Le Figaro Lyon
With his neat haircut over thin glasses and a midnight blue clutched suit, Alassane S. seems to want to retain some of the beauty that his many conquests recognized him before his four years of pre-trial detention. The slender man who grew up in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, appears from Wednesday before the Assize Court of Lyon for the murder of Anne-Laure Castro, a young escort-girl of 23 years of which he was the last client, on October 23, 2019. Facts for which he faces 30 years in prison but of which he claims his innocence, as he did, with condescension and vehemence throughout the investigation of the judicial police of Lyon.
The order of referral to the Assize Court for murder nevertheless underlines his presence rue de Marseille, in the 7th arrondissement of Lyon, towards the banks of the Rhône on the night of 23 to 24 October. It is in the river, under the Gallieni Bridge, that the girl's body will be found seven days later. A body whose plunge into the water has not erased the wound running from the throat to the nape. This wound that would have touched the bone marrow, paralyzing Anne-Laure without killing her according to the medical examiner. After the autopsy, extensive examinations of his organs revealed the presence of water from the Rhone in his lungs, indicating death by drowning.
Anne-Laure's ordeal
The words of the director of investigation of the criminal brigade coldly restore the ordeal of the last moments of the young woman, pretty and intelligent, adept of alcohol, drugs and difficult relationships too. She was found tied up in the fetal position by an electric cable, trapped alive by 47 meters of cling film. In one of the two plastic bags hanging from his neck was one of his hands.
The police made the link with a disturbing disappearance reported a week earlier at the police station of the 6th arrondissement on which their colleagues of morality are investigating. Meanwhile, her family has almost discovered the prostitution activity of the woman who had been adopted at 4 months in Djibouti, and of which they knew nothing. It was revealed to them by a very close friend of Anne-Laure. The family went so far as to contact the latter client, who assured them, as he would assure the policeman, that they had never honoured their October 23 appointment on the morning.
A shopping cart, a silhouette and questions
However, the girl's phone stopped on a relay covering the forty-year-old's home several times until the afternoon, alternating periods in the off position and brief phases of re-ignition. Over the course of the interviews of the suspect and his companion, emerges the profile of a violent man, behind the apparent shyness described by his family, wealthy and came from Africa or the United States to Lyon this Wednesday. A man adept at threesomes and frequent and numerous sexual relations, accustomed to escort sites and heavy consumer of pornography.
The youngest of five siblings enrolled in the professional success of parents, director at IBM and interior decorator, Alassane seems to shine less socially. Employed in sales, including ready-to-wear, he had launched an activity as a street vendor of grills and drinks on the markets in Lyon. He moved there with a cart of which he had sawed the upper part. The same trolley that was found the day after Anne-Laure disappeared in the parking lot of the Lidl store on rue de Marseille, abandoned. In the night, around three o'clock in the morning, CCTV cameras filmed a long figure carrying an indefinite mass in a shopping cart whose top seems to be missing.
Alassane, at whose home plastic film was found, was seen taking down his garbage on the same time slot. Garbage cans, because he doesn't want it to be carried after him, he says. Phone records show a call from his girlfriend in the night, suggesting an absence from home. This companion who sees him return a little later handling a phone that does not belong to him. The accused pointed out from that first day the lack of formal evidence against him. His lawyers will plead for acquittal. The verdict is expected on Friday.