Christine de Védrines's memoir sheds light on the incredible story of a noble French family conned by 'hypnotic' trickster
If Christine de Védrines's privileged life had gone to plan, she would now be sitting in a vast turreted ancestral chateau surrounded by sunflowers in a picturesque corner of south-east France. Instead, after a bizarre interlude in a semi-detached house in Oxford, this elegant, unmistakably aristocratic woman is living with her husband, Charles-Henri, heir to the family seat, and three grownup children in a claustrophobic council flat on the outskirts of Bordeaux.
They are, she says in her first interview since publishing a memoir of one of the most extraordinary cons ever perpetrated, financially "ruined". Robbed of their fortune and heritage by a machiavellian fraudster. "Now we have nothing," she says as a statement of fact, devoid of self-pity.
For more than a decade now, the Védrines have been at the centre of an incredible story described as a mix of Harry Potter, Dan Brown, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Christine de Védrines has decided to give her own version in a book entitled Nous n'étions pas armés (We weren't armed), detailing their ordeal. Charles-Henri, 65, and their three children, Guillaume, 35, Amaury, 32, and Diane, 27, have each contributed their side of the incredible tale. The family have written the book, she says, partly as a cathartic act, partly as a warning.
Many still find it hard to believe that 11 wealthy, cultured and intelligent members of a noble Protestant family could have been brainwashed for nearly a decade by a confidence trickster who fleeced them of nearly €5m (£4.3m). Between 1999 and 2009, Thierry Tilly plunged them into collective paranoia, convinced that only he could save them from a sinister masonic plot.
It was Charles-Henri's older sister Ghislaine, director of a Paris secretarial college, who employed Tilly as her deputy, who introduced the conman into the family. At first the Védrines were impressed by his claims of contacts in high places – Tilly claimed to be a descendant of the Habsburgs and the son of an Olympic ice-skater – and the fraudster's money-making schemes. Soon, however, Tilly had convinced them he was a secret agent and that their lives were in danger and they were being bugged, followed and spied on by an evil network that included other family members.
Incredible as it seemed, one by one they fell under his spell, including family matriarch Guillemette, aged 88; an older brother, Philippe, a retired Shell Oil executive; and Charles-Henri, a successful and popular obstetrician. It was, as one family member, banished after questioning Tilly's motives, said, as if he had "opened their heads and taken out their brains".
"As his profession and character demands, he [Charles-Henri] is prudent and pragmatic," Christine writes, but despite this her husband still "gave all his confidence … thanks to the chameleon-like talent of Thierry Tilly".
Believing itself endangered, the family was soon barricading itself behind the closed shutters of the ancestral home, Chateau Martel, in the pretty medieval village of Monflanquin in the Lot-et-Garonne, cutting off contact with the outside world.
Christine de Védrines, 62, admits the convoluted saga stretches credibility. "If someone told me this story, I would have difficulty believing it," she told the Observer. "But it happened. It's true. We were all manipulated."
Tilly is currently serving 10 years in jail for the kidnap, brutal treatment, extortion and abuse of weakness of the Védrines family. The Védrines' jewels, paintings and several properties, however, have all gone, and their money, supposedly invested by Tilly, has disappeared into the offshore ether.
"I heard someone on the radio talking about us and saying we were cultured, educated, intelligent and this should have armed us against Tilly," Christine told the Observer last week. "But it didn't. We were simply not armed to deal with someone who lied on such an extraordinary scale. Maybe we were naive, but we were not used to another human being lying to us, tricking us. We did not expect it. Thierry Tilly was a bad person, a predator, a vampire. And we were like puppets, unable to stop him. He was very clever. It was almost as if we were hypnotised."
Tilly uprooted the family to the UK, telling them their lives were at risk in France, then beat, threatened and humiliated Christine to obtain the "key" to a non-existent family fortune he claimed she possessed, turning her own children against her.
The spell was only broken in March 2009, when Christine fled back to France and went to the police. Tilly was arrested in Switzerland shortly afterwards, but such was his power over the family it was six months before her husband and children were persuaded to return with the help of a lawyer specialising in cults, Daniel Picotin.
"People ask how he could have manipulated all 11 of us, but it didn't help being so many. It meant every time someone expressed a doubt about him, someone else would justify what he was doing. We were all manipulated," said Christine.
Charles-Henri, who inherited Château Martel, said he had been devastated to discover Tilly had tricked him into signing papers to sell the property, sealing the couple's ruin. He is contesting the sale. "When the lawyer told me I almost fell off my chair. I thought I was signing for a loan. I would never have knowingly sold Martel. I wasn't in my right mind, but I wouldn't have agreed to sell my family home – my, and my children's, heritage. I will fight to my dying day to get it back."
Today the family is trying to rebuild some kind of normal life. Charles-Henri has returned to work as a doctor to feed the family, Diane is studying chemistry, Guillaume has his own insurance business and Amaury has just finished a business degree. Christine remains resolutely upbeat. What she misses most, she said, is not the chateau or her engagement ring, taken by Tilly, but the poems and notes to her late parents, the Mother's Day cards from her children. "They were in a suitcase taken to Oxford. I haven't a clue what Tilly did with them," she said. "They're not worth anything, but they were my memories."
She said her book, which she hopes will be translated into English, is an attempt to establish "the truth" of the family's bizarre ordeal, and a warning to others of the "extraordinary things that can happen to an ordinary family. For 10 years we lived with Thierry Tilly's lies. I wanted to leave a record of the truth."
