Nicolas (Nico) Claux was born on March 22, 1972 in the African nation of Cameroon. At age 5 his family moved to London, then to Paris, France at age 7. At age 12 he moved to Portugal and then back to Paris at 16 with only his father. Claux never had the opportunity to connect with other children his age, causing him to become withdrawn and quite lonely. Though, Claux reported that he never felt very close with his parents, even before they traveled the world.
His first encounter with death was when his grandfather died. It is unknown how old Claux was when this happened, but he was fascinated with burial rites, wakes, morgues, and anything to do with death from then on. Nicolas also began to hate the children around him, when they weren’t interested in death/aspects of death. During this time, Claux became obsessed with being in graveyards.
It’s unclear at what age Claux was exactly, but one day he decided that just being in graveyards wasn’t enough. He said, “[he] woke up one day feeling this sinister urge to dig up a corpse and mutilate it”. His first victim was an old woman who was laid to rest in her own burial chamber. He used a crowbar to break into the mausoleum, and a screwdriver to open the casket. Claux said that when he opened the casket he almost fainted from the horrid smell of rotting flesh and embalming chemicals. After recovering, he was able to see that the woman had a very wet look as if she had been covered in oil, and there was white cloth covering her face. After taking this in, Claux says it’s as if he fell asleep and woke up “covered in corpse slime” and the old woman was stabbed over 50 times. Nico simply cleaned up to the best of his ability, grabbed his tools and left. Ever since that day, he did such things whenever he had any free time, sometimes bringing home bones as memorabilia.
At 20, he joined the military for 1 year before dropping out and trying to get into the only local school for embalming. When Claux was rejected, he got a job at a children’s hospital as a morgue assistant. Apparently the very first “fresh body” he saw was a 10-year-old girls. Nothing suspicious had been reported during his time at this hospital, but he soon got a job at St. Joseph Hospital Mortuary.
At this job, he would start to fulfill his cannibalistic fantasies. Claux would strip away pieces of flesh around the ribs and either eat them raw or bring them home to cook them. He said he liked it better raw, but he enjoyed experimenting with different cooking techniques. He said he always made sure to check the medical records to make sure it wasn’t contaminated or older than 4 days before consuming it. Since Claux was working in a hospital he was able to steal blood as well. The blood had no plasma in it, making it “too thin”, so to fix this, Claux would mix human ashes or protein powder into it, calling it “protein drinks”.
After a while of this disgusting schedule, Claux got bored with being around already dead bodies and decided that he wanted to experience the kill. Nicolas decided to use an early videotex service which was accessible through telephone lines called Mintel, to connect with a potential victim. It was here where Nico and Thierry Bissonnier connected and started talking. Bissonnier was a gay man, and thought that Claux was also looking for sex, so he decided to give his home address. Claux came at the meeting time, hiding a .22 pistol in his pocket. As soon as Bissonnier let him in, Claux pulled out the gun and shot him.
After watching the man bleed out for a bit, Claux decided to explore the small, one-bedroom apartment. After a round or two, he came back to Bissonnier, discovering that he was still alive so he shot him again twice more until he was positive he was dead. Claux then went into the kitchen, found some cookies, and ate them while watching the dead body. Once he was finished, he shot Bissonnier once more in the back and smashed a potted plant over his head. Claux wiped away any fingerprints, picked up Bissonnier’s checkbook, credit card, driver’s license and wallet, an alarm clock, and an answering machine then left. Bissonnier’s body stayed in his apartment, rotting, for 3 days before his parents got worried and came looking for him. It’s an unclear timeline, but Claux later tried to forge one of Bissonnier’s checks to buy a VCR. When asked for identification, he showed Bissonnier’s driver’s license with Claux’s picture to the banker. The banker was immediately suspicious when they compared Clau’x signature with Bissonnier’s and saw they were different. The authorities were immediately alerted.
When in custody, Claux confessed fairly easily once evidence was presented. All his crimes were proven when a search of his apartment was conducted. There were human teeth scattered about the floor, skeletal remains hanging from the ceiling and on shelves, stolen blood bags in the fridge, human ashes in containers, and a large collection of hardcore S&M videotapes. The very same gun that was used to kill Thierry was hidden under the bed.
From the evidence and confessions, Nicolas Claux was charged with 1 account of murder and 6 counts of grave robbery on November 15, 1994. He spent only 7 years and four months in prison out of a twelve-year sentence and was released in March of 2002. Claux is now living his life in freedom, in Dublin, Ireland, selling his own paintings as well as other murderer’s possessions, such as letters, paintings, or photographs.
Ava Barnes • Oct 16, 2023 at 12:51 pm
I’d never heard of this case! Great article!