The senior IT executive has programmed this round trip to death in great detail.
A trip of 8000 km between Colorado (United States), where he lives, and Saint-Maur (Val-de-Marne) where the mother of his children still lives.
In the apartment, in the heart of summer, the American executes Aurélie, his ex, but also Christophe, a lover she has just met and whose existence he is probably unaware of.
After this bloodbath, the forties returned home quietly across the Atlantic.
It is this hardly credible scenario that emerges in the case of the double assassination of Saint-Maur at the end of July.
In any case, the investigation carried out by the criminal brigade has just led to the imprisonment in August of Aurélie's ex-spouse in the United States, who confessed.
French authorities have requested the suspect's extradition.
This track of the husband had however been almost ruled out from the start of the investigation.
"He is in the United States with the children," Aurélie's mother explained to investigators.
It is she who discovers the corpse of her daughter on July 29.
She had received a phone call from the employer, surprised not to hear from this 43-year-old corporate executive.
Christophe, a "collateral" victim
In the mother's bedroom, the two lovers lie naked on the bed, their legs tangled.
"There was blood everywhere," recalls one of the police officers who arrived on the scene.
Experts said 18 bullets were fired, 17 plus one.
It was Aurélie who was the most affected, hit by two-thirds of the projectiles.
The investigators seek first to ensure that it is not Christophe, 42, who was targeted in this assassination.
This executive in the IT department of Canal + is a single without history.
“A discreet and kind father of a family, rather a gentleman,” describes one of his colleagues.
According to our information, it had been ten days since he exchanged with Aurélie on a dating site.
And that was, it seems, the first time they had met physically.
"He was there at the worst time, a judicial source does not return.
A collateral victim like that is hardly believable.
"
The suspect's sister rocks the investigation
“As there was such a surge of violence in this double assassination, the passionate track was necessarily the one to be privileged”, continues a source close to the file.
The police therefore go back on the trail of Aurélie's relations with other men.
The mother of the family had apparently been separated for several years with the father of her children.
“Two relations were developed in particular, specifies the same source.
In particular a childhood friend living in the South-West, in Arcachon, and with whom she had reconnected.
But these leads do not lead to anything.
Newsletter - Most of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
Everything changes when the investigators call the sister of the ex-spouse to discuss the double murder.
"But my brother was in France when it happened," she would have told them.
The latter had asked him to look after his two children during his stay in Paris for "professional reasons".
A weapon sent to a poste restante in Paris
The ex-spouse lied.
And the IT executive ends up confessing.
He says he bought a firearm in the United States, a Herstal, of Belgian manufacture.
He sent it to France, as a poste restante in the 18th arrondissement of Paris.
Then he took the plane, reserving a ticket in his name.
Still without trying to hide his identity, he rented a hotel room in Paris, then took action.
“At times, he practically showed professionalism, analyzes a legal source.
To others, it was amateurism.
"
He would have surprised Aurélie and Christophe because he had kept the duplicate of the keys to his ex-wife's apartment when she had asked him to return them to him.
After the shooting, the escape of the assassin was filmed by the CCTV cameras of Saint-Maur.
We would see him throw the firearm in the Marne where it would have been partly found.
There remains the question of the mobile.
Why did he want his ex dead?
The investigation will have to determine it.