His name is unknown, his publishing house modest and the titles of his works The dead speak And Interview with a corpse leave you thinking. However, in the heart of winter, Philippe Boxho sneaked into the top of the L’Express book list. In the “Essays and Documents” category, the man, a forensic doctor in Belgium, overtook those much more famous than him, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Gilles Kepel and François Sureau. By mid-April, his first work had sold 45,000 copies, the second 50,000, according to Edistat. And this, only in France. Across Quiévrain, he claims 100,000 copies of each opus and its conferences – one per week on average – attract 600 enthusiasts and leave 400 disappointed due to lack of space.
Before him, others, like Michel Sapanet and his Live from the morgue (Plon), tried their hand at the genre – telling the inside story of the forensic profession – but none achieved the notoriety born on social networks. Its sudden takeoff in January is largely due to its presence on the Legend YouTube channel. His interviews with Guillaume Pley, star of the network, were a hit: 4.4 million views for the first episode, 3.3 for the second. The third, which has just been posted online, has been viewed 500,000 times in twenty-four hours. Since then, Philippe Boxho, 58, has also appeared in short format on TikTok, willingly responds to Cyril Hanouna on C8 and always sells a few more books.
It must be said that with his flowery shirts and his transparent plastic glasses which give him a little air of Laurent Voulzy, his easy informality, the man has nothing of the learned professor. Even his CV on the University of Liège website describes him as a “full professor” in legal medicine and criminalistics. His first book The dead speak is a succession of cases encountered during his career, the second, Interview with a corpse, is centered on the role of each person in the investigative work. His slight accent gives him a nonchalant air, he talks a lot, with passion, but without raising his voice, he recounts the worst horrors without being discouraged, even with a touch of humor. Without overdoing the spectacular, Philippe Boxho spares his readers nothing. In conferences, he does not hesitate to show photos, while taking care to anonymize the bodies and, more generally, to only work on old and “ordinary” cases.
“Either he became a forensic scientist or he became a serial killer”
He claims to do teaching, refuses to be paid for his conferences: “I do this to explain what my job is. I don’t put on a show.” He insists that while he fictionalizes his stories so they don’t look like a police report and changes the names, “everything else is true, not like the TV shows.” He hates the image that these reflect of his profession, also a way of showing that he offers something true, something real. The man is not fooled. He knows that the subject he deals with – murder, news stories, police investigations – fascinates people. And let them come and seek from him a thrill of horror to better ward off such a fate.
He sometimes plays with it, as when he recounts how, one day, while responding to a railway suicide, he showed a piece of skin found on the rail to a police officer. It was the dead man’s face, he laughed, the policeman rolled his eyes. Such anecdotes earned him bittersweet comments like this sentence read on YouTube: “I have never seen a guy unleash such crazy things with such calm and serenity! Either he became a forensic scientist or he became a killer serially him.”
He takes care not to go too far, warns when children who are too young attend his conferences, spoke on BFM TV after the discovery of Emile’s bones in Haut-Vernet, but does not intend to become a television expert. He continues to give between 150 and 250 hours of courses per year at the university and is now finishing a third book which will be published before the summer. To the delight of its publisher, Kennes Editions, its success emerged from very serious financial difficulties a year ago. With this in mind, Philippe Boxho hopes to convince him to finally publish his book on the holy shroud, his other passion.
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