It all began on Friday, November 15, 2024. That day, in the late afternoon, a visibly exhausted man with hollow cheeks and trembling hands pushed open the doors of the Bron police station, located in the suburbs of Lyon. Speaking in Spanish, he identified himself as John Edward C., a 32-year-old Colombian national, and made it clear to the receptionists that he had important information to reveal about a planned premeditated murder in the area.

When they entered his name into the database, the police discovered that he appeared in two incident reports filed a few days earlier at a Lyon police station regarding the theft of his suitcase and passport. They also learned that he was subject to an order to leave French territory and had been staying for about one month in a shelter in Bron.

An assassination plot? The police wondered whether they were dealing with a compulsive, thrill-seeking liar. But his insistence intrigued them enough to alert their colleagues at the judicial police, based at the central police headquarters on Rue Marius-Berliet in Lyon. At 6:15 pm, two experienced investigators from the organized and specialized crime division, one of whom was fluent in Spanish, went to the Bron police station, where they began a lengthy conversation with Edward C. Very quickly, they sensed that this former soldier was telling the truth when he claimed to have been recruited in Bogota for a very specific contract: the elimination of a French trafficker in Lyon.

‘I am just a victim’

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