Dans la tête du tueur (2004)

In [year unspecified], a nurse is found dead on a beach near Brest, stabbed several times. Jean-François Abgrall, a gendarme with the Rennes research unit, is tasked with solving the crime. His investigation leads him to Francis Heaulme, a drifter who was seen between the beach and the nearby Emmaüs center. By questioning him several times, Abgrall cross-checks the information he has gathered. Gradually, he becomes convinced that the crime he is investigating was not the first. He then pieces together the path of serial killer Francis Heaulme, who, over eight years and between stays in psychiatric hospitals, left a trail of bloody murders during his wanderings. A special unit is temporarily set up to retrace Francis Heaulme’s movements and compare them with unsolved murders. Despite the effectiveness of this approach, which will lead to several criminal cases being solved, Jean-François Abgrall finds himself at odds with his superiors and with a judicial system that, at the time, was ill-suited to investigating serial murders.