The friend met on vacation is a murderer on the run: the film story of two Frenchmen

What is a backpacker’s worst fear? Meeting the wrong person. Myriam, 22, and Yanis, 21, two Frenchmen set off on a trip to Catalonia, had a bitter experience. They met a nice Belgian in his forties and spent five days with him. The man turned out to be a criminal sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2017 for the murder of his wife. He had been on the run since he failed to return to prison in Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium, after a period of leave on June 9.

As they explain in a long post on Twitter, it all started on a beach in Tarragona, Spain. Myriam from Paris was sunbathing and Yanis from Aix was playing guitar, when Victor, a Belgian, approached them. He told them he wanted to travel to Spain to learn the language and still have enough money for a 100-day vacation. The man then explained that he wanted to get a tattoo. Perfect, Myriam is a tattoo artist. So the two friends agreed that Victor would follow them to Montblanc, where they were on vacation.

At first Myriam was wary: “He wanted to see us every day and it’s hard for us to say no to people”. For five days, the two Frenchmen met Victor every afternoon. Myriam gave him his first tattoo: a burning heart on his arm. No sooner had the ink dried than Victor was already planning the second: the word libertyfreedom, on the collarbone.

No numbers, no emails, no bank cards

In the course of their conversations, the forty-year-old opens up. He recounts his crazy adventures, the dozens of jobs he’s worked, and then slips in an almost innocuous comment about having been in prison. Myriam and Yanis begin to have doubts. Why was he in prison? There is no answer. Other details provided by Victor also make them question: “He told us his children were very angry with him.” The Belgian also had a tendency to brag. He always talked about his latest girlfriends, but never about the mother of his children. Myriam kept her distance. What if Victor raped his ex-girlfriend?

Another disturbing detail: the man paid only in cash, he did not have a valid telephone number or e-mail address. Finally, the Belgian let slip his real first name during a conversation with Yanis: his real name is Adrien. Realizing the mistake, the forty-year-old tried to explain: he and a friend play at being called Victor… Nothing really convincing for the French, who started to imagine, without really believing it: what if the man were on the run ?

Yanis takes out his cell phone and searches for: «Adrien, Belgium, wanted». He immediately comes across a photo of his new friend and various articles in the Belgian press. Victor is called Adrien Rompen and was convicted in 2017 of strangling and fatally beating his wife, Charlene Grosdent.

Es el hombre!

“Total shock, I couldn’t believe it,” writes Myriam, “All our doubts were confirmed, it was even worse than we had imaginedfor 3/4 minutes we read all the articles in which we thought it couldn’t be him, we looked at all the photos we had of him, all the ones we had seen in the press”.

The two Frenchmen got scared. In the early afternoon they had another meeting with the man: “We thought we had to act quickly.” They called the European emergency number, trying to explain in hesitant English the absurd situation they were in. In the early afternoon of Monday, the police finally arrived in Montblanc. Just as Adrien Rompen arrived. “He didn’t think it was for him,” recalls Yanis, “he walked over to them without asking.” In hesitant Spanish, the man from Aix pointed out the fugitive to the police: «lui Es el hombre!» After 17 days on the run, the Belgian was arrested.