Departures of note

On 9 August 1988 police in Saône-et-Loire spotted a Volkswagen Type 2 microbus on a dead‑end road near a TGV construction site in Bussières and approached it. Inside, Pierre Chanal told a policeman he was an “NCO taking advantage of some leave time to do some tourism.”

The police then saw a man’s head wrapped in a blanket through the rear window; the man, Balázs Falvay, a 20‑year‑old Hungarian, was freed and said he had been hitchhiking the night before in Chalon‑sur‑Saône and that Chanal had picked him up.