2023-12-06 17:31:12
Published6. December 2023, 6:31 p.m.
France: Tried for having murdered a nonagenarian with a madeleine
In Orléans, a man acquitted at first instance must face justice once more.
par
Renaud Michiels
For the prosecution, a madeleine is indeed the murder weapon.
AFP
A sixty-year-old is back in court at the Orléans Court of Appeal. Accused of having murdered a nonagenarian by choking her with a madeleine, he was acquitted in May 2022. But the courts appealed.
The events took place in the spring of 2019 in a retirement home in Tours, in Indre-et-Loire. Alain J. then visits a resident, Yvette, a nonagenarian, relates “The Parisian”.
He closes the door behind him
The man brought him madeleines. Strangely, the nursing staff will testify, he locks the door.
After her departure, in the early evening, a nurse discovered the resident’s lifeless body. Two pieces of madeleine stuck in his trachea would have caused death by asphyxiation.
A life annuity as a motive?
An accident, as tragic as it is banal? The only certainty is that investigators will discover that today’s visitor has a motive. The deceased had in fact sold her house to him for life annuity. He may therefore have wanted to recover it more quickly and obviously had plans to resell it.
Here he is being prosecuted for premeditated murder, i.e. assassination. And the suspicions and elements once morest the visitor are considered strong enough for the courts to keep him in pre-trial detention for three years. On May 22, 2022, the man was acquitted.
No solid evidence
The jurors believe that the motive is insufficient. There is no solid proof that the accused was able to “stuff the madeleine into the mouth” of the nonagenarian, specifies the French daily. The man, finally, a former firefighter, had sworn that if he had seen the victim choking, he would have “immediately started cardiac massage”.
But Alain J. is now back before the courts in Orléans. The trial which opened this Wednesday is expected to last until Friday. It is up to the Court of Appeal to decide whether it is a Machiavellian assassination or a sad accident.
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