Gallic gassers strike
The latest in a rash of mysterious robberies on the Riviera
On 3 August, Formula 1 driver Jenson Button and his wife (pictured at right)were burgled in a rented holiday villa in Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera. The 35-yearold motor racing star and his wife Jessica, 30, a model – along with three other guests in the house – were rendered unconscious by the gang, who stole jewellery worth £300,000 including Jessica’s treasured diamond engagement ring, from the same room where Button and his wife were sleeping.
According to Button’s spokesman, police believe two men (picked up on CCTV) may have pumped anæsthetising gas through the air conditioning vents before entering the villa. However, the police refused to comment directly on the gas hypothesis, which echoes reports of previous attacks against wealthy individuals and celebrities. Former Arsenal footballer Patrick Vieira said he and his family were knocked out by gas during a 2006 raid on their home in Cannes. And in 2002, British television stars Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine said they were gassed while attending the Cannes Film Festival. Other accounts, particularly from France, have appeared in the media over the past 15 years or so, describing people waking up groggy to discover they slept through a raid. However, using gas to target a house or flat is “highly unusual”, according to Michael Fraser, a former burglar turned home security consultant, who claimed it was much more commonly used against caravans and motor homes. “It is especially common in France, pumping gas into a motor home,” he said. “It’s such a confined space that it’s highly effective. It seems to be often targeted at British tourists.”
Gordon Doig, from Edinburgh, was on holiday in Orange near the Cote D’Azur when his motor home was robbed in the night. Waking up later than usual, he felt groggy. “They took everything bar the mobile phone,” he said. “The dog didn’t even bark.” He is convinced he and his wife were gassed. Tim Best from Gloucester says he was robbed on a 2003 caravan holiday in Avignon. “I can remember people’s voices and people laughing but not being able to wake up,” he said. “We slept in close proximity so you would have noticed if someone had stepped over you, but we didn’t notice anything. When we did wake the next morning, we were lethargic and unusually tired… money, credit cards, laptops and our tools were stolen.”
When jewels and valuables worth more than £20,000 were stolen from Daniel Hechter’s Riviera villa in 2008, the security guards said they had been gassed. Like Button, the French fashion designer slept through the robbery. It was the same scenario in 2013, when £150,000 worth of goods were seized from the villa of spy novelist Gérard deVilliers. He was not present, but his estranged wife, Christine, slept through the robbery.
The British Home Office was sufficiently concerned about reports last summer that it issued a warning to holidaymakers, though there is precious little hard evidence of gas-heists. A number of doubts spring to mind: What gas is used, and in what quantities? How do they ensure it will be effective in the right parts of the targeted house? No one has ever appeared in court charged with using gas in a burglary and there are no official statistics to back up the anecdotal reports.
In response to the Home Office warning, the Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCA) released a statement saying it was highly sceptical about robbers using anæsthetic gas. “It is the view of the College that it would not be possible to render someone unconscious by blowing ether, chloroform, or any of the currently used volatile anæsthetic agents, through the window of a motorhome without their knowledge, even if they were sleeping at the time,” the statement said. They were even more dismissive about using it on an entire villa. “They would need massive amounts of gas,” said a spokesman. “We can’t rule out that some sort of agent was used, but the volume of gas and the logistics involved in delivering it make it highly unlikely that this was anæsthetic. You have to remember, we’re talking about rendering four adults unconscious in a large villa. When you combine that with the fact that these gases are expensive and difficult to get hold of, we are very sceptical.”
On the other hand, two years ago, private investigator Patrick Boffa, based on the Côte d’Azur, investigated two cases in Ramatuelle, barely five miles from the villa rented by Button, in which the victims were reportedly gassed. He claimed the French authorities were playing down the risk. “They’re trying to minimise it so they don’t scare away wealthy visitors, especially the Russians who’ll stop coming if they think they can be targeted.” BBC News, 5+7 Aug; D.Telegraph, 7 Aug 2015. For phantom anæsthetists see FT329:28-29, 330:28-29; for the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, see FT216:36-39.