Toulouse. Gabriel Loubradou, president of the association “Stop a oblivion”, died
Lotois Gabriel Loubradou died at the age of 83, Sunday October 24. He was the co-founder and president of the Toulouse association of families of victims “Stop oblivion”, which fights for the truth about hundreds of unsolved murders committed in the years 1980-90.
He made his life a fight against the shortcomings of the Toulouse justice system. Gabriel Loubradou died of cancer on the evening of Sunday, October 24, 2021. He was 83 years old.
“He was an extremely courageous person, with total ethics”, says Yves Garric, former journalist and old friend of Gabriel Loubradou. “He was also very modest: he never told me about the pain he felt towards his daughter.”
Because the life of this history-geography professor from Cahors, in the Lot, changed in 1989. On August 16, his daughter Hélène disappeared from the Aufréry clinic, in Pin-Balma, where she was hospitalized for depression.
She was 27 years old, and was the mother of an eight-year-old boy. She has never been found. For Gabriel Loubradou, there is no doubt: she was killed. “His obsession was to start over the truth about his daughter’s disappearance”, underlines Marcel Gay, also a journalist and friend of the former professor.“He only lived for that”.
A fight to bring out the truth
Almost ten years later, serial killer Patrice Alègre was arrested in 1997 and sentenced in 2002 to life imprisonment for murder, attempted murder and rape.
During its investigation, the Homicide cell 31, headed by gendarme Michel Roussel, revealed serious dysfunctions within Toulouse institutions.
Between botched investigations, murders classified as suicide or disappearances of seals … It would be more than 190 murders or disappearances committed in the years 1980-1990 not clarified and classified without follow-up by the Tribunal de grande instance of Toulouse.
Thus in 2004, Gabriel Loubradou created the Toulouse association “Stop oblivion” with twelve other families of victims. Objective: to gather files of disappearances and unexplained crimes.
Thanks to the work of the association, the Homicide 31 cell was able to make the link between certain files and Patrice Alègre.
From then on, Gabriel Loubradou devoted his life to this search for truth. “He had a computer memory, which allows him all the connections, all the overlaps between the different cases”, remembers Yves Garric.
He put his file after all the others. He had generosity, courage, faith, something extraordinary.
Above all, “he was not afraid”, continues the former journalist.
The fifty cases brought by Stop to oblivion “are not all linked to the Alègre case, but have one thing in common: their mistreatment by certain magistrates and their investigative services”, explained Gabriel Loubradou, then president of the association, in a editorial published on the website of Stop forgetting. The association brings together around thirty families of victims and several hundred members.
“He carried out all kinds of operations, harassed the public authorities – and especially the justice system – to force the magistrates to investigate these various murders”, tells Marcel Gay, who helped the former professor of history and geography in some of his investigations. “He moved heaven and earth to achieve it”.
“A priceless loss”
“It is an invaluable loss for the association”, regrets Yves Garric. The former journalist fears that part of his fight for the truth will go with him. “He had the keys, everything we can never say about this huge legal mess”.
“I hope his work will continue”, declares for his part Michel Gay. “I tip my hat to these people who are going to take up the torch, who are fighting not for money, but for ideas”.
Gabriel Lourbadou will be buried on Saturday, October 30, 2021, in Montcuq in the Lot, where he lived.