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At the trial of "Tanguy" accused of parricide, the devastating testimony of the mother who spoke

2022-09-21T18:45:15.807Z


Twenty years of waiting, of silences and a criminal record punishable by life rest on the shoulders of this frail nonagenarian in a wheelchair...


Twenty years of waiting, silences and a criminal record punishable by life rest on the shoulders of this frail nonagenarian in a wheelchair.

At the assizes of Val-d'Oise, the mother of "Tanguy" accused of having killed his father, mysteriously disappeared in 2002, delivered Wednesday, September 21 a devastating testimony for his son.

Shrunken in her wheelchair, looking hard and scowling, Marie-Thérèse Wittier reiterated before the court her confessions obtained with forceps by the police in 2016, fourteen years after the disappearance of her husband Jean from the family pavilion of Argenteuil.

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"

Do you think I slept last night?"

I spent the sleepless night because I knew what I had to say again.

It's terrible, because when you're scared, you're scared

, ”says this little 91-year-old woman in a shrill voice, alert for her advanced age.

At the material time, the couple lived behind closed doors with their son Patrick at home, an eternal unemployed man approaching his forties, like the "

Tanguy

" who refuses to leave the family nest in the famous 2001 film.

Exasperated by his idleness, his 73-year-old retired father put padlocks on the cupboard and the fridge to force him out of the house.

"

A month, a month and a half

" before the report of her disappearance by the family on September 19, 2002, relates Marie-Thérèse Wittier, she is seated one evening with Patrick when Jean returns from shopping.

Having discovered that she has thrown vegetables, her miserly husband gets angry, slaps her, threatens to have her "

interned

".

But Patrick "

knew very well that if I was interned, it was the door, he was homeless

", says Marie-Thérèse, who testified for more than three hours without a break.

As his father sits down and begins to eat his soup, Patrick gets up.

He didn't say anything.

He acted, that's all.

The son goes to take a hammer from the toolbox and strikes his father violently from behind, at the level of the head.

The former electrician collapses on his side.

Patrick goes to take a bucket behind the stove and fill it with water.

He plunges his father's head into it, drowns it.

There I saw him struggling

,” describes Marie-Thérèse, who says she was petrified throughout the scene.

A corpse in the middle of the living room, his son sends him to bed.

My mother is lying

Although she didn't see it with her own eyes, she claims her younger brother took the body down to the basement and sawed it for several weeks.

To the point of sending him to buy a second saw blade after a few days.

"

Do you think I was going to go into the cellar to see all this...

", she complains.

His son asks him to call the roads from a telephone booth, to ensure that the city's waste is actually incinerated.

"

I posed - I lied again - for a journalist who was reporting

," apologizes the grandmother.

For several weeks, he gives her in the middle of the night a garbage bag filled with laundry and pieces of Jean Wittier, to put on the road just before the garbage collectors pass.

"

80 kilos (of body), twice a week, if it was over four weeks, that's ten kilos per bag

", calculates the president Marc Trévidic.

Once Jean Wittier's body had "

gone to the trash

", the family went to the police to declare that the pensioner left on his bicycle the morning before from the house and never returned.

Landing in the cupboards of an overworked police and justice, the file sinks into oblivion.

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While her daughter moves heaven and earth to find out what happened to her father, the mother remains "

under the influence

" of her son, who rapes her and extorts money from her.

For fourteen long years, Marie-Thérèse remained silent.

But in the spring of 2016, the police visited him again in a retirement home.

They cook her, cajole her, threaten her, bluff.

On the second day of interrogation, after one hour and twenty-two minutes of recording, Marie-Thérèse cracked.

And finally unburdens itself of its heavy secret.

Questioned at the helm, Wednesday at the end of the day, Patrick Wittier maintains that he has nothing to do with the disappearance of his father, which he attributes to a probable

hidden "

road accident ".

My mother is lying.

I don't understand why she is lying like that

,” accuses this tall, skinny 59-year-old intellectual in a serene voice, repeating “

falling from the clouds

”.

In front of the court, Marie-Thérèse Wittier curtly concludes her testimony, evoking her pregnancy: “

my husband, he did not want Patrick.

He brought me a piece of paper to do an abortion.

I said to him: + Get the hell out of me, I am against abortions +.

Now, sixty years later, Judge, I regret it.

That's all.

»

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-09-21

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