Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
A slight, pale man with a neatly combed side parting and rimless glasses managed, over a period of more than ten years, not only to gain control over an educated French aristocratic family spanning three generations, but also to deprive them of their entire fortune. The manipulator in question is Thierry Tilly, who made the extended de Védrines aristocratic family dance to his tune like puppets in a puppet theater. But how did Thierry Tilly manage to cast a spell over an aristocratic family consisting of an elderly mother, three adult children, their partners, and their grandchildren, and completely isolate them from the outside world? It all began in 1996 when 50-year-old Ghislaine Marchand wanted to take care of the administration of “La Femme Secrétaire,” the most prestigious secretarial school in Paris, which her daughter attended and which was in financial distress. She asked lawyer Vincent David for help, who recommended Thierry Tilly as a consultant. Ghislaine Marchand was born into the de Védrines family, an old French noble family. At the time she met Thierry Tilly, she was living in Paris with her husband Jean, an economic journalist, and their children. Thierry Tilly quickly became Ghislaine Marchand’s right-hand man and closest confidant. She even took Tilly with her on her summer vacation in 2000 to her vacation home not far from the family castle in Montflanquin. There, he also got to know the other members of the de Védrines noble family. Ghislaine’s mother Guillemette de Védrines, born in 1913, and her brother Philippe, a former officer, were particularly taken with the eloquent Tilly, who claimed to have an office in the Ministry of Defense and to work as a secret agent for the UN and NATO. Tilly managed to gain the trust of the entire family through strategic psychological games and convinced them that Freemasons were threatening their lives. As a result, the family installed surveillance cameras throughout their castle and completely isolated themselves from the outside world. Only Ghislaine was allowed to leave the house to go shopping. Her husband Jean Marchand, who was critical of Tilly, was excluded from the family by Tilly via email. Ghislaine divorced him. In 2003, her husband contacted the regional magazine Sud-Ouest and reported Tilly’s machinations. But nothing happened. Meanwhile, Thierry Tilly gained access to the family’s assets. Due to a fraud offense, Tilly was banned from running a business in France for ten years, which is why he went to Oxford. Despite no longer being in France, Tilly had complete control over the family, which he controlled by email and telephone. Tilly brought the grandchildren Amoury, Guillaume, and Diane to Oxford to live in his rented house. They had to work as waiters and salespeople and hand over their earnings to Tilly. This only changed when a dispute between Ghislaine and Phillipe escalated to such an extent that Philippe asked the police for help in 2008. In the meantime, Christine, the wife of the Védrines’ youngest son, Charles-Henri, had confided in her employer, the French aristocrat Bobby de Pouget Saint-Victor, for whom she worked at his company, Oxford Fine Food Company. He advised her to leave the family clan, who were not only holding her hostage but also torturing her. Christine did indeed manage to flee to France, where, with the help of lawyer Daniel Picotin, she filed a complaint against Tilly. He was arrested at Zurich Airport on October 21, 2009, and extradited to France. Thierry Tilly, who had psychologically manipulated and terrorized a total of 11 family members and deprived them of their entire fortune of 4.5 million euros as well as their family castle in Martell, was sentenced in the appeal proceedings to ten years in prison, two years more than in the first instance. This was the maximum possible sentence for “unlawful confinement, exploitation of the weakness of persons in a state of psychological dependence, and use of violence against vulnerable persons.” Tilly’s accomplice, Jacques Gonzales, a severely disabled man in a wheelchair who had swindled money from the de Védrines family through an alleged charity called “Blue Lights,” was sentenced to four years in prison. Thierry Tilly himself referred to Gonzales as his boss. One thing is certain: Thierry Tilly was a master manipulator who, even after his arrest, still had the family believing that he was the victim of a conspiracy. The brainwashing had worked perfectly. The aristocratic de Védrines family now knows that they had fallen for an impostor who had robbed them of their entire inheritance. Thierry Tilly, dubbed “the guru” by the French press, was released from prison in 2018.
