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On the evening of February 25, 1954, rush-hour crowds near the Paris Stock Exchange heard an angry shout. “Stop him—he’s robbed me!”
Within moments, the man fleeing along the Rue Vivienne had a pack of pursuers behind him. To shake them off, he dived into a building on Les Grands Boulevards. Moments later he came out again, trying to look innocent. The ruse failed.
“That’s him!” somebody yelled.
By now Jean Vergne, a 35-year-old police officer, had arrived on the scene. Drawing his revolver, he ordered the man to put his hands up. Instead, the fugitive drew a gun and fired three times. Vergne, a widower with a four-year-old daughter, fell dead with a bullet through his heart.
Enraged, the crowd chased the killer into the Richelieu-Drouot Metro station. Still firing, he wounded one pursuer before being wrestled to the ground.
The next day, shocked Parisians learned that Vergne’s murderer was 27-year-old Jacques Fesch, the playboy son…
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