Tracing France’s History in the Heroin Trade

A couple of weeks ago I found myself sat outside a bar in Marseille’s Panier district, the old town, waiting for the daughter of the man who I’d been told was the city’s “last Godfather”. Before he died in his cell in Baumettes Prison in 1984, Gaëtan Zampa was so feared and respected in the south of France that even some of the police who pursued him were reluctant to actually catch him. “You don’t like to put a lion in a cage,” they’d say.