Hello everyone, I hope you’re all doing well. Today I’m going to tell you about a man who is often compared to Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, because he too has been on the run for far too many years. Except that regarding the man we’re going to talk about today, we know where he is. We just can’t go get him, despite the absurd horror of his crime. Without further ado, here is the case of Jean Meyer’s murder.

Trouble at the control tower

Let’s go back in time to 2011. Jean Meyer is 34 years old, and things are going pretty well in his life. He’s married to his wife Nelly and has a 4-year-old daughter. Professionally, things are also going smoothly. He’s a supervisor for the air traffic controllers at Basel-Mulhouse International Airport, and he has no worries at work. Well, actually, there is something wrong in the control tower.
That “something” is Karim Ouali. He is a 35-year-old trainee air traffic controller who is competent but tends to spoil the atmosphere with his strange behavior. He is convinced that his colleagues discriminate against him because of his Algerian heritage and are holding back his career advancement. Jean feels a lot of empathy for Karim and even checks to see if he’s really being persecuted. What he unfortunately doesn’t know is that the roots of Karim’s unhappiness run much deeper than any alleged “persecution.”

From golden boy to nutcase

Although Karim, like Jean, is a graduate of the prestigious École Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (National School of Civilian Aviation) and earns a good salary in addition to rental income from an apartment he owns, his life is far from perfect. Yet things had started out well.
Born in the Paris region to a modest family, he always did well in school and was admitted to ÉNAC in 1998, making his family proud. He was described as cheerful, open, and friendly.
Unfortunately, everything changed in 2006, when Karim’s father died in his arms of a heart attack. This incident naturally traumatized him deeply and had dramatic consequences for his mental health. He cut ties with his family and friends and withdrew into himself. And so, over time, he began to feel out of step with the world around him and sank into paranoia. His only anchor seems to be the character of the Joker, whom he adores to the point of getting him tattooed on him.
He eventually became convinced that his colleagues were harassing him, and even filed a police report against them. He told the police that his colleagues were leaving used tissues on the floor of his apartment and filling his mailbox with flyers to unsettle him. As you might expect, the police didn’t take him seriously, but he stood his ground. He continued to spiral downward and was eventually hospitalized for depression. He was placed on medical leave, but his access badge to the airport control tower remained active because the Civil Aviation Authority didn’t want to upset him even more (it would later be convicted for this voluntary security breach). You know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

From nutcase to murderer

April 27, 2011. Jean gets up early and leaves for work ahead of schedule. He arrives around 7:40 a.m. Ten minutes later, another air traffic controller arrives and sees Jean as he steps out of the elevator. The upstanding family man lies in a pool of blood after being struck 11 times with a hatchet. He is pronounced dead at 7:55 a.m., and poor Nelly Meyer is notified around 8:30 a.m that she will be raising her little girl alone.
Since the killer might still be on the scene, the entire airport is locked down and flights are grounded. All non-priority police operations are canceled to mobilize as many officers as possible, and the CAA is contacted to determine who else could have entered the control tower besides Jean and the now-traumatized air traffic controller who discovered him. The response is swift, and it is exactly what we expected: Karim entered the control tower at 7:35 a.m. and left at 7:49 a.m. His jacket, containing €900 in cash, is found on a landing.
The investigators spring into action immediately. They go to his home in Saint-Louis, near the airport, and wait outside his building. When he doesn’t show up, they enter his apartment and are shocked by what they find. The apartment is littered with trash, to the point where the floor is no longer visible. They also find many esoteric items: tarot cards, inverted crosses. They also find cards bearing the image of the Joker. And finally, they find what appears to be a manifesto several hundred pages long. This document, titled Avataro, features Karim, who presents himself as an Avatar, and depicts conversations with the Devil himself. In it, the killer discusses conspiracy theories, prophets, and the end of the world, and believes himself to be the central figure who will disrupt the balance of humanity. What is concerning about this document, aside from the madness of the theories presented, is that Karim names his colleagues and knows their addresses.
Fortunately, the 36 air traffic controllers at Basel-Mulhouse Airport don’t receive a visit the day after the murder, but rather a letter left in their mailbox. In this letter, which was obviously written and sent by Karim, he seems to take pleasure in threatening them:

“Hello, 21st-century musketeers,
Sorry I can’t deliver this letter in person, but unfortunately, beheading 36 people in a single day isn’t possible. I want to thank you for that commando training, which helped toughen my spirit without putting me at risk of getting hit by a stray bullet. Alas, thrice alas, having long been aware that I was going to leave this job once my rhymes were done, that always gave me an advantage over you. When was the decision to act made? That’s for you to figure out. Now you understand why I was so calm in the face of your petty provocations, you big bitches. You misinterpreted my attitude. It wasn’t weakness, and now you know that revenge is a dish best served cold.

If only you knew what can be done with a syringe or some snake oil accidentally slipped into my pockets. Not to mention the mini sprays made from semen that have splattered your dishes several times at 6:45 in the morning. If you don’t want it to stick in your throat, you’d better watch out for the little stirrers on the 6th floor, too. You started this, and you thought I’d just stand there forever without reacting. I admire the naivety of the little cuckolded engineer straight out of the movie The Woman Next Door.”

He must have felt so important and dangerous while writing those lines, so let’s remember that he isn’t some evil genius. He’s simply an ordinary, neurotic man who didn’t receive the help he needed in time and who seems to revel in his delusions.
Speaking of delusions, his manifesto shows that he clearly had intentions far more sinister than the murder of Jean Meyer, which leads everyone to believe that Jean died a hero: Karim arrived at the control tower early, so he had no intention of running into his colleagues. It is therefore likely that his target was not his workplace, but the entire airport. Indeed, he has the skills to cause a large-scale incident, but the crime scene suggests that Jean, having arrived earlier than expected, intervened and prevented him from accessing the room where he could have caused the worst for many more people.

A perfect getaway

There’s no sign that he’s given up on his nefarious plans, so the investigators throw themselves into their manhunt, but unfortunately Karim has planned his escape carefully. He emptied his bank accounts, bought a plane ticket he never used, left his phone turned on and mailed it to Switzerland, and bought another phone, leaving the box in plain sight at his home before leaving it on a trash can, where it was recovered and used by a city worker. Furthermore, investigators discover the vehicle he used to get to the airport abandoned with no trace of him. They also discover that he bought another vehicle, a green Volkswagen Polo, and likely left the area in that vehicle. Finally, they learn that some time before the murder, Karim legally changed his first name on his documents, becoming Aderfi.
On November 27, 2011, the green Polo is found in Bron, near Lyon. Inside, investigators find the murder weapon, a USB drive containing photos of Karim dressed as the Joker, maps of Europe, and a copy of In Praise of Flight. Everything has been carefully staged for them, and it becomes clear that Karim is no longer in France. The investigation has reached a standstill.

A peaceful life on the run

In 2016, Europol places Karim Ouali on its list of most wanted criminals.
Almost two years later, one of the strangest twists I’ve ever heard of takes place. On April 5, 2018, French investigators are informed that Karim is in Hong Kong. He had arrived in the territory on May 17, 2011, and was immediately imprisoned for a month for forging his passport. In addition to changing his first name, he had altered the “O” in his last name himself so that it became a “Q.” After his release, he remained in Hong Kong under judicial supervision, which ended in 2016.
Rumor has it that he’s turned over a new leaf. He’s even said to have a little boy.

What we know for sure is that he’s looking for love in 2021. And that source is him. That year, a photo of one of France’s most wanted men, along with a profile packed with details, popped up on the Hong Kong dating site Love Awake. Under the username “Shemen,” he says he lives in the Aberdeen district in the south of the island. He doesn’t seem to be holding back when it comes to his lifestyle, so how is it that he hasn’t yet been extradited to France? The answer is as simple as it is tragically ridiculous: the Chinese authorities don’t like us.
Diplomatic relations between France and China have long been strained, particularly regarding extradition. Indeed, a bilateral extradition treaty was signed with China long before the murder of Jean Meyer, but tensions persist because China has violated this treaty by coming to France to apprehend its own political opponents, even though the treaty prohibits extradition on political or military grounds. Furthermore, France suspended ratification of the extradition agreement with Hong Kong in August 2020 following the adoption of a national security law criminalizing “subversion, secession, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces.” In response to this explicit disapproval, China ceased all judicial cooperation with France. And so, when French authorities sent an international letter rogatory in 2018, Hong Kong authorities did not respond. The same goes for extradition requests sent since then. Investigators say it themselves: in this case, we are at the mercy of Chinese goodwill, which seems nonexistent for the moment. That is where we stand today. Karim, this man who has sunk into madness and destroyed a family’s life, can live peacefully, believing himself to be the supervillain he portrayed in his manifesto (which is poorly written, by the way), when in reality he is nothing more than a coward benefiting from a standoff between two governments. We can’t do anything but hope that justice comes soon in this case.

Let me know what you think about this case in the comments, or on Reddit / Tumblr / Bluesky / Threads / Instagram / Mastodon / Facebook! You can also subscribe below to get the new articles in your inbox. I hope you find some money on the ground today, and I’ll see you next time !