France: serial killer feared near Paris as 4th victim dies from the same gun
French forensic police are seen yesterday outside the home of a woman identified as Malika, 47, who was shot three times in the head and pronounced dead that evening.
A 47-year-old woman in France died late yesterday from three gunshots to the head, leaving a Paris suburb to fear the work of a serial killer, according to media reports.
Since November, four murders have occurred in Essonne area and a prosecutor announced today that the same semi-automatic gun was used in all of them, according to The Associated Press.
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Appearing on Europe-1 radio today, Interior Minister Claude Guéant said he feared a serial killer was behind the murders and said "maximum resources" would be used to find the perpetrator, according to the AP.
According to the Paris daily Le Figaro, Malika, a woman of Algerian origin, worked at Orly airport south of the capital and was not known to have been in trouble. The attacker fled on a motorcycle.
In a separate report, Le Figaro also reported that ballistics were identical in all of the murders.
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Grooves left by the barrel of the gun on the bullets taken from the victims’ bodies were identical and the cartridges left at the scene all bore the marks of the same firing hammer. The semi-automatic weapon was of the very common 7.65mm caliber, according to Le Figaro.