Jaccoud case

The Jaccoud Case, in French Affaire Jaccoud, also known as the Affaire Poupette, was a Swiss judicial scandal of the 1960s.

On 1 May 1958, Charles Zumbach, a seventy-year-old dealer in agricultural machinery, was brutally murdered at his home in Plan-les-Ouates. When his wife came home, she heard four shots and cries for help. Shortly afterwards an unknown man shoved her towards the garden and started shooting at her. Later, she could not recall the appearance of the offender. The perpetrator – perhaps there were several – then returned to the injured Charles Zumbach, and stabbed him to death with a knife before escaping on a bicycle.

Zumbach ran an agricultural machinery business in Plan-les-Ouates, which, it was later revealed, also served as the headquarters of an international gang of criminals and arms dealers led by a former member of the French Foreign Legion who called himself “Reymond”.

When the police interrogated Zumbach's son André, he said he had received two calls at his workplace (a radio station in Geneva) the night of the killing, but both times the caller hung up without speaking. André Zumbach suspected that the caller wanted to make sure that he was not at his parents' house. Asked by the police whom he suspected of being the caller, Zumbach named Pierre Jaccoud, a prominent Geneva lawyer and politician who had had an eight-year relationship with Linda Baud (whom Jaccoud called "Poupette" – "dolly"). Baud worked as executive secretary at the radio station, had had an affair with André Zumbach, and wanted to leave Jaccoud. Jaccoud had written her many desperate letters to convince her to stay with him. Eight months before the murder, Jaccoud sent nude photos of her to her new lover, André Zumbach. The police suspected Jaccoud of the murder.

The police searched Jaccoud's apartment in his absence; he was in Stockholm on a business trip in connection with his position as Vice President of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce. They found blood on a coat and a Moroccan knife, but, as later studies revealed, Jaccoud and the victim shared the same blood group, Type O. Erik Undritz, a renowned Basel haematologist, and Pierre Hegg, head of the Geneva Forensic Laboratory, testified that there were also liver cells on the knife. However, this testimony was later contested; the cells could have been of animal origin, and the knife had been stored for some time after the murder. Jaccoud owned two pistols, but neither was the murder weapon. In addition, on the road near Zumbach's house a button was found that matched the buttons of one of Jaccoud's coats. The coat itself was found in a box of used clothing, and was missing exactly one button. On his return in June 1958, Jaccoud was arrested. In prison he suffered a nervous breakdown and spent most of his time in the infirmary.

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