After almost 48 hours in police custody, Jacques Rançon breaks down.
Extracted from prison to be heard in the investigation into the murder of Isabelle Mesnage, killed and raped in 1986 in the Somme, "Jacques the Ripper" tells a horror scene.
"I start to undress her, she struggles, I punch her, I make love to her.
Well there, after, I cut her and I cut her breasts and her penis, and then I went back to the ball… ”This June 19, 2019, by his brutal and sordid confession, Jacques Rançon puts an end to a cold insoluble case, a case that remained unsolved for more than 30 years.
Already sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of Mokhtaria Chaïb and Marie-Hélène Gonzalez killed at the end of the 1990s, the sixty-year-old is tried from this Tuesday, June 8 before the assizes of the Somme for the murder and rape of Isabelle Mesnage, computer scientist at Amiens hospital aged 20.
This case, closed for the first time in 1992, illustrates the French difficulty in tracking down serial predators.
Gaps from which Jacques Rançon took advantage throughout his criminal career ...
A capital clue that has gone unnoticed
In the summer of 1986, a blazing sun hit the Somme.
When Isabelle Mesnage's remains are discovered in a clearing in Cachy, the heat wave has taken its toll and the body is very damaged.
Forensic scientists miss a major clue: the victim's sexual organs have been removed ... Almost a signature, investigators will discover, thirty years later ... Torn clothes, a bloody stick, a few camping utensils and a hat of cowboys complete the sinister crime scene.
The investigation into the rape and murder of Isabelle Mesnage, 20, in the Somme, was closed in 1992, before being relaunched in 2018. PHOTOPQR / Le Courrier picard / DR
Who could have attacked this young, independent, athletic woman who had gone hiking for a few days at the start of summer? Isabelle Mesnage had no enemy, no debts, just a flirtation ... Police custody follows one another, telephone tapping too, but after six years of combing the victim's entourage, the investigators must surrender obviously: they have no clue. In February 1992, the investigation was closed.
The same year, Jacques Rançon was arrested in the Somme.
He is 32 years old.
Armed with a knife, he has just forced a young woman into his vehicle before raping her.
A "stroke of madness" according to him.
Investigators look no further, taken aback by this suspect who telephoned his victim a few days after the rape to offer him a new meeting.
No comparison is then made with the death of Isabelle Mesnage.
The young computer scientist was however found less than 2 km from the scene of the rape ...
An ignored past
Jacques Rançon was imprisoned, served five years in prison, and left to live in Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales) in 1997. Seven years later, 1,000 km from the Somme, the city's police officers made a crucial discovery.
After years of investigation into the "Perpignan station murders", DNA was isolated on the right shoe of Mokhtaria Chaïb, 19, killed and mutilated on December 21, 1997. This DNA is that of Jacques Ransom.
Placed in custody, the latter admits having killed Mokhtaria Chaïb, admits two other violent attacks in Perpignan and the murder of Marie-Hélène Gonzalez, killed and raped in June 1998. The genitals of the two women were amputated.
Why, given the horror of these crimes, then not to have searched in the past of the suspect, already convicted in 1998 and 2000 for two attacks of women in Amiens and Perpignan?
Why not have retraced the thread of his years in the Somme, when he worked in popular balls?
Why not have wondered about his companions, who all evoked long night outings and his "sadistic smile"?
“This is a practical case to study for justice, believes Me Corinne Herrmann, who represents the Mesnage family with Me Didier Seban.
Despite his worrying profile and confessions in two murders, justice did not seek to know where Jacques Rançon had passed, if he could have committed other crimes ... "
A testimony that relaunches the investigation
A few days after the murderer's conviction to life in 2018, a woman will change the course of the Mesnage affair.
She recognized on television the face of the man who had attacked her in the summer of 1986 near Villers-Bretonneux (Somme)… Her memories are precise.
The kidnapping attempt took place less than 600 m from the last place where Isabelle Mesnage was seen, note the gendarmes of the Amiens research section.
Another coincidence?
This time, justice makes the link.
At the end of 2018, Isabelle Mesnage's body was exhumed and some experts now assure that Isabelle Mesnage's traumas "evoke the stigmata present during the autopsy of Mokhtaria Chaïb" and are "characteristic of an operating procedure corresponding to the actions of Jacques Rançon ”.
Mutilation that the killer recognized in front of the investigating magistrate: "I took my knife and I cut her breasts and her penis ... to avoid my fingerprints, the sperm ..." Willingness to disturb the investigators, really?
The psychiatrists who have appraised Jacques Rançon rather see in these mutilations "an over-murder" which reveals "a kind of fetishism".
All the experts also describe a "serial sex criminal".
The question of "a black number"
Faced with such a profile, capable of assaulting women every three months at the end of the 1990s, the question of a "dark figure" necessarily arises.
"For lack of criminal memory in the courts, Jacques Rançon was able to continue his criminal course," notes Didier Seban.
When he was arrested, in 1992, for a rape committed a few hundred meters from the murder of Isabelle, no one thought of questioning him, because the Mesnage file was already old ... However, this could undoubtedly have avoided the murders in Perpignan … ”
Read alsoCold cases: the report that wants to change everything
And how many others? Justice seems to have learned from its mistakes. A reform of the treatment of cold cases should soon see the light of day and aims to facilitate links between examining magistrates throughout the territory. Already, dozens of unsolved cases like that of Isabelle Mesnage are being identified by the courts. Among these files, "the disappeared from the A26", women killed at the end of the 1980s near the Picardy hunting ground of Jacques Rançon ... These women and the hypothesis of other crimes attributable to the killer should logically be s' invite to this new trial, which is to last until the end of the week. “He admitted of course, but returned to these confessions, which are a mixture of other cases in which he was involved, tempers his lawyer Me Xavier Capelet.There is evidence to doubt the relevance of these confessions. "
