Her massive figure and heavy face will once again roam the corridors of a courthouse. Jacques Rançon, the killer of Perpignan station, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of Moktaria Chaïb and Marie-Hélène Gonzalez, is heard this Friday by a judge of Amiens in connection with the murder of Isabelle Mesnage, committed in 1986 in the Somme, we learned from concordant sources. There remains one question: in the face of which Jacques Rançon will find the examining magistrate? In this case, the killer oscillates from the start between two diametrically opposed postures.
"Very calm", with this gruff tone and a disillusioned point which characterize him, Jacques Rançon had, during the last hour of his police custody in June 2019, delivered fairly detailed confessions to the gendarmes of the research section (SR) Amiens. Confessions reiterated a few hours later, in the presence of his lawyer, before the two judges who charged him with murder. "These confessions were a copy and paste of those he had delivered about the murder of Moktaria Chaïb, said Me Xavier Capelet, his historical lawyer. One wonders if he has not made an amalgam between the two cases… ”
"He gave specific details"
Thus, the killer at Perpignan station has since retracted his confession. Last August, at the scene of Isabelle Mesnage's death, her memory would have played tricks on her. Then last October 18, he finally denied any involvement in the death of the young woman of 20 years kidnapped, beaten and raped on June 28, 1986 before being discovered on an isolated dirt road, a few kilometers from Jacques Rançon .
"It had already worked like that in the Moktaria Chaïb case," blows Me Corinne Herrmann, the lawyer for the Mesnage family. Confessions, then denials, before admitting everything at the hearing. "He gave specific details and now claims to remember nothing, it's strange," also said a relative of the investigation. In fact, Jacques Rançon seems "obsessed with DNA," says the same source. Since there is none in this file, he believes that it is not for nothing. He seems in defensive denial. "
Injuries "identical to those of the victims of Perpignan"
Material elements seem, however, beyond the killer's confession, to incriminate Jacques Rançon in the death of Isabelle Mesnage. The young woman's body had been mutilated. Wounds "identical to those of the victims of Perpignan," said Corinne Herrmann, who spoke of "geometric wounds, which cannot have been caused by animals. "Characteristic" injuries according to certain experts who were able to analyze photos of the body but also to examine it after its exhumation. "Legal experts confirm that the injuries are identical to that of the victims of Perpignan. But at least one other believes that they have nothing to do with it, ”tempers Me Capelet.
It remains to be seen whether the justice system - which should not organize a reconstitution if Rançon persists in its denials - will consider the charges sufficient to send him back to an assize court. "All the elements are there," says Herrmann. My clients, Isabelle's parents, are old and expect a trial before the end of the year. "