Le Figaro Lyon
When Maryvonne went to the police station of the 14th arrondissement of Marseille at the end of June 2018 to report the disappearance of her son, the name of the latter was already well known in police files. But not in the victim column. Julien L., 44, is a high-flying offender from the Lyon milieu, known in particular for his escape in 2006, when he had distorted company to his police escort in a cemetery during a leave for the burial of a relative. He is also again closely followed by an investigator from the Central Office for the Fight against Organized Crime (OCLO) specializing in organized crime, for the preparation of a robbery, alongside a sulphurous Lyon specialist in the discipline, André K, with whom he communicates by PGP encrypted phone. It took three years of investigation into this disappearance for "the most unusual case", in ten years of post, for this policeman yet accustomed to organized crime.
And suspicions that quickly move towards a settling of accounts following a "carrot" of 300,000 euros of narcotics in the south of Spain. This is what emerges from a listening of André K. with another member of the robbery team in preparation and for which several defendants will finally receive a sentence of up to 7 years in prison at the Criminal Court of Lyon. "We are not about to see the librarian again," he says in reference to the nickname of Julien L., going so far as to evoke "a contract" to avenge his accomplice. Elements corroborated by a former comrade in detention, whose testimony will contain perfectly invented elements. If the observation is correct, the explanation is only rumour, as the world of banditry knows how to peddle, going so far as to evoke an elimination "by Marseillais".
Football, reality TV and bags of weed
But it is the mother's personal investigation that makes it possible to find the identity of the last person who saw her son alive. This is Charles R., a footballer with a career that never really took off despite many attempts in France, Switzerland and England. Semi-pro in Swiss territory during the 2010s, the man played in a reality show and plans at the time to start boxing, for which his Parisian coach ensures that he has a level of competition. Very sporty, the thirty-year-old, from a middle-class family grew up in Villeurbanne, well surrounded. He is described as intelligent, funny, seductive. He held a position as a boatman on Lake Geneva before being employed in the office of the father of one of his ex-spouses, a judicial administrator in the Paris region.
In search of sensations, according to the personality investigator who met her in 2019, Charles R. nevertheless plunged into delinquency in the mid-2010s, after meeting Julien L. in a night establishment in Lyon. He begins to make deliveries of weed in Switzerland on behalf of the trafficker. While investigating him, the OLCLO policeman realizes that the former football player, who has been heading to the Paris region since the summer of 2018, continues to visit the Lyon region on a regular basis. And discovers that he makes go-fast deliveries of weed to Switzerland once a month, with an accomplice, on a repeated modus operandi. He was arrested in September 2019 in Beynost, in flagrante delicto, with about twenty kilos conveyed in the carrier car he drives, following the delivery of his companion. But investigators are especially interested in the disappearance that occurred 15 months earlier, far from having revealed its secrets.
"Right-of-way"
Anaïs S., the girlfriend of Charles R. at the time of the facts is also placed in custody. To the investigators, she tells how the latter had returned from a trip to Spain terrorized the day before the disappearance of Julien L. And how he wished to see it in the aftermath. After he reported Julien L.'s threats against her and her family, the young woman is convinced of the fatal outcome of the meeting scheduled for June 16, 2018. Because relations between the two men have deteriorated over the years and especially after a violent dispute during a holiday in the mountains, reported by Anaïs in custody. Her boyfriend would have had a victim attitude not daring to respond to Julien L., contrasting with his usual character. She understands that he is the stooge of the trafficker. He has made it his obligation since their meeting, so that he continues to deliver drugs on his behalf. "A relationship of control", according to the police, from which he no longer knows how to get out.
After being arrested at the wheel of a stolen vehicle provided by his boss, the lieutenant was reportedly fined by the latter, instructing him to work for him in order to repay. "An endless debt," according to the OLCLO investigator. On the evening of June 16, yet another argument broke out between the two men, in the cellar of Charles R.'s parents' home, which served as a bar and weight room. Julien allegedly asked to pay him money to repay the Spanish scam. In his confession, Charles R. will evoke a violent fight of several minutes during which, convinced that one of the two would not come out alive, he tries to strangle Julien L.. The latter would have finally wobbled on a last blow his head going fatally hit the rower present in the cellar.
"It looked like he had no soul"
When Charles R. returned to Anaïs' home around 23 p.m., "he was in a state of shock, according to the young woman's statements to the police. He was white, with empty eyes, it looked like he had no soul. He told me I did it, I killed him." To the investigating magistrate, she will specify that he had announced this intention. He answers today that he did not want to act and that it was the fight that degenerated. However, self-defence was not retained in the order for referral to the Rhône Assize Court, even though the defendant bought a baseball bat a few hours before the events. A year and a half later, forensic records will in any case confirm the presence in the cellar of the blood of the victim, whose body has never been found. And for good reason, the body was loaded with the help of Charles' best friend, Joris K., in a car, as the latter quickly admits in custody. This friend, to whom Charles had asked a few months before if the uncle, legionnaire, could not have assembled a team to make someone disappear.
After a vain attempt to bury in the forest of Saint-Bonnet-de-Mure, where the drought made the soil too dry, the body of Julien L. would have been thrown into Lake Geneva in all likelihood, and the confession of the accused detailed. The shovel used in the Lyon region was found on site. To Anaïs, months earlier on the sofa in the living room while watching programs on criminal cases, Charles had confided in a joking tone that if he had to make a body disappear, he would weigh it and throw it into a lake. This is what the ex-boatman did, in the deepest part of Europe. According to his account, he bought canoe and swaddled the body in a sleeping bag weighted with weight weights. "He is an intelligent man who used every ploy to cover up his crime," according to the investigator. It lasted 15 months. And now faces life imprisonment. The verdict is expected on Friday.