From Catalonia where they are still on holiday, the two friends are just beginning to realize what has just happened to them. Myriam, 22, and Yanis, 21, allowed the arrest Monday of Adrien Rompen, a Belgian sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2017 for the murder of his wife and on the run since he had not returned on June 6 to his prison in Marche-en-Famenne (Belgium) after a leave.
Last weekend, Myriam tanned on a beach in Tarragona, while Yanis strummed a few chords on his guitar. The road trip is sweet for the Parisian and the Aix who have planned to go around Catalonia and let themselves go according to the meetings. It is in this state of mind that the pair meet Victor, a Belgian in his forties, who tells them that he wants to "go around Spain to work on the language". The "tourist" confides to them that he has "still enough money for 100 days of vacation".
The discussion begins and the man explains that he wants to get a tattoo. That's good, Myriam is a tattoo artist. So the two friends agree that Victor follow them to Montblanc, this town in Catalonia where they live for the holidays.
"He bragged a lot"
The Belgian is friendly but starting to get clingy. "He wanted to see us every day and we have a hard time saying no to people," says Myriam. Aperitif, bike, hike... For five days, the two Frenchmen meet Victor every afternoon.
And Myriam offers him his first tattoo: "A burning heart on his arm because he loved flames and nature." For his second inking, Victor has already planned everything: "He wanted me to tattoo the word freedom on his collarbone"
During conversations, the forty-year-old, sure of himself, gives himself: "He told us a lot about his life, he boasted a lot". Victor would have been in turn firefighter, teacher for two years, photographer, speaks four languages, is a triathlon champion, gifted in sewing. He sometimes even holds an esoteric speech. "He was talking about God, saying that he had met someone called Angel, he was a little perched, in his delirium." And then, the man slips innocuously to have been in prison.
Adrien Rompen, photographed by Myriam and Yanis, poses proudly with the Catalan flag. (DR)
There, Myriam and Yanis begin to doubt. "But how did he do all this while he was in prison?" they ask. Especially: "But why would he have been incarcerated?" Especially since some details of Victor's life disturb them, including his speech on his personal life. "He told us that his children resented him very much. We thought there must be a good reason for his children to hate him so much."
On the fourth day, Myriam distanced herself. Beyond the annoyance, Victor's behavior, his speech about women, make her particularly uncomfortable: "I could no longer stand conversations with him. He talked a lot about his last girlfriends, but never about the mother of his children. I thought he hit her and that's why his children didn't talk to him anymore."
"Maybe he's on the run"
Myriam and Yanis are still surprised. The man only pays in cash, has no phone number, or no longer a valid email address. Finally the Belgian lets slip his real name: Adrien. Realizing his blunder, the forty-year-old tries an explanation: with a friend, he would sometimes play to be called Adrien... Nothing very convincing for the French who begin to imagine without really believing it: "Maybe he is on the run".
"Adrien, Belgium, wanted". These are the words Yanis types into Google to try to understand who their strange holiday companion is. The "investigation" is quick. The famous Victor is none other than Adrien Rompen, convicted in 2017 for strangling and inflicting fatal blows on his wife, Charlene Grosdent.
At his trial, a psychiatric expert described the femicide perpetrator as a man "with little empathy, and a sense of his own importance. We can even talk about cynicism in the relational game. He likes to be seen," reported the Belgian press at the time. Adrien Trompen was sentenced to 20 years in prison. On June 9, allowed to leave his prison in Marche-en-Famenne for a short leave, the detainee had never returned and the Belgian media had echoed this escape.
When they come across these articles on Monday, Myriam and Yanis are distraught: "We panicked totally". But the two friends do not hesitate to react: "When we saw what he had done, we had no problem denouncing him. We didn't know how to do it without putting ourselves in danger. Not to mention that they have another appointment with the Belgian in the early afternoon: "We said we had to act quickly".
In Google, Yanis simply types: "What to do when you meet a wanted person". The search engine directs them to 112, the European emergency number. "It was complicated, we had to talk to them in English," says Yanis, who finally manages to say: "The gentleman killed a woman, he is free."
"He gave us a hand-stitched denim bob"
In a few minutes, in the early afternoon Monday, the police arrived in Montblanc. Just as Adrien Rompen arrives for his appointment with the French. "He didn't think it was for him," Yanis recalls, "he walked in their direction without question." In hesitant Spanish, the Aix native points to the fugitive to the police: "Es el hombre!" After 17 days on the run, the Belgian was arrested.
Myriam and Yanis spent five days with Adrien Rompen, a Belgian fugitive.
"The excellent work of the police services in charge of the case allowed the location of the person concerned," the Verviers prosecutor's office told the Belgian media, adding that the fugitive would be repatriated so that he "can return to a Belgian prison as quickly as possible". Myriam and Yanis were to be asked by the justice to testify but they have still not been contacted.
Since then, the two friends, who told their adventure on Twitter, "recover from (their) emotions" in Catalonia, where they stay a few more days and are delighted with their reaction: "We had a lot of stress, we do not go down but we read the interviews of the parents of the victim, his children who said they were relieved to know he was arrested. We wanted to reassure his family by denouncing him." Myriam and Yanis are already starting to joke about this holiday "adventure": "He gave us a hand-stitched denim bob with the flag of Spain. He was renamed the murderer's bob."