“I want to speak to the Bouchon family.
I've been in detention for six and a half years, I'm sorry, but I didn't kill your mother.
I don't know who it is, but I wanted to tell you, ”assured Laurent Dejean on the first day of his appeal before the Assize Court in Albi (Tarn).
These are the first words of the alleged murderer of Patricia Bouchon, back for two weeks before the assizes for the homicide of "the jogger of Bouloc" on February 14, 2011.
This 42-year-old plasterer, sentenced to twenty years in prison in 2019 by the Haute-Garonne Assize Court, spoke on Monday after the testimony at the bar of the daughter of the victim, Carlyne, who said " his close and sometimes conflictual relationship with his mother ”, who died at the age of 49 after going for a morning jog in Bouloc (Haute-Garonne), a town north of Toulouse.
Much more verbose and responsive to the questions of the president of the Assize Court than during the first instance in Toulouse where he appeared to be a spectator of his trial, Laurent Dejean, blue shirt, black pants and short hair, hammered home his innocence, asserting loud and clear not to have accepted the sentence to twenty years imprisonment for "an act he did not do".
"It's a disaster what happened in our village but what do you want me to tell you except that it is not me," he said.
I have the feeling that I was tried in five minutes in Toulouse when there is no my DNA, no mobile, not the same color of the car and not the same hours as me in this case.
"
Many inconsistencies
To lift the veil on the many gray areas of this file which has nearly 50,000 pages, the court heard this Monday afternoon from a couple residing in Bouloc, precisely in the dirt road where related clues were found. to the violent assault of Patricia Bouchon. On February 15, 2011, the gendarmes had discovered at this place, an earring belonging to the disappeared one, a pet, a piercing and a large bloodstain. The morning of the victim's disappearance, this retired couple heard around 4.30 am a woman's cry, followed a few minutes later by a man's voice saying "excuse me" on several occasions before hearing a vehicle go down this dead end to spin towards Bouloc. The gendarmes were able to date the passage of the jogger near this path around 4:15 am to 4:30 am.
"The man spoke loudly, like someone in intense emotional stress, who regretted his gesture, no longer controlled his emotions," said this retired nurse. With my husband, we thought it was a neighborhood problem and when we looked out the balcony, we saw nothing because it was pitch dark and then there was silence. I couldn't assess where the screams and apologies were coming from but it was in our way. "
Patricia Bouchon's belongings were found a few meters from their house. During the reenactment, the retired couple did not recognize the voice of the accused. Questioned by the president of the Assize Court, Laurent Dejean admitted to knowing this dirt road, near which he passed to go to his work. He also assured that he had never met Patricia Bouchon during his morning jogging in Bouloc. The president then reminded him that he had declared in police custody "to have met him several times near the stadium". One more inconsistency for this forty-something declared as psychotic. This Tuesday, the jurors hear Nicolas Gélis, the main witness who made it possible to draw a robot portrait of the suspect, after crossing a Clio blocking the road on the day of the tragedy,near the route taken by Patricia Bouchon.