By John Lichfield in Paris

Independent.co.uk

Thursday, 18 January 2001

The most wanted man in France shot himself dead yesterday as police closed in on a block of flats in Béziers, on the French Mediterranean coast.

Albert Foulcher, 50, a former insurance agent and gun enthusiast, had been on the run since murdering two policemen and two other men near Narbonne more than a week ago. He had already been sentenced to life, in his absence, for a 1993 murder.

The hunt by hundreds of gendarmes and police, involving two helicopters, cornered him in the council flat of a girlfriend, 20 miles from Narbonne.

Seventy officers who besieged the block were first beaten back by a burst of automatic fire through the door as residents were evacuated. When police finally stormed the flat after eight hours Foulcher was lying dead under a bed.

His motives for last week's murders remain obscure. Two men murdered by Foulcher, in separate attacks, were not witnesses at his trial last year, as police had said earlier. One victim was the husband of a former mistress; the other was the head of an insurance office, which had taken business away from Foulcher's own insurance agency, which had failed.

The policemen were shot dead in their car by automatic fire when they were called to the scene of the first murder.

Foulcher, also a fitness fanatic and self-made business man, had actually been on the run since January of last year, when he decided not to attend his trial for the earlier murder.

He had been freed on bail in 1996 after an appeal court ruled that his long pre-trial detention violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

By John Lichfield in Paris

Independent.co.uk

Tuesday, 9 January 2001

A convicted murderer shot dead two policemen and two men who had given evidence at his trial before playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with police across the south of France last night.

A convicted murderer shot dead two policemen and two men who had given evidence at his trial before playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with police across the south of France last night.

Albert Foulcher, 49, a former insurance agent, had been on the run since he was convicted in April for the murder of a colleague eight years ago.

Police helicopters and hundreds of police were mobilised to track him in the Montpellier and NÃmes area after he shot and killed two policemen and committed two suspected revenge murders earlier in the day.

The fugitive was believed to be driving a stolen Mercedes and armed with at least one semi-automatic weapon. His car was reported to have been spotted by police on several occasions but he was still managing to elude his pursuers.

The policemen were killed in Narbonne after being called to what appeared to be a domestic dispute. Foulcher had turned up at the home of Pascal Herrero, one of the people who gave evidence at his trial. When the police arrived, he turned the weapon on them before shooting Mr Herrero.

One of the police officers died instantly. The other, shot in the head, died before he reached hospital. Less than an hour later, Foulcher turned up at a village close to Narbonne and murdered a former colleague, Maurice Michaud, who had also testified against him last year. The murderer escaped in Mr Michaud's Mercedes and burst through a police barricade between Narbonne and Beziers before trying to flee to the east on the A9 Barcelona to Marseilles motorway.

Shots were exchanged with gendarmes at another barricade before Foulcher did a U-turn at a toll station near Némes and escaped in the direction from which he had come. There were several reported sightings of the car last night in the Némes and Montpellier area.

Foulcher was convicted of the murder in 1993, at Pailhés near Montpellier, of another insurance agent - the man from whom he had bought a business in 1984. He was arrested soon after the killing but, through a judicial error, he was allowed bail in 1998 and failed to turn up for his trial. He was found guilty in his absence given a life sentence.

There were fears last night that Foulcher might be planning further revenge killings. Police said they had provided armed guards for two lawyers involved in the murderer's trial - his defence lawyer, Jacques Martin, and an unnamed female lawyer who was the former wife of the investigating magistrate judge who led the inquiries into the originalmurder.

The killing of the two policemen in the Narbonne area brings the number of policemen shot dead in France in the past three weeks to four. One of these was killed by one of his own colleagues by mistake at a roadblock.