the alleged murderer of Amandine Estrabaud again before the Assize Court
Guerric Jehanno was sentenced in October 2020 to thirty years of criminal imprisonment for the kidnapping, forcible confinement, rape and murder of Amandine Estrabaud. The young woman was missing in 2013 – her body has never been found.
7 years before Delphine Jubular, there was Amandine Estrabaud. The 29-year-old young woman, an education assistant in a high school, disappeared on June 18, 2013 between Castres, where she works, and her home in Roquecourbe (Tarn).
His alleged murderer, Guerric Jehanno, has been retried on appeal since this morning. The 33-year-old former mason has always denied his involvement in the affair. But his behavior and his contradictions led investigators to question him.
What happened on June 18, 2013?
Education assistant in a high school, Amandine Estrabaud quits her job as she does every day and hitchhikes to the village of Roquecourbe, where she has been living for a few months. It has remained untraceable since.
At home, the door is wide open, her phone is found in a jacket pocket and a vehicle visibly left behind around her house. In the grass, the gendarmes also recover an earring and a ballerina.
The only certainty of the investigators: the young woman was attacked at home, probably by an acquaintance who would have accompanied her. A neighbor of Amandine says in fact to have seen, from behind, a man of Guerric Jehanno’s build, dressed in workman’s trousers with fluorescent bands, getting out of a company van alongside the young woman.
The Guerric Jehanno track
First questioned as a witness, the one who admits to having had a crush on Amandine ended up at the top of the list of 52 suspects … And if he denies, the frame blessed in 2016 when he draws a plan for four of his fellow prisoners of the place where he would have buried the young woman. Important research is in the forest of Sido, near Roquecourbe … But no body is finally found.
Neither physical evidence nor corpse thus come to support the theory of guilt of Guerric Jehanno, indicted in April 2015. For his lawyer, Me Simon Cohen, it is simply a matter of a miscarriage of justice: “there was never any tangible evidence against this man: no trace of blood, not a piece of cloth, not a hair or a hair of the missing woman“, he concurs in Parisian.
“My client is being prosecuted for rape and murder when there is no body. It is not even known if his disappearance is linked to a violent death. Guerric Jehanno had no motive, no motive to do this“, still pleads Me Simon Cohen.
Four days on appeal
So, is Guerric Jehanno responsible for the murder of Amandine Estrabaud? The mother of the latter, Monique Sire, is in any case convinced. Just like Pierre Debuisson, the family lawyer: “the fact that Guerric Jehanno has not made the slightest request for release since his first conviction over a year ago is a positive signal“he told the Depeche du Midi.
“Perhaps he understood that he would have everything to gain – psychologically and judicially – by indicating Amandine’s body.“At the Parisian, he further details:”Guerric Jehanno […] changed his behavior, started taking antidepressants after the disappearance and made bizarre comments to his mother assuring her that he was not a murderer.“
Me Pierre Debuisson and the family of Amandine Estrabaud have high hopes for the next four days, even if it is impossible to predict whether Guerric Jehanno will deliver more – and will end eight years of wandering, without a burial in front of which is found.
Judged until November 19 at the Assize Court of Haute-Garonne, the alleged murderer faces life imprisonment.