Drug-related suicides in France

François Vérove (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa veʁɔv]; 22 January 1962 – 29 September 2021), also known as Le Grêlé ([lə ɡʁɛle, ɡʁele], the "Pockmarked Man"), was a French serial killer, rapist and police officer who murdered at least three people between 1986 and 1994 in the Île-de-France region. He received his nickname from acne scars seen on his face by witnesses following his first murder. Vérove committed suicide in September 2021 upon realizing that he was about to be identified.
Vérove's first murder, that of 11-year-old Cécile Bloch, took place in the 19th arrondissement of Paris in 1986. The following year he murdered two adults in the 4th arrondissement. He was linked to two further murders in 1991 and 1994, as well as two rapes in 1987 and 1994. During his crime spree, Vérove belonged to various French police forces; he was a member of the National Gendarmerie between 1983 and 1988, serving as a motorcyclist in the Republican Guard, then became an officer in the National Police in Paris until his retirement in 2019. He briefly held elected office as a municipal councillor in Prades-le-Lez, Hérault, between 2019 and 2020.
On 24 September 2021, Vérove received a police summons to provide a DNA sample as part of an investigation into the Bloch killing. His wife reported him missing on 27 September. Two days later, Vérove killed himself by barbiturate overdose in a rented flat in Le Grau-du-Roi, Gard. He left behind a suicide note in which he confessed to his crimes.

Germaine Berton (7 June 1902, in Puteaux – 6 July 1942, in Paris) was a French anarchist and trade unionist. She is known for the murder of Marius Plateau, an editor for the Action Francaise journal and a leader in the royalist organisation Camelots du Roi, in January 1923. Germaine Berton was defended by Henri Torrès during her trial and surrealists have used her mugshot in a number of art pieces. Despite confessing, Berton was acquitted on 24 December 1923.
Berton stopped engaging with anarchist organizations following a subsequent arrest in 1924. In 1925, Berton married Paul Burger, a painter before leaving him in 1935 for René Coillot, a printer. She died in 1942 due to an intentional overdose.

Alfred Métraux (5 November 1902 – 12 April 1963) was a Swiss and Argentine anthropologist, ethnologist and human rights leader.

Francine Mussey (6 October 1897 – 23 March 1933) was a French film actress whose career began in the silent film era of the 1920s and ended in 1933 when she committed suicide by ingesting poison at age 35.Mussey was born in the 18th arrondissement of Paris as Marcelle Fromholt in 1897. She made her debut in the 1920 Lucien Lehmann-directed film L'épave, opposite actors Marcel Bonneau and Jean-François Martial. She would go on to appear in a number of films throughout the 1920s and into the sound film era of the early 1930s directed by Louis Feuillade, Gaston Ravel, Alexandre Ryder and Jean Daumery, among others. She appeared in the 1927 epic Napoléon which ran for five and a half hours.

Marthe Hanau (1890 – 19 July 1935) was a Frenchwoman who successfully defrauded French financial markets in the 1920s and the 1930s.

Walter Georg Alfred Hasenclever (8 July 1890 – 22 June 1940) was a German Jewish Expressionist poet and playwright. His works were banned when the Nazis came to power and he went into exile in France. There he was imprisoned as a "foreign enemy". He died in Les Milles (Camp des Milles) near Aix-en-Provence.