French inmate known as "Tommy" Rico died in a hospital in Marseille on Thursday, having spent more than 55 years in prison. Joseph Thomas Rico was convicted of seven murders, with suspicion of involvement in three others. He is considered the longest-serving inmate in French prisons, and died at the age of 91, "leaving behind a chilling criminal record," as described by the French newspaper "Libération." "Tommy" Rico was twice sentenced to life imprisonment. He was born on the island of Corsica and was transferred from one prison to another. According to the "France 3 Corse" channel, "Tommy" Rico had been suffering from cancer for several years and "died of old age" in one of Marseille's hospitals. After his first imprisonment for the murder of his godfather at the age of 24, "Tommy" Rico was sentenced to life in 1983 for a double murder on two separate occasions. Overall, he spent more than two-thirds of his life behind bars. In his final years, the inmate filed over twenty requests for parole, but he consistently denied the crimes for which he was convicted: the murder of three cashiers in a supermarket in 1979, as well as the murder of a girl, her father, and one of their neighbors in 1980. In 1959, he was also suspected in the disappearance of three young German tourists, but the investigation was dropped due to insufficient evidence.
