Dominici affair

The Dominici affair was the criminal investigation into the triple murder of three Britons in France. During the night of 4/5 August 1952, Sir Jack Drummond, a 61-year-old scientist; his 45-year-old wife Anne Wilbraham; and their 10-year-old daughter Elizabeth were murdered next to their car which was parked in a lay-by near La Grand'Terre, the farm belonging to the Dominici family, located near the village of Lurs in the département of Basses-Alpes (now Alpes-de-Haute-Provence). The affair made international headlines at the time.

Crime

On the evening of August 4, 1952, while they were holidaying in France, the Drummond family made a stop along the National Highway 96, at 165 meters from La Grand'Terre, a farm in the municipality of Lurs in the Basses-Alpes. A bridge spanned the railway 60m from the road. A path winds on either side of the railway line and the slope of the Durance. That evening the Dominici family, who owned the farm, were having a party to celebrate the end of the harvest. In the early hours of the morning, on the night of August 4 to 5, six or seven shots were heard, at approximately 1.10AM.

The following dawn Gustave Dominici reported to a passing motorcyclist that he had found the body of a young girl whose head had apparently been smashed in. He asked the cyclist to contact the police. Shortly thereafter, the bodies of Mr and Mrs Drummond were found near their car, apparently shot to death.

Family patriarch Gaston Dominici was convicted of the three murders in 1957 and sentenced to death, though it was widely believed that his guilt had not been clearly established. In 1957, President René Coty commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, and on 14 July 1960, President Charles de Gaulle ordered Gaston Dominici's release on humanitarian grounds due to his poor health, but he was never pardoned or given a re-trial. Gaston Dominici died April 4, 1965.