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The Detective Who Discovered HE Was the Murderer: Historic Sleepwalking Cases

Khalid Elhassan February 9, 2025 15 min

Sleepwalking - Robert Ledru commits murder in his sleep — Robert Ledru commits murder in his sleep. Pinterest

17. An Unexpected Twist

Le Havre’s waterfront and beach. Pinterest

Initial investigators thought it was odd that the victim had not been robbed, and nothing pointed to any reason, motive, or suspect. Little did Ledru know at the time just how odd the murder investigation would turn out. When he went to the beach to investigate the crime scene, Ledru noticed footprints that led up to and away from the corpse. After he examined them, he seemed troubled, and remarked that they looked familiar. He ordered plaster casts made of the clearest footprints. When that was done, he sat right there on the beach, and looked at the plaster cast footprints for hours. Finally, he got up and told the gathered gendarmes that there was no need for further investigation, as he had solved the crime and found the killer. There was a bizarre twist, however: the killer was none other than Ledru himself.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.