Jacques Rançon consistently denied Friday 11 June before the Somme Assize Court having killed Isabelle Mesnage.
However, he did not find words to paint a positive portrait of himself, pushed to his limits on his confessions, his relationship to the truth, his other crimes.
Read also: Isabelle Mesnage case: the atypical confessions of Jacques Rançon in question
"
I'll never tell you it's me because it's not me, so calm down!"
": The 61-year-old Picard, who became the"
killer of the Perpignan station
", came out for the first time against Didier Seban, a civil party lawyer.
Since the opening Tuesday, June 8 of his trial for the rape and murder, 35 years old, of the young computer scientist, he had shown very few emotions. "
In 1986, I was not an assassin,
" he repeated. He was sentenced in 2018 to life imprisonment for his crimes in Perpignan, in 1997 and 1998. In June 2019, he confessed to the rape, murder and mutilation of Isabelle Mesnage's body, at his last custody hearing on sight then before the judge, but then retracted.
Often responding with a single word and repeating "
I don't know
", he was almost talkative on Friday June 11 to explain these confessions.
“
At one point, I said: 'I want to confess but it's not me.
All I said was thinking of Moktaria and Marie-Hélène,
”his victims from Perpignan, he explained.
"
I was fed up, so I said what they wanted to hear
."
But "
you gave details that only the killer could know, it is your signature
", asserts the lawyer, evoking in particular the backpack stained with blood of the young woman.
"
Signatures
"
Me Seban and General Counsel Anne-Laure Sandretto have long sought to probe his relationship to the truth.
Jacques Rançon's advice tried to demonstrate that the second investigation, launched in 2018 on this "
cold case
",
started
from the principle of his guilt, neglecting other aspects of the case.
"
Since we are looking for similarities, we can also look for differences
", noted his lawyer, Me Xavier Capelet, stressing that his client had nothing to lose since he was already sentenced to life imprisonment and that he would have without doubtless lived a trial "
less painful
" if he had confessed.
To read also: At the Assizes of the Somme, Jacques Rançon, "killer of the Perpignan station", refutes the accusations
During her plea, Me Corinne Herrmann, defense of the civil parties, on the other hand noted the "
signatures
" of Jacques Rançon in this crime, both "
ante mortem
" - "
the fact of catching the neck of his victims
", "
Knife wounds
", "
beatings
" - and "
post-mortem
": "
the removal of the sexual organs
", a "
very rare
"
act
, "
as for the murders in Perpignan
". "
For me, it's a signature as certain as if we had DNA,
" she said.
"
Where is the chance?
"Added Me Seban, pointing to the series of"
elements all leading to Jacques Rançon
", starting with his"
hunting ground
", an"
extremely limited territory
"where Isabelle Mesnage was seen for the last time and close to two other crimes or attempts he has committed.
"
It can only be him!"
», He launched.
"
Say who you are
"
"
You have the opportunity to tell this court who you are
", had insisted earlier the president, Patricia Ledru, recalling that the accused said to suffer from the image of "
monster
" given of him.
She tried, in vain, to make him explain the difference between a consensual sexual relation, with his partner, and a sexual assault or a rape.
To read also: Ransom trial: "misses" of the investigation into the murder of Isabelle Mesnage to its spectacular revival
The accused admits that he was going to hang out in search of daughters, but only after the birth of his son in 1987, not in 1986. A woman however testified Tuesday, June 8 to have narrowly escaped a kidnapping in 1986. The president also went back to the origins of his career as a sexual predator by reading the testimony of another woman, assaulted in 1976, still a teenager. Without prosecution, the gendarmes having dissuaded the teenager from filing a complaint against this "
poor kid
". Suspended Friday evening, the hearing must resume Saturday with the requisitions and pleadings of the defense.
