Nadir Sedrati

Nadir Sedrati (born 26 March 1938), known as The Canal Cutter (Le Dépeceur du Canal), is a French serial killer who was convicted of killing and dismembering three people from May to July 1999, whose remains he would later dump in the Marne–Rhine Canal near Nancy.

Nadir Sedrati was born on 26 March 1938 in the village of Gavet in Isère, the younger of two boys born to Algerian immigrants.

His father died when he was three, and due to the ongoing World War and her mother's incapability to take care of them, the two brothers were placed in an orphanage.

Shortly afterwards, Sedrati's older brother, Milhoud, was expelled due to being overtly violent, but Nadir was allowed to stay due to his more calm and intelligent nature.

On 2 October 1946, at the age of 8 and a half, Sedrati was baptized at the church in Douvaine.

As he was frequently called 'Dominique' instead of his given name, he grew up with the impression that that was his real name until January 1952, when he checked his identity papers and learned his true name.

In addition to this, he learned that his father, whom he had never met, had died during the Second World War, which left a mark on the impressionable young man which subsequently led him to commit petty crimes.

In 1957, at the age of 19, Sedrati joined the army in Algeria, where he planned to set up a scam, but was quickly arrested.

He was then dishonorably discharged, but avoided prison time due to his age, as the age of majority was 21 at the time.

In 1962, he was arrested for several counts of fraud and imprisoned.

During this time, he underwent several psychiatric tests, and while most of the results deemed him responsible for his actions, others were met with mixed reception from psychiatrists.

After his release, he would be imprisoned on fifteen additional occasions, but would sometimes be interned at a psychiatric hospital to avoid penal sanctions.

In 1969, Sedrati returned to Algeria to meet his girlfriend's parents, as he wanted to propose to her - however, they rejected the "presumed Algerian" due to his French name, the fact that he was uncircumsized and that he could not speak a word of Arabic.

This greatly affected Sedrati, and from then on he frequently felt lonely and rejected by the world.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, he alternated between spending time in prison and various psychiatric hospitals.

According to him, one of "mental abnormalities" was supposedly covering himself in honey to prevent attacks from extraterrestrials.

During one of his prison stints, he became acquainted with a fellow inmate, 42-year-old André Gachy, with whom he became good friends.

He is also suspected in at least two disappearances dating back to 1982, for which he was never charged.

After his release in early 1982, Sedrati decided to move in with his new friend at the latter's house in La Verrière.

On 19 May 1982, Sedrati and Gachy went on vacation in Thonon-les-Bains, resting at a local resort for a few days before leaving.

At one point, however, Gachy vanished without a trace, but strangely, Sedrati did not report his disappearance to authorities and instead started using his friend's identity papers and checkbook, as well as living at his residences in La Verrière and Saintes.

Owing to the fact that he was an adult with few friends other than Sedrati, no investigation took place to investigate the man's disappearance.

In the summer of 1982, an employee of a shop in La Rochelle noticed that Sedrati was fraudulently buying products using a fake identity and reported him to the police.

After his arrest, investigators learned that the scamming techniques he had used were similar to the ones he had used in the past, and suspected that Gachy might have fallen victim to a homicide.

In August of that year, in spite of his protests of innocence and the fact that Gachy's body had not been found, Sedrati was charged with murder and identity theft.

He then spent the next three years and three months in prison, awaiting trial at the cour d'assises in Nancy.

On 26 November 1985, the trial began.

The public prosecutor demanded a life sentence for the accused, but as there was little evidence to convict him, Sedrati was instead acquitted of all charges and released after just four days.

On 6 September 1988, he was interned for a few months at a psychiatric ward for "behavioural disorders", but was released again on 17 December.

In 1993, Sedrati impersonated a man by the name of Joël Royer, and then another man by the name of Vosger, using both identities intermittently to avoid detection.

In October 1994, 62-year-old Léon Krauss, a pensioner living by himself at an apartment in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, mysteriously vanished.

His disappearance went unnoticed at first and allowed Sedrati to settle into his apartment and use his identity papers and bank accounts.

Soon after, the building's janitor received a letter, supposedly written by Krauss, in which he claimed to have rented his apartment to Sedrati.

One of Krauss' cousins also received a letter, in which it was claimed that Krauss had left the region to start a new life with a woman by the name of Colette.

On 24 December 1994, Sedrati went to the police station in Strasbourg and, pretending to be Krauss, asked that they inform his "family" to stop pestering him before he abruptly left.

Approximately four months later, Krauss' family members alerted the police, claiming that the man who claimed to be their relative was an impostor and that the letters' handwriting did not match.

At their request, they were provided with a photograph of the man, whom they recognized as Sedrati.

This alerted the authorities, as they had previously dealt with him not only due to his various acts of fraud but also his acquittal in the supposed murder of his friend years prior.

In the spring of 1995, Sedrati was arrested and incarcerated at the Saint-Mihiel Detention Centre to await trial.

He was initially charged with murder, as Krauss' body was never located, this charge was dropped in favour of the identity theft, of which he was convicted and sentenced to a 5-year prison term.