A former French soldier who served in Afghanistan and admitted to eating a man’s tongue and heart had been “hearing voices in his head”.
Jérémy Rimbaud, 26, who had served alongside British forces fighting the Taliban, has admitted breaking into the 90-year-old’s home in Nouilhan, southwestern France, on November 15, and beating him over the head with an iron rod before extracting part of his organs with a penknife.
Forensic experts later confirmed that cooked meat found on a plate with beans was indeed human, and presumably belonged to Lépold Pédébidau, the dead pensioner.
After he set fire to his victim’s house, the flames alerted the dead man’s son, who lives nearby, who discovered his father’s body, investigators said.
The case has shocked the tiny hamlet in southern France, which is home to just 200 people. The former soldier is accused of attacking another villager in France by hitting him against a tractor.
Rimbaud, has been transferred to a high-security unit for dangerous psychopaths.
He told investigators he had heard voices and “obeyed a message of higher origin” telling him carry out the gruesome act.
The killing took place only ten days after he left the army, in which he had served with at the Marine Infantry Tank Regiment, a light cavalry regiment of the French army and one of its most decorated.
A source at the regiment had said Rimbaud had “posed no problems during his stint” in Afghanistan between December 2010 and June 2011 and where he obtained the grade of corporal.
“The only thing I can tell you is that he never showed any worrying signs,” a superior officer told the Sud Ouest newspaper.
After leaving the army on November 5, his girlfriend told the newspaper that he suddenly started having fits of deliria. Scared of what he might do, she filmed one of these and has handed the footage to investigators.
The American Wavy Yard shooter, Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 people in Washington earlier this year complained about the same affliction. He was shot after het went on a shooting spree.
Alexis appeared to be suffering from “voices in his head”. He had filed a police report in Rhode Island before the shooting, in which he claimed to be the victim of harassment and that he was hearing voices in his head.
According to an FBI official, Alexis was under the belief that he “was being controlled or influenced by extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves”.
“Ultra low frequency attack is what I’ve been subject to for the last 3 months. And to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven me to this.” This message was obtained by federal authorities from Alexis’s thumb drives, phones and computers