2023-10-13 02:44:32
French lawyer Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, in Paris, October 13, 2014. JOEL SAGET / AFP
He felt it coming, the sneaky death, he who at almost 84 years old, continued to go to his appointments on a scooter. He sent a last message to his loved ones, in the middle of the night of October 5, “Hello my friend, I have reached the end of my path (incidentally I have a little crab, but the overall physical collapse is much more spectacular). Everything suddenly fell apart, only one explanation: we have a programmed biological clock! » He wanted the secret to be well kept, to protect his firm for a while longer, a reflex of lawyers, after fifty-eight years at the bar. Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi did not wear his eternal bow tie that day; he died at his home, in Paris, Thursday October 12, a little before dawn, surrounded by his wife, his daughters, his collaborators. Everyone affectionately called him Uncle.
Read also (2020): Article reserved for our subscribers Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, refractory optimist
Little Jean-Pierre was born on November 11, 1939 in Amblény, a village of 1,200 inhabitants, in Aisne – his family said he was born on the 12th, because being born on November 11th seemed a bit pretentious. He was proud to be mixed race, doubly, triple mixed race: “I am Corsican, I am West Indian, I am from Amblenoiswrote Me Versini, in his only book, Identity papers (Ed. du Cerf, 2020). I am the son of a polyamorous father who was imprisoned and a poet mother, I was raised between Picardy and Africa, between a grandfather who was a senior magistrate and several mothers, I became a lawyer in Paris. This is the story of the Gaul that I am. »
He alone found his way in the confused genealogy of a poetic and broken family, where unknown half-sisters arrive at regular intervals (the father had six daughters from five different mothers); his mother left when he was fifteen months old, found him when he was eight, died when he was sixteen. He lived several lives, in Amblény with the Martinicans; in Paris from 1956; at his Corsican grandmother (the sister of the former minister César Campinchi), who lived with her three sisters dressed in black in Calcatoggio, a village in the Gulf of Sagone. Like his ancestor César, Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi became a lawyer: “In approximately one hundred and thirty years, we have accumulated two hundred years of family lawyering at the Paris bar. »
Family populated by magistrates
The young man met his father late, at age 10, when he was returning from Argentina. He got to know him better in Fresnes prison, where his father was serving eight years due to an odious miscarriage of justice: he had been convicted of making counterfeit 50 franc notes. In police custody, always courteous, he told the commissioner, “I’m really sorry for making you stay up so late.” – a very Versini word. The affair, however, caused a slight unease in a family populated by magistrates – Jean-Pierre’s grandfather was even an advisor to the Court of Cassation. The young man said to himself that it was better to have a father who was a counterfeiter than a militiaman.
You have 52.7% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#death #criminal #lawyer #JeanPierre #VersiniCampinchi