“I planted a guy in Pigalle
(Editor's note: in Paris)
but I never killed anyone.
I did some hold-ups, but I fell through the cracks.
I have over fifteen years of incarceration behind me.
Rose
(the first name has been changed)
, she saved me from prison from 1994, she saved me from organized crime.
She saved my life and I thank her for it.
"
It is without a shadow of hesitation and in a rocky voice that Pierre Pinaud answers questions from the president of the Assize Court of Seine-et-Marne, in Melun.
But it is not for armed robbery that this 70-year-old man has appeared before the criminal jury since Wednesday.
It's for attempted spousal murder and habitual domestic violence.
First conviction at the age of 17
On September 13, 2017, he stabbed Rose twice in the chest while she was lying in bed.
He reproached her for her infidelity.
The drama took place in their apartment, in the Beauval district, in Meaux (Seine-et-Marne).
The weapon had passed through the thorax.
Who is Pierre Pinaud really?
According to him, his criminal record does not reflect reality, since many convictions have been erased.
Listening to him tell his story, we go back to a time when you could sentence a 16-year-old to one year in prison and send him behind bars for car theft.
His first conviction before he joined the army, at the age of 17.
“Bad Choice” of Life and Cocaine Addiction
A time when you could spend “three years in a dungeon”.
Pierre Pinaud does not hide why he was sent to this "clay cell".
The experience marked him: “I had stolen weapons to sell them to robbers.
The prison is Club Med next to that.
"
Pierre Pinaud spent his early childhood on a farm near Limoges (Haute-Vienne).
When he was 5 years old, his family moved to a low-cost housing estate in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis).
School does not interest him.
Unlike the rest of the siblings, the accused "made bad choices".
Pierre Pinaud responds bluntly to even the most intimate questions asked by his lawyer.
When Me Thierry Benkimoun asks him about his cocaine consumption, the septuagenarian does not go all the way: “I took cocaine to get high and have sex.
It is ten times stronger than Viagra.
I fell addicted.
"
It was a friend of the couple who had alerted the emergency services
An alcoholic since his youth, Pierre Pinaud is also a heavy smoker.
An addiction that earned him lung cancer.
He was condemned by medicine, he escaped thanks to chemotherapy.
If no question bothers him, his conviction for rape to seven years in prison by the Paris Assize Court in 1986, however, he forgets it.
During this first day of hearing, the jurors got to the heart of the matter.
Two voicemail messages left by the accused on a friend's phone at the very moment of the tragedy were played at the hearing.
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"You can leave Madam, do not be uncomfortable", insisted on clarifying the president while addressing the victim, sitting next to his lawyer, Me Florence Pain.
Rose stayed to listen anyway.
In the recordings, he is heard crying and begging his companion to call the fire department.
But the accused retorts a "You are going to die".
If Rose is alive today, it is thanks to this friend who alerted the police.
“I heard him screaming behind, I was afraid,” testified the latter at the bar.
Pierre Pinaud says: “In prison, they detoxified me from alcohol and cocaine.
I am not the same anymore.
The man I was in 2017 is dead.
I want to end my life in the sun, in a motorhome.
"
