking her, while she was dialing the doorway code to her home.
On October 30, at 10 pm, the 35-year-old chef de Cabinet of minister Jean-Claude Gaudin, Laurence Eymieux, was attacked.
He dragged Laurence 125 meters away to the isolated exit area of the service staircase, where he continued hitting Eymieux, as well as molesting her.
The psychiatric expert Martel interpreted "his unshakeable belief in maraboutage" as "a delusional process", while Dubec rather saw it as "a rationalization" and "the beginning of a psychic work".