Marie-Jacqueline Sono Ngalième, 66, will be at the helm of the Oise Assize Court in Beauvais this Thursday.
She will have to answer, for three days, for the facts of the murder of a spouse committed on August 22, 2018 in Margny-lès-Compiègne.
The accused incurs life imprisonment, ie thirty years incompressible.
This summer evening, the couple is once again very alcoholic.
“It was the permanent drinking binge,” confirms Mouna Taoufik, the defense lawyer.
As she prepares to eat, an argument breaks out.
Marie-Jacqueline holds a knife in her hand.
A few minutes later, Bernard Coffin manages to reach the nearby bar, bleeding.
He was shot several times in the chest and will die in hospital.
Read alsoMargny-lès-Compiègne: indictment for killing his spouse
The whole issue of the trial will be to know if the gesture of the accused was voluntary or not.
At this stage, the accused still refutes any premeditation.
According to her, her companion would have inflicted his blows on himself, impaling himself on the blade of about twenty centimeters during the fight.
“We witnessed his downfall without being able to do anything”
" Many times ?
And in a place where there are vital organs?
It's amazing, "said Murielle Bellier, the lawyer for the victim's family.
She adds: “Especially since she had gone to correctional in Compiègne for violence against a spouse in 2014. The facts were similar…”
During the reconstruction of the crime, in September 2019, the family of the deceased did not hide their enmity towards their sister-in-law, described as a “manipulator”.
“She isolated my brother from his whole family, testified Annie, his sister.
She made him drink, we witnessed his downfall without being able to do anything.
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On stage with a former “king” of Congolese rumba
Bernard Coffin had met her nine years earlier, when she was coming out of a cure to cure her alcoholism, “He was a big teddy bear, he took life on the bright side.
But his
Saint-Bernard
side lost him.
He saw in her someone who needed to be helped and she pulled him down, ”summarizes Me Bellier today.
Margny-lès-Compiègne, in September 2019. During the reconstruction, the accused tried to prove that her gesture was involuntary, that it was a tragic accident.
LP/SF
“Once, at a birthday party, she was drunk.
She danced without stopping and said that she had been Clodette.
We never knew if it was true or false, ”remembered Bernard Coffin's sister in 2019. Clodette or almost… Because before moving into Bernard Coffin's dilapidated house, Marie-Jacqueline Sono Ngalième had experienced a hectic life.
According to her lawyer, she was thus part of the troupe of dancers of an African star, Tabu Ley Rochereau, former "king" of Congolese rumba.
First African singer to have made the Olympia in Paris, the latter had the idea, in the 1970s, to draw inspiration from Claude François by surrounding himself with "Rocherettes".
Marie-Jacqueline Sono Ngalième was one of the lucky ones when she arrived in France.
“It was because of her alcoholism that she lost everything”
"She would have even gone to Claude François and was going to go to Clodettes school, but she got pregnant at that time and could not pursue her dream", continues Mouna Taoufik.
Say goodbye to glitz and glory.
Married three times, she will have seven children.
She will live in France but also in Belgium.
“Each time, she was in a relationship with men of good social conditions, cultured.
She lived well.
Her children have good jobs too.
It was because of her alcoholism that she lost everything,” laments her counsel.
His alcoholism… but also his character.
“The problem is that she is infuriating, arrogant.
And that will not help him during the trial, blows the lawyer.
It must come down from the pedestal it has built for itself.
She hides behind a shell.
She had a battered life, but refuses to talk about it.
She's human, she claims it was an accident.
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