Inside the bizarre world of Alexandre Despallieres, accused killer of Australian music icon Peter Ikin
For a man accused of murder, Alex Despallieres can sure make a fine coffee. But nothing is normal in the world of the Frenchman suspected of killing an Aussie music industry icon.
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For a man accused of murder, Alex Despallieres can sure make a fine coffee.
“It’s in the blend, now I can be like George Clooney,” the then 40-year-old beams as he hands me another podded brew from his new machine.
Then nonchalantly he adds: “I didn’t kill any of them you know, people say a lot of things about me, but I didn’t do any of it.”
The coffee suddenly doesn’t taste so good.
It was early 2009 and the Frenchman stood accused of murdering Australian Warner Music executive Peter Ikin in November the previous year.
Despallieres would later be jailed twice, including for forging Ikin’s will, and released twice, with French police believing Ikin died of natural causes.
Now almost 12 years later he is to face trial over the death of the music industry heavyweight, for what police allege was a poisoning murder to claim his $20 million estate including the apartment we were in and others in Sydney and New York, by what the French court has heard was a narcissistic master manipulator.
It’s a strange case but then spend a day with the man and you quickly realise nothing is what it seems in the world of Alexandre Despallieres.
On the morning we were invited to the up-market Chelsea mansionette in west London, once owned and lived in by Ikin but then occupied by Despallieres, he proudly made multiple rounds of coffee for a carousel of visitors who would roll in and out throughout the day.
They were like bit actors with brief cameos apparently there to support the Frenchman.
The machine was new (and in those days super expensive) but then everything in the home was new, kitchenware, dining ware, tables, large flatscreen TVs still being unpacked and two new series Porsches, delivered to the Hospital Road home by the dealer that day.
One new Porsche were was to replace the Mercedes that he told London police was stolen by one of Ikin’s friends, which police later dismissed as a domestic dispute. The other was for his PA and apparent lover Jeremy Bilien and another man.
The home, then valued at $5 million, was two storey with main reception and expansive lounge, kitchen and dining upstairs and main bedroom and guest room downstairs.
There were photos of the Frenchman everywhere and others including one of the ‘60s Swedish siren Britt Eckland, dedicated “To Alex With Love and Affection”.
There was no images of Ikin, known as PI to his friends, except one which featured Despallieres with Elton John in 1988 of which multiple print copies oddly had been made.
When it is pointed out there was nothing there of Ikin, I get corrected.
“But Peter is here, he is always with me,” Despallieres said as he pointed to the master bedroom where there was an urn of ashes.
Despallieres has a lot on his mind not least of all being accused of having murdered Ikin, faking a will to get his estate as well, and he wants to reveal, allegations from his own family that he had killed his parents six years earlier.
In October 2008 Despallieres and Ikin, then aged 62, entered into a civil partnership, registering at the Kensington and Chelsea Register Office. A month later he would be found dead in a room at a down-market Paris hotel room on Rue de la Gaite.
Bilien was also now living in the Chelsea apartment as was Despallieres’ sister, off and on, and an American actor whom he was briefly married to and all had something to say in the Frenchman’s defence (months later though it would be Bilien who would tell police the will was allegedly forged).
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Despallieres, formally known by the surname Becker, invited News Corp to the home to clear his name as an alleged murderer and forger.
“I am mystified, I really am,” he said.
“They say things like I am a murderer but I’m just trying to grieve but I can’t because every day there is something new. People say so many things about me and you can print what you like about me, I don’t care it won’t make a difference. It won’t bring him back. Let them say I’m the bad guy, it’s not going to change anything.
“They want to say I am this extremely mean person which is good for them, it will bring them nowhere.”
He said he had been sick and for 23 years had HIV then on cue, after a quick phone call, his private British doctor and close friend Dr Eoin comes to the apartment for his daily check.
“You see, look at me, I am sick, I am barely human,” Despallieres said as the doctor entered the room, before then pointing also to a small scar on his own neck that was another illness.
“Honestly look at me – it’s been 23 years that I have been sick – how long will I live? What do I expect of life? A new Porsche, I don’t give a damn I just need a car. It’s not for me. I’ve been everywhere, I expect nothing, I just want to grieve and anyway I will be with Peter soon.”
Then his lawyer makes a cameo, and tells Despallieres to say nothing more but Despallieres can’t help himself and wants to talk about how days after he died, Ikin’s body was cremated
and denied allegations this was fast tracked to destroy the evidence. There’s more names, more claims, more games as Despallieres downs Coca Cola cans in between coffees and starts talking and talking.
His friends said he had also claimed he had brain cancer, which he said was a lie, but it was his ill health which Despallieres said prompted famed actor Eckland to walk with him regularly.
Also, not so apparently.
“No I won’t go there that’s just … I won’t give him any credibility whatsoever or even mention his name in my mouth,” Eckland told News Corp Australia a few months later.
“I will not even say his name.”
She said they did meet through a friend of her ex-husband Rod Stewart who said he was dying and could she come for dinner.
“That is what I did, sort of in a public persona if you know what I mean I didn’t go there as a personal friend, I went there with others and really that was the only time.”
Despallieres, who dropped out of school at 16 and pursued a career as a pop artist, met Ikin in 1998 and had a brief affair. Then 20 years alter they met again and the rest is known.
“It will never go away because there is money, that drives them nuts,” Despallieres concludes the day, before musing the whole saga was now likely to be made into a film about him.
Originally published as Inside the bizarre world of Alexandre Despallieres, accused killer of Australian music icon Peter Ikin