Khaberni - Joseph-Thomas Rico, also known as "Tommy" Rico, who spent more than 55 years of his life behind bars, died on Thursday in a hospital in the city of Marseille.
He was convicted of committing seven murders, with suspicions of involvement in three additional crimes. "Tommy" Rico was the oldest prisoner in France, as well as the prisoner who had spent the longest time in French prisons. He passed away at the age of 91, on Thursday, November 20, 2025, in a hospital in Marseille.
This serial killer, who was also convicted in a bloody armed robbery case, leaves behind a chilling criminal record, according to the French newspaper "Liberation".
Tommy Rico was sentenced twice to life imprisonment. He was born on the island of Corsica and was transferred from Borgo prison in Haute-Corsica to Salon-de-Provence, and most recently to Luynes, near Aix-en-Provence.
According to a source close to the case, confirming news reported by "France 3 Corsica", he had been suffering from cancer for several years and "died of old age" in one of the hospitals of the Phocaean city (Marseille).
When the editorial board contacted his lawyer in Marseille, Mr. Alain Lout, there was no immediate response.
After being imprisoned for the first time at the age of 24 for the murder of his godfather, Tommy Rico was sentenced again in 1983 to life imprisonment for committing double murder on two different occasions. In total, he spent over 55 years behind bars, which is almost two-thirds of his life.
In his latter years, he made more than twenty requests for parole, but he continued to deny the crimes for which he had been convicted, which included the murder of three supermarket cashiers in the city of Beziers (Hérault department) on December 22, 1979, and also the murder of a girl, her father, and one of their neighbors in the Var department on January 18, 1980.
In 1959, he was also suspected in a case involving the disappearance of three young German female tourists, but the investigation was eventually closed due to insufficient evidence.
