Nadir Sedrati (born 26 March 1938), known as The Canal Cutter (), 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. He is also suspected in at least two disappearances dating back to 1982, for which he was never charged.
Early life 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 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.
First packages and internments As a teenager in the 1950s, Sedrati was involved in a string of petty thefts, for which he was not convicted.
In 1957, at the age of 19, Sedrati joined the army. Performing his military service during the Algerian War, he is quickly shaken by fighting against the Algerian military, whom he describes as his “brothers”, and decides to set up a swindle. Sedrati was eventually unmasked and discharged from the army. His superiors deemed him “capable of the worst”. Sedrati was subsequently committed to the psychiatric hospital in Nice for a nervous breakdown.
In 1958, having regained his freedom, Sedrati organized a fake tombola for the Algerian contingent, posing as a soldier. He cashed in the subscriptions in his own name. After being unmasked, Sedrati was committed to the Sarreguemines psychiatric hospital.
Released in 1959, Sedrati married for the first time in the early 1960s, but soon divorced.
Incarceration for fraud and internment In 1962, at the age of 24, Sedrati's papers were withdrawn on the grounds that he was not a French citizen. So he decided to steal other people's identities to live and feed himself. He was arrested and remanded in custody for fraud, and underwent a psychiatric examination by Jacques Leyrie, who declared him responsible for his actions. Sedrati was sentenced in 1963 by the Criminal Court for fraud.
After his release from prison, Sedrati was subsequently sentenced to twenty prison terms for theft, forgery and fraud. To avoid various criminal sanctions, Sedrati was regularly committed to a psychiatric hospital. One of his “mental anomalies” is, according to Sedrati: “protection from extraterrestrial attacks, by spraying himself with honey”. However, some opinions are mixed as to his criminal responsibility, while others go so far as to say that he is not criminally responsible.
In 1969, Sedrati struck up a relationship with a woman of Algerian origin. Wishing to marry her, he decided to accompany her to Algeria to meet her parents-in-law. Sedrati's future in-laws, however, reject this “presumed Algerian, named Dominique, uncircumsized and not speaking a word of Arabic”. Sedrati couldn't stand the prejudice of his future in-laws, who claimed he wasn't from Algeria, and decided to end the relationship.
In the early 1970s, Sedrati was expelled from France and forced to live in Algeria. However, he managed to return to France, where he became a naturalized French citizen in 1981.
In 1982, after another psychiatric internment, Sedrati met André Gachy, a 43-year-old retired teacher suffering from a nervous breakdown. Following his release, Sedrati asked Gachy if he could move in with him to avoid being left alone. Gachy accepts Sedrati's offer of company and invites him to his home in La Verrière.
Disappearances André Gachy 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. As 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.
Sedrati first appeared before the La Rochelle criminal court in September 1984, accused of swindling Gachy. The defense argued that Sedrati had never succeeded in obtaining French identity papers. The court granted him mitigating circumstances and sentenced him to three and a half years in prison.
On 25 November 1985, Sedrati's trial began before the Charente-Maritime Assize Court, for the alleged murder of Gachy. During the two-day trial, Sedrati still claimed to have impersonated Gachy, but denied having killed the pensioner, claiming that he was a “simple swindler”. In fact, one of the stumbling blocks in the case against Sedrati is the absence of the missing man's body. Sedrati's arguments work in his favor, given his history of fraud. On second day, 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.
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.
Léon Krauss 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, 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 February 1995, the Strasbourg police went to Krauss's apartment to find out more about this mysterious occupant, whom they recognized as the person who had made the statement. They take him into custody and search Krauss's apartment, where they find the missing man's papers and accounts, as well as those of Grossiord and Royer. Using a recent photograph, the man in custody was identified as Nadir Sedrati, aged 57, known to the police for various frauds. After admitting his identity, Sedrati stated that he had assumed the identities of Krauss, Grossiord and Royer in order to support himself financially. At the end of his police custody, Sedrati was indicted for fraud against Royer and Grossiord, as well as for “kidnapping and confinement” accompanied by fraud against Krauss. He is remanded to Strasbourg prison.
Later in this year, Sedrati appeared before the Strasbourg Criminal Court, charged with impersonating Grossiord and Royer. He was found guilty of fraud in a state of “legal recidivism” and sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment. The investigation into Krauss's disappearance continues against Sedrati, who formally denies having killed the pensioner. Excavations were carried out in an attempt to find the body of the missing man, but to no avail. Investigators working on the case are convinced that Krauss was murdered by Sedrati, as the suspect had already been prosecuted for the same offence a few years earlier.Sedrati's case for the alleged murder of Léon Krauss (whose body was never found) was dismissed. However, he was referred to the criminal court for impersonation, before being transferred to the Saint-Mihiel detention center.
On 19 February 1998, Sedrati appeared before the Créteil Criminal Court on a charge of fraud against Krauss, and was sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment. During his detention at the Saint-Mihiel detention center, Sedrati worked as a hairdresser and met other inmates, with whom he exchanged various confidences.
Release and association with Gassen and Steil On 16 March 1999, Sedrati was paroled. Almost immediately after his release, he resumed using the name of Royer in order to obtain cyanide, before moving into the home of a man named Jean Stauffer in Nancy, to whom he presented himself as "Philippe Grossiord". In April of that year, he bought a woodchipper and reconnected with Gassen and Steil, both of whom had also been released from prison by then. At that time, Gassen lived and worked in Germany while Steil worked as a delivery driver for a hostel in Strasbourg.
Three weeks later, Sedrati made a contract with Steil using his Grossiord alias, in which the latter would work at a fictitious company named 'Inter Europe Diffusion'. Not realizing that Grossiord was Sedrati, Steil accepted the offer and made arrangements to travel to Nancy.
Murders On 14 May 1999, Steil boarded a train bound for Nancy, telling his family that he was going for a job interview and would be back three days later. Once he arrived at the location provided by his new "employer", Steil immediately recognized Sedrati, who offered him to spend the evening at his place to celebrate their reunion. While he was distracted, Sedrati poured potassium cyanide into a cup of coffee and served it to Steil, who quickly succumbed to its poisonous effects.
Once he confirmed that he was dead, Sedrati spent the next several hours dismembering his body, before loading the remains into his vehicle and disposing of them in the nearby canal. He then cleaned the entire apartment to erase any evidence and called the hostel Steil was staying at, claiming that he would not be coming back as he had started working at his company.