“
Facing the Other together.
“Since he confessed on February 14, 2018 to having killed”
accidentally
“his daughter, Nordahl Lelandais no longer has a real identity in the eyes of Jennifer de Araujo.
In an interview with Le
Parisien
, the mother of the eight-year-old girl kidnapped and then killed during a wedding in Pont-de-Beauvoisin (Isère) looks back on the six months of torture, during which she, her husband and her daughter Colleen waited for the dog handler to finally speak.
A few days before the trial at the Assizes of Grenoble, she confides her expectations for the hearing and delivers the story of a life shaken by the loss of a child.
Read alsoMaëlys murder trial: “Until then, Nordahl Lelandais has managed to keep his secrets”
The memories of this wedding evening in this village hall which "
turned into a nightmare
" are still intact in his memory.
Moments before, her daughter was on her knees “
to taste the dessert
”, in her white dress, her complexion tanned by a recent family holiday in Portugal.
Jennifer de Araujo remembers this moment when everything changed, when she realized that her daughter was no longer on the dance floor, then the arrival of the gendarmes and the first doubts concerning Nordahl Lelandais.
This man "
not at all ready for the ceremony
" had come to the party without having really been invited.
He was the first to flee when the guests started the search.
9 months of waiting,
"
the duration of a pregnancy
"
And then there are those long months of "
endless
" "
unbearable
" waiting : "
we had our mobile phones permanently on next to us, in case the investigators called us to tell us that they had found her
“, she recalls.
Nordahl Lelandais, who only admits being cornered, ends up breaking down on Valentine's Day, when the investigators detect a tiny stain of blood in the trunk of his Audi A3: "
There, I understood that it was finished, that I would not see her alive again.
It gave me an electric shock, I wanted to scream my anger.
“After the discovery of the remains of the girl in a steep area of the Chartreuse massif, her parents and her sister can finally offer a burial to Maëlys, in June 2018 at the church of Tour-du-Pin: “
I finally able to talk to him, more than nine months after his disappearance.
The duration of a pregnancy, well...
»
After this terrible shock, Jennifer de Araujo and her husband tried to have a new child, but the mother suffered two miscarriages.
The couple divorce.
“
It drove us even further apart, it felt like we were only attracting death around us.
To rebuild themselves, they also had to sort through Maëlys' belongings: "
When I sorted her clothes, I was struck by her smell, it made me think back to a sentence she had said one day: Don't worry, my little one, I'll be back!
She was in the hallway, and she was going to the farm to see the cows, while I was waiting for her at home.
Emotion overwhelmed me.
"The one who worked at the
I had a hard time dealing with death.
»
many doubts
From Monday, Jennifer de Araujo will have to face the alleged murderer of her daughter.
Anyone who has already been convicted of the murder of Arthur Noyer in 2021 faces life imprisonment.
If she shows herself to be combative, the three weeks of hearing promise to be a new ordeal: “
It will be very hard.
We will have to go back four years and relive every moment.
"She hopes to finally get answers to the many questions that relatives still ask themselves:"
We have doubts about everything: we don't know if he raped her, what she died of, what were the last words that she said
,” she laments.
Almost five years after the disappearance of her daughter, Jennifer de Araujo retains one certainty, Maëlys, her granddaughter "
smiling, beautiful, full of life
” “
would have become a great lady.
“And to add:”
I will always miss her.
»
