Successive murders in France’s second-largest city have cast a grim light on the growing use of teenage contract killers by rival drug lords in Marseille, the subject of a new book by a trio of French journalists that explores an alarming development in the port city’s deadly drug wars.
When police entered Matéo’s home in a leafy suburb of Marseille, hours after his car was spotted at the scene of a deadly shooting, the 18-year-old responded with adolescent bravado, reportedly telling officers they were lucky he wasn’t carrying a gun, or else he would have “died weapons drawn”.
Matéo’s tender age, skinny frame and spotty face belie a sinister reputation as one of Marseille’s most prolific contract killers, charged by investigators with carrying out at least six murders in the space of a month. His rapid-fire journey from petty delinquent to alleged serial killer is recounted in a new book by journalists Jéremie Pham-Lê, Vincent Gautronneau and Jean-Michel Décugis, which explores the growing use of teenage contract killers in Marseille’s drug wars.
“Tueurs à gages. Enquête sur le nouveau phénomène des shooters” (Contract killers: Investigating the new phenomenon of shooters) includes chilling reconstructions of the teenager’s alleged killings, based on police reports, witness accounts and Matéo’s own candid testimony to investigators – as well as the graphic footage he posted on social media to document and brag about his deeds.
Matéo “is the embodiment of (a) new generation of hurried, uninhibited, no-holds-barred hit men", write the trio of journalists. “They are teenagers galvanised by extreme violence, who think they're living in a video game but shoot live ammunition.”
Kill ‘without remorse or reflection’
The book’s release on Wednesday comes just days after two grisly killings involving teenagers further rattled the Mediterranean port city, where rival gangs are locked in a deadly turf war for control of the highly profitable drug market.
Both the victims and perpetrators of such violence are increasingly young, Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone told reporters at the weekend. He described the “unprecedented savagery” of an attack on a 15-year-old boy who was “stabbed 50 times” and then burned alive on Wednesday.
A botched revenge mission two days later resulted in a 14-year-old shooting dead a cab driver who had refused to wait for him while he carried out his mission.
Bessone said both teenagers had been recruited via social media, adding that drug lords were hiring young boys online not only for street dealing – but also to kill “without any remorse or reflection”.
‘The greater the buzz, the higher the pay’
The lack of remorse or reflection transpires from wiretapped telephone conversations reported in “Tueurs à gages”, shedding light on the wanton carelessness of Matéo’s actions, his feeling of impunity and his delusions regarding an early release.
In a phone call with his brother, Matéo exposes his plans to express false contrition in court, boasting that he will soon be driving around Marseille in a McLaren and killing off those who turned him in. Another call with his girlfriend betrays his fascination with murder.
The likes of Matéo are “fascinated by organised crime like others are by jihadism”, a police source told Le Parisien following his arrest in April last year, describing the teenager as “radicalised by crime”.
Another police source quoted by local daily La Provence highlighted the lucrative nature of the contracts and the role played by social media in escalating the stakes, noting that a hit man hired for 20,000 euros could more than double his gains if he generated enough publicity online.
“The greater the buzz, the higher the pay,” the source explained, stressing that the “aim is to terrorise”.
Instead of fleeing the scene after his first killing, Matéo took the time to film his victim’s bloodied body, front and back, set his car alight in plain sight of a residential block, and then post the gruesome footage on Snapchat, complete with soundtrack and the “DZ Mafia” signature, after the clan that hired him.
Naming the scourge
The murders claimed by Matéo are among a record 49 deaths, seven of them minors, attributed to drug-related violence in Marseille last year – an unprecedented toll that led the city’s former prosecutor Dominique Laurens to coin the term “narchomicide”.
Speaking to AFP this week, Laurens said the term – a contraction of “homicide” and “narcobanditism” – was designed to give greater visibility to the many intended and collateral victims of drug trafficking, much as the term femicide “finally described a phenomenon of violence against women that had previously remained under the radar”.
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The notion of “narchomicide” has rapidly made its way onto the front pages of newspapers and into judicial statistics, particularly in Marseille, replacing talk of “settling scores”. Without this change of terminology, the 15-year-old who was brutally murdered last week would have been treated as “the ordinary victim of a brawl between youths”, the former prosecutor pointed out.
Laurens spoke of a societal failure to prevent youths from falling prey to drug lords who exploit them as “cannon fodder (...) just like terrorists”. Her words echoed a warning last month by Aix-en-Provence prosecutor Franck Rastoul, who flagged the growing threat from drug-related violence.
“It is imperative that we fully understand the ravages of drug trafficking, which undermines the very foundations of our society,” Rastoul said, adding that young people were “intoxicated by easy drug money” to the point of “total disregard for human life”.
