A "relief" for the family of Sophie Le Tan, who still hopes to see Jean-Marc Reiser, indicted for the kidnapping, forcible confinement and murder of the young woman, tried by an assize court from here 2021. The Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal of this 60-year-old man, who requested the cancellation of certain crucial expert opinions, implicating him in the disappearance of the 21-year-old student whose remains were found in a forest of the Bas-Rhin last October.
While the suspect has always claimed to have received the young woman at his home, during an apartment visit, and to have treated her, which could explain the traces of blood found at her home, much other evidence overwhelms her .
Between November 15 and January 8, several items were found at the suspect's home, including a hacksaw. Four months later, analyzes carried out by the National Institute of Scientific Police (INPS) revealed traces of DNA belonging to the evaporated student on the tool.
The suspect's lawyers, already convicted of rape, hoped that this key element could be excluded from the proceedings, like a T-shirt, a blade, a piece of lino, or even a washing machine cover and shoes, some of which had traces of blood.
"Procedural fantasies"
The defenders denounced the conditions for the discovery of the saw, by a legal expert escorted by investigators from the PJ of Strasbourg, on January 8, 2019. The latter, according to their request for a declaration of invalidity, “exceeded the mission entrusted to him By recovering this tool without witnesses and they thus asked for the cancellation of "all the objects passed into the hands of the expert".
This request for a declaration of invalidity, already rejected by the Colmar Court of Appeal, has therefore also been rejected by the Court of Cassation. In its judgment, the latter considered that the time which had elapsed between the notification of the disputed reports of the expert and their request was too long. A decision that satisfies Me Gérard Welzer, lawyer for Sophie Le Tan's family. "The Court of Cassation has given a fair response to the procedural fantasies of Mr. Reiser, who is once again trying to escape his guilt," he said on Tuesday to the Parisian.
