Original subtitles

[sirens]

[Lauren Collins] If you're an expert on serial killers,

the first thing people ask you is, why?

And Stéphane Bourgoin has this incredibly

compelling backstory,

that he had a companion who was murdered by a serial killer

in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

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[Lauren Collins] This was a quest for him.

It was kind of a way for him to look the worst of humanity

in the face.

It was a personal catharsis.

It was the confrontation with these forces of evil...

[sinister laugh]

...that had wreaked havoc in his life.

[prison buzzer]

[Stéphane Bourgoin] You know my girlfriend was murdered.

[Tommy Lynn] I wanna tell you sorry,

but I don't believe in the word sorry.

[Lauren Collins] And the story went a long way to establish

his credibility in the public's eye.

He's got a profile in the media, fervent fans,

and even the police are asking, you know,

"Tell us about serial killers."

But there are a lot of people that Bourgoin betrayed.

Like, I know that he knows how much pain he caused people.

And he doesn't seem to care.

[sirens]

[birds singing]

[speaking in French]

[Maât] I should have maybe have been a cop,

or a detective maybe.

But the 4th Eye, we are not professionals.

None of us is in the field of crime.

[Maât] But, the truth is the truth.

And at the time when we started to investigate

Stéphane Bourgoin, we just want for him to admit that he

was lying all these years.

[Maât] But then we start to realize that he

took advantage of people, like Micki Pistorius.

People who were not in a good place,

promoting himself on her disadvantage.

He wants more fame and more people,

more conferences, and so on.

Even if he didn't have the material to make them.

For me it's unacceptable.

It's not really something you can just brush aside and say,

"That's no big deal."

Because he will hurt more people in the process.

[siren]

[Lauren Collins] At some point,

Stéphane Bourgoin aligns himself with

The Serial Victims Association.

This is an organization, a community really,

made up of survivors and of families who have lost

loved ones to serial killers.

And one of the most active members of this association is

a woman named Dahina Sy.

[reporter] For his murderous trail across this region of

France and Belgium,

he is known as the Ogre of the Ardennes.

[Valak] At some point during our investigation,

we notice that Bourgoin is doing a lot of media-focusing

on the victims of serial killers.

But just like everything else, something feels off.

[Maât] The victims, he used them as props

to promote himself.

And at the same time, he was saying that,

"Yeah, my wife was murdered by a serial killer."

[Maât] I think that he really used that as an advantage.

Because in the French media, nobody dared to critically

probe anything because of the "poor guy".

[Maât] But, with Bourgoin, of course,

it's a never-ending story.

A never-ending story of lies.

So his dead wife's story.

What if his wife was not murdered by a serial killer

or other?

What if the murder is a lie?

[overlapping French news audio]

[Maât] My father was really doting and loving

and really warm.

My mother was more like the exact opposite.

She tend to have a really quick hand when it came

to physical violence.

And she pushed me through a window once.

But she was clever because she never did it when

anybody was around.

[Valak] I started in the military when I was 19.

I went to war.

I saw the sadness of that destruction.

[Maât] Generally, you tend to repeat what you have been

dealt with in life.

Or you take the exact opposite and you became a really

advocate against it.

The Fourth Eye is exposing the lies of someone who used those

lies to abuse and cheat people.

And we couldn't let somebody profit from the

suffering of others.

[Maât] I mean, if you want to protect the family,

you don't show the picture at all.

[Maât] His story, it sounded like a broken recorder.

Except for, there was always a little detail changing,

which is a bit weird when you think about it,

that the story was never consistent.

[Valak] One day it's his wife,

the next day it's his girlfriend.

The next day it's a friend, it's never the same.

[Lauren Collins] The 4th Eye had a hunch that the

Eileen story was the foundational lie of his career.

It gave him credibility.

But not only professional credibility,

it gave him emotional credibility.

Here's someone in this very sensitive space,

whom people can trust, because he's been there.

And so the 4th Eye knew that if they could

prove Eileen was a lie,

they could cut down Bourgoin's legitimacy.

[various keystrokes]

[Valak] So, from that moment on, we said to ourselves,

we're going to try to find what we can find out

about this killer.

[Valak] Bourgoin always said the killer of his girlfriend

was on death row in California.

[Valak] That he killed sometimes ten.

[Valak] Sometimes 12 other people.

[Valak] We had been working on this for months.

The conviction we had was that this Eileen story was

just another Bourgoin lie.

We soon realized,

the only way we could end his legitimacy,

was to expose his lies to the press,

by contacting the media.

[Valak] So we wrote them, the most popular ones in France.

[Maât] And also, we contacted journalists that invited him

over all the time.

Pradel, Jacques Pradel.

[Valak] The goal, in fact, was to stop him from taking

advantage of more victims.

[Maât] Everybody brushed us off.

Everybody.

[Lauren Collins] The 4th Eye felt betrayed,

they felt shunned.

The 4th Eye's been like living and breathing this

story for months.

Here they thought,

"We're, like, delivering this amazing thing

on a silver platter.

It's so important, like, stop the presses."

Whereas for a journalist on the other side of that,

people didn't receive it that way.

I mean, they kind of came out of nowhere.

And they were anonymous.

I mean they were using pseudonyms.

It's not the ideal scenario for somebody coming

to you with a story.

[Valak] Obviously, we weren't editing pros.

We knew if these videos fail, so does the 4th Eye.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[sirens]

[Lauren Collins] After reaching out to the media and

being totally ignored, the 4th Eye had to regroup.

I mean, in their world, Bourgoin was like the king.

It felt personal to them.

And so, they decided they were gonna take it to YouTube.

[Valak] Our title is a bit provocative.

We called it Serial Mytho, which means Compulsive Liar.

[Valak] We posted it at night.

[Valak] We say to ourselves if tomorrow we get 100 views,

we'll be happy.

The next day, it starts to go up, 500, 600, 700.

Not bad.

[Maât] And we were, like, wow,

it's spreading like a drop of oil.

[Valak] So, we went back to our files,

with all the lies we've documented.

[Valak] We're going to try to make a video once a week.

[Maât] It was like, wow.

People going, "They are nobodies.

You are jealous.

You just want money."

[Lauren Collins] There's no formal mechanism to punish

somebody who crosses lines in this field.

I mean there's no disbarment,

there's no losing your medical license.

It's up to the audience really, the fans.

[Lauren Collins] Once people start to kind of smell there's

blood in the water, it's kind of a pile-on,

and there are all these fans who are like,

combing through his stuff, looking for clues,

trying to figure out what he's covering up.

One of the kind of most tantalizing clues in

some fans' eyes, was his pseudonym,

Étienne Jallieu.

So Étienne Jallieu is a pseudonym that Bourgoin used

for years on some of his, kind of,

boundary-pushing books about some really disturbing stuff.

A group of fans realized that Étienne Jallieu was a

near-anagram for "J'ai tué Eileen,"

which is "I killed Eileen" in French.

And that seemed to some people, like,

just way too much of a coincidence.

[Valak] The biggest platform that Stéphane Bourgoin had

was his Facebook.

So when he closed his page,

that cut off communication with his fans.

[Maât] We had people submitting to us that Étienne Jallieu

is the anagram of "I killed Eileen."

For me, it was a bit far-fetched.

I said, let's try not to be the guy who is in the basement of

his mother, going,

"Ha, ha, ha, I'm gonna get you, ha, ha, ha."

No. That was not the goal of it.

[Maât] We never called him.

It was always in public.

And we were always asking people on our page

to not harass him.

We wanted the facts and only the facts.

[Valak] Every time we published a video,

we hope it would create a buzz.

And when there's a buzz, the journalists notice.

After months of work, it paid off.

-We just went like...

[sighs]

...finally.

[Valak] Then, the media took over.

[Valak] It was Stéphane Bourgoin who became the story.

[Maât] The attention of the media,

articles, and stuff,

once we got one, it became a deluge.

[Sven] When the media realized what we have done,

we felt relief and joy.

But we were angry because the journalists had turned

a blind eye.

It's frustrating to have given him so much viewership

when he didn't deserve it.

[Maxime Chattam] Some friend of mine sent me a

text message and told me,

"Have you seen the video about Stéphane Bourgoin

telling he is a liar?"

And I was like, "Nope."

And I went on the Internet, and I watched it,

and I said, "Wow."

And I had to face the truth that Stéphane Bourgoin

is probably a liar.

And I think a lot of people felt this personal failure

because they knew him.

And actually, the truth came from YouTube, you know,

it's not the journalists.

What I do remember, is that I thought,

what is he going to do now?

[Lauren Collins] In the spring of 2020,

you have a flurry of articles come out about Bourgoin's lies.

And Bourgoin kind of lies low and isn't really in the

public eye for a while.

Nobody's really sure, like, how he's gonna respond to this.

And then, in May of 2020, Paris Match,

which is like People Magazine, combined with something like

what News Week used to be.

They drop their big, you know,

Stéphane Bourgoin exclusive.

And Paris Match has this huge readership.

It's kind of the first time that your average reader with

his café and croissant in the morning,

is like hearing the Stéphane Bourgoin story.

And it's Bourgoin for the first time answering questions about

what exactly happened.

[Valak] When we saw the article in Paris Match, we were happy.

It's a big deal.

We thought, it's done, we've reached the goal.

It was our research and evidence that forced him to

talk about his lies.

He definitely doesn't admit to everything,

but he admits to a lot.

He admits to faking FBI credentials.

[Valak] When he talks about claiming he had parts of

Schaefer's body at home, he says it's a joke.

For Eileen, he says he invented the name,

but that someone he knew really died.

With regards to Eileen, we said we may never actually know.

We thought it's done.

[Sven laughs]

[Maât] The very same evening, he posts.

And he said that he never actually met that journalist

from the Paris Match.

I'm like, what?

[sarcastic chuckle]

What, what?

[Lauren Collins] Once the story gets picked up

in the media,

the 4th Eye felt like they delivered this bombshell.

But as soon as he makes the confession,

he then kinda tries to unwind it and walk it back by claiming

Paris Match has wildly misrepresented him and can't be

trusted as a source.

It was all kind of fine points of semantics rather than

anything of substance.

But nonetheless, to cast doubt over the entire conversation.

[Valak] We looked at each other and said,

"So he didn't get it at all."

[Maât] He's trying to climb back under the limelight.

[Valak] We thought it would be suicidal for the media to

invite him on again.

[Valak] He's done, he's gone, we won't see him again.

[Valak] But I'm always a pessimist when it

comes to Bourgoin.

[Lauren Collins] This is a really serious inflection point.

His sense of responsibility, or accountability,

or contrition doesn't seem to have progressed at all.

And right in the middle of, you know,

all of this stuff being adjudicated,

he releases a new book.

I mean, he's doubling down.

[Valak] For me, it's the most disgusting thing he's ever done.

[♪ somber music playing]

[cell phone buzzing]

[sirens]

[Lauren Collins] After Bourgoin's lies had become

public, he's still defiant.

But then, the story starts to hit the international press.

An article comes out.

It's no longer this parochial French culture story,

but an international true crime affair.

You have pieces on CNN, VOX,

The New York Post, Daily Mail, Fox News.

"French serial killer expert admits his career is

built on lies."

"French serial killer expert admits serial lies."

"Serial expert exposed."

I'd click, wouldn't you?

Bourgoin gets sidelined.

People start to distance themselves from him.

Publishers drop him.

Media invites dry up.

Bourgoin is effectively persona non grata.

And so the 4th Eye feels vindicated.

[humming]

[Maât] Come on, yep.

That's one.

I hope that the fact that we did what we did...

Mm-hmm.

...will prove to victims that somebody cares about them.

Voila.

Which, I'm hoping it's finally finishing.

Ah! Mmm.

When this all started to get really serious,

I had just been diagnosed with relapse of my breast cancer

that I had in 2012.

And I had to find a way to occupy myself.

So maybe it carried me a bit as well.

[Valak] It was a game.

24 hours, it was only Bourgoin.

Only Bourgoin.

My wife, I'm the first to say it, she suffered.

There were tensions.

[Maât] I don't know how the balance is exactly between

the good and the bad.

But I think I have been useful because I love to be useful.

I don't have a crystal ball,

so I don't know what the future holds.

But I think he knows we are watching.

[in French] Sound, speed. Quiet, please.

[in French] Interview, take one.

[Lauren Collins] Hello.

-I actually think it's a true crime story about true crime.

Bourgoin was a voleur de vie, a life thief.

He took every role in the true crime repertory.

Victim, law enforcement, media.

[Lauren Collins] Investigator, perpetrator,

and he was playing every single one of them at the same time.

And the reason why this was such an attractive scheme,

and the reason that he got found out,

was because there was such a devoted audience.

And that's why this story is the perfect vehicle for getting

into some of these deeper questions about true crime.

Like, why are so many people obsessed with these stories

about murder and suffering?

And how did true crime turn into the massive industry

that it is today?

-It's tragedy porn, it's disaster porn,

it's violence porn.

And I think it relates to the overflow of content in

the last ten years.

[Sarah Koenig] From This American Life and WBEZ Chicago,

it's Serial.

One story told week by week.

I'm Sarah Koenig.

[Sarah Weinman] 2014...

[Sarah Koenig] Here's a case I've been working on.

[Sarah Weinman] ...the first season of Serial aired.

And, I mean, it was such a massive phenomena that did

introduce people to true crime,

who had never thought that they would care

or be captivated.

There was The Jinx.

[Robert Durst] Nobody tells the whole truth.

[Sarah Weinman] Then came Making a Murderer.

And because all the episodes were available at once,

[reporter] What do you wanna say today?

[Steven Avery] I'm innocent!

-It paved the way for bingeable content.

True crime.

This is not a new phenomenon by any stretch.

All that has changed is how people consume true crime,

or how they get obsessed.

[speaker] I think like everyone else,

Making a Murderer, The Jinx on HBO,

that whole time period made me wonder why we weren't doing,

like, a comic con type of thing for this genre.

[Sarah Weinman] Especially in more recent years,

you end up with conventions that cater to fans.

'Cause, let's face it,

it's not just about the cases of the people,

but the genre is a commodity.

[promo voice] So many twists and turns.

Anything could happen.

My, my, my.

Introducing the ID Wine Club.

-Well, we are the Wine and Crime Gals,

our podcast is Wine and Crime.

We chug wine, chat true crime, and unleash our worst

Minnesotan accents.

-I also think people are desperate for connection

and community, because there is so little of it in real life,

that they go seeking it out on the Internet.

[Sarah Weinman] True crime becomes part of their identity

and becomes such fodder for online sleuthing.

-Internet sleuths. -Online web sleuths.

[Sarah Weinman] Fans that come up with all sorts

of conspiracy theories, alternate suspects.

[host] Some of these groups have upwards of 20,000 members

and lots of theories.

-Citizen detectives can be incredibly effective.

[Aja Raden] But, the 4th Eye, if they'd been honest about it,

they would have admitted they were entertaining themselves

and each other.

They acted it out.

-Alright, camera set.

[Aja Raden] That they were these great investigators.

They redeemed it as a sort of truth in the same way Bourgoin

wanted to be this famous expert on serial killers,

so he told everyone he was.

Everybody in this story pretty much told themselves a story

and then told it to everybody else and,

like all good stories, you tell them often enough,

you tell them long enough, and most importantly,

you tell them to enough people,

and they just have a funny way of becoming real.

Not true, but real.

[Lauren Collins] It's been a year since the videos

the 4th Eye created were published.

The reason the story won't die,

this kind of zombie nature of the story,

is because Bourgoin won't come clean.

I just felt like I needed to pull out all the stops

to hear what he had to say about it all.

I felt like he deserved the right of reply.

Especially to survivors and victims like Dahina Sy.

I tracked down the village that I thought he lived in.

I took the train from Paris.

When we got there, he was waiting outside.

He had this little storybook cottage with, you know,

fruit trees in the garden.

And gingham curtains.

And there was just this dissonance of...

...am I about to step into this chamber of horrors?

[♪ suspenseful music playing]

[Stéphane Bourgoin] What would be your first question?

[director] Where do you prefer to be?

Do you prefer to be in that chair, or in this chair?

[Stéphane Bourgoin] I prefer to be in your place.

Doing the interviews than being interviewed myself.

Yes.

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