In the box of the accused will take place the alleged sponsor of the assassination of billionaire Hélène Pastor, her Polish son-in-law Wojciech Janowski, 74 years old.
In front of him, on the bench of the civil parties, will sit his ex-companion Sylvia Ratkowski and the half-brother of this one, Gildo Pallanca-Pastor, the two heirs of the victim.
The appeal trial of the so-called “Pastor” case, named after this Monegasque dynasty splashed by crime more than seven years ago, finally opens this Monday before the Assize Court of Appeal of Bouches-du -Rhône, after several postponements due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
Only five of the ten defendants in the first trial, which ended in the fall of 2018 with Janowski's life sentence, are being retried.
Among these, his former sports coach, Pascal Dauriac, who has constantly referred to him as the mastermind of the crime, and the two suspected killers, Comorians from Marseille who deny the facts.
The gym teacher, who had improvised a recruiter, had been sentenced to thirty years;
the duo of perpetual henchmen.
Hélène Pastor, a wealthy Monegasque heiress, was murdered in May 2014 in Nice.
Scheduled until November 19, this trial takes place in an atmosphere of extreme tension between the children of the victim, who no longer speak to each other.
On May 6, 2014, when she had just visited her younger son Gildo, treated at l'Archet hospital in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) after a double stroke, Hélène Pastor and her driver, Mohamed Darwich, had been the target of a commando of two men armed with a rifle.
He, the faithful employee, died four days later.
She, 77, the heiress of a powerful real estate empire of the Rock, whose fortune was estimated at 12 billion euros, had died fifteen days later.
"I'm afraid, I want to see you again because I have things to tell you," she had whispered shortly before to the police officers who had come to question her.
Janowski confesses before retracting
Very quickly, because of the amateurism of the killers, tracked from Marseille via video surveillance, then the confessions of the sports coach, in the service of the couple Sylvia Ratkowski-Wojciech Janowski for thirteen years, the investigation was focused on the latter. Sweeping the facade of the respectable entrepreneur, good father and notable of Monaco, the investigation revealed the dark side of a ruined businessman, who took advantage of a false diploma and pumped the money of his companion to his knowledge. Placed in custody, Janowski confesses before retracting before the judge. “Yes, I ordered this murder (…) so that my wife's suffering would stop,” he said, arguing about the “harassment” of his mother-in-law on Sylvia and her two daughters. "I was so scared that I was forced to admit," he then defended himself,claiming to have been mistreated by the police.
Read alsoThe Pastor dynasty, “the other princely family” of Monaco
During the first trial, in 2018, the video recording of Janowski's 6th custody hearing, which no one had ever seen at the time, was broadcast. What Me Éric Dupond-Moretti, his lawyer at the time, had believed to constitute an element of defense had turned out to be totally overwhelming. We saw him claiming - and obtaining - wipes and a Coke, then blowing his nose while confessing that he wanted to "solve the problem" of his mother-in-law to "save Sylvia" and gave "200,000 euros" in small denominations to the coach. to do this. In his plea, Me Dupond-Moretti had pleaded guilty to the sole murder of Hélène Pastor. Janowski has since challenged it. He intends to plead not guilty and "demonstrate to the Assize Court that many gray areas remain," explains his new defender, Marseille criminal lawyer Jean-Jacques Campana.
On the side of the civil parties, the youngest son of Hélène Pastor, who took Me Thierry Herzog for lawyer alongside the Nice Me Gérard Baudoux, intends to be "active and offensive during the debates", explains his entourage.
"He wants to know the truth and wonders about the degree of knowledge that his half-sister Sylvia had, or not, of the project of acting out of his companion for nearly thirty years", one indicates to our journal.
“They want to kill us,” Hélène Pastor would have said to her son at the end of 2013.
"We do not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs"
Gildo Pastor-Pallanca had learned during the investigation that Janowski would also have planned to kill him - according to the words of the coach.
In a recent interview with Paris-Match, where he indulges in expressing a hateful resentment against his sister, he explains that the relationship between her and his mother was "execrable".
The investigation, however, ruled out any hypothesis of Sylvia Ratkowski's complicity.
And it is highly unlikely that the Assize Court will be interested in the intimate questions of one of the civil parties - if not for what the state of family relations at the time of the facts could shed light.
Gildo Pallanca-Pastor wants Wojciech Janowski's sentence to life imprisonment to be confirmed.
LP / Olivier Lejeune
As he had indicated on several occasions to the Parisian, Gildo Pallanca-Pastor, who now lives in the United States with his family, wishes above all that the life sentence of his ex-brother-in-law, whose guilt does not his eyes no doubt, be confirmed. At the beginning of October, Me Thierry Herzog in this sense asked the president of the court, who had not, it seems, not foreseen in his schedule, the viewing of the recordings of the custody of Janowski. "This is undoubtedly an oversight, which it would be surprising if it were not remedied," said the lawyer.
The defender of Janowski ensures not to be opposed to it, "provided that the entirety of the hearings of custody is shown".
Me Jean-Jacques Campana insists: “The police worked loyally, of course, but too quickly.
She endorsed the thesis that my client is the sole sponsor for a financial motive that does not hold.
However, the file provides proof that
Jano
inherited nothing in the event of the death of his mother-in-law.
"And to conclude, cryptically, with this adage of Jean de la Fontaine:" We do not kill the goose that lays golden eggs.
