A sentence of 30 years of criminal imprisonment with two-thirds of security was required Saturday before the Assize Court of the Somme against Jacques Rançon for the rape and murder of Isabelle Mesnage in 1986.
To read also: Assises de la Somme: "I will never tell you that it's me because it's not me!", Assures Jacques Rançon
"
In the mind of Jacques Rançon, everything is sexual, a violent sexuality
", launched the general counsel Anne-Laure Sandretto against Jacques Rançon, on the 5th day of his trial. This 61-year-old warehouse operator had already been sentenced in 2018 to life imprisonment for the rapes and murders of two women near the Perpignan station in 1997 and 1998. He had confessed in 2019 to having raped and strangled Isabelle Mesnage before to retract. This 20-year-old computer scientist was found dead in July 1986, on the edge of a wood, in Cachy, near Amiens.
For more than 1h30, Mrs. Sandretto painted the portrait of a man "
in reinforced concrete who has no emotional vibration
", "
unfathomable
", "
silent
" and "
dangerous
", passing "
from an ordinary life to a life of horror when he is unleashed by his impulses
”. In front of an impassive defendant, she detailed the list of the "
charges
", in particular the place of the facts, "
hunting ground
" of Jacques Rançon, close to his residence at the time, a place which he "
knows perfectly
" and where he has "
already made two known victims
". The Advocate General also noted the "
concordance
”Between the moment of Isabelle Mesnage's disappearance and a“
moment of freedom to travel alone in his vehicle
”.
As for
Jacques Rançon's
“
modus operandi
”, she recalled the “
similarity of the wounds
” inflicted on Isabelle Mesnage, Moktaria Chaïb and Marie-Hélène Gonzalez, the two victims of Perpignan, whose bodies had also suffered significant mutilations, especially the genitals. “
This would be his first murder. It is already a very heavy sentence for a first offender. I understand that the prosecution can not seek life imprisonment
", reacted to the press Me Corinne Herrmann, lawyer of the civil parties, recalling that his clients are not in"
a process of revenge
"but of"
wish for justice
". The investigation had stalled before ending in a dismissal in 1992. But it was relaunched in 2017 when this specialist in unsolved cases had asked on behalf of the family the reopening of the investigations and obtained success.
