return to these murder cases without a corpse
Of the murder trial is sometimes held in the absence of a corpse, like the one that opens on Friday in Toulouse to judge the presumed murderer of Martine Escadeillasa young woman who disappeared in 1986.
Here are four gripping previous cases, in which the body of the missing person was never found and the defendants always maintained their innocence. In the Escadeillas case, however, the alleged murderer, Joel Bourgeonfirst confessed when he was taken into police custody in 2019, only to recant a week later.
Nicolas Zepeda convicted, appeals
Narumi Kurosaki, a 21-year-old Japanese girl, arrived in Besançon in the summer of 2016 for a year of study and soon after broke up with her Chilean boyfriend, Nicolas Zepeda. Without telling her, he comes to find her in France and spends the night of December 4 to 5 with her. “Strident women’s cries” are heard in the residence hall. As for the young woman, she will never be seen again.
Accused of having murdered her, then of having sent messages to his relatives pretending to be her, the time to return to Chile, Zepeda was extradited to France in the summer of 2020. On April 12, 2022, he was sentenced to 28 years’ imprisonment in Besançon and appealed. It is to be retried in 2023.
Jacques Viguier acquitted
Suzanne Viguier, a 38-year-old dance teacher, disappeared on February 27, 2000 in Toulouse. Her lover is the last to have seen her alive, at dawn, when he accompanied her back to the marital home. Quickly suspected, the young woman’s husband, Jacques Viguier, a university professor, served nine months in pre-trial detention. judge for murderhe was acquitted twice, in 2009 and then on appeal in 2010.
In the book “Innocent” published in 2010, Jacques Viguier returned to “10 years of suffering and combat”, the subtitle of the book. A film was made from this case, “An intimate conviction”, with Marina Foïs and Olivier Gourmet.
Maurice Agnelet sentenced
The disappearance at the age of 29 of Agnès Le Roux, heiress of one of the most prestigious casinos in Nice, during the weekend of All Saints’ Day 1977, marks the beginning of a judicial soap opera with twists and turns. The lawyer Maurice Agnelet, who was once her lover and was close to the boss of a competing casino, was suspected but was dismissed in 1985. Sent back to the assizes after the reversal of his second wife who had provided him with an alibi, he was acquitted in 2006 but sentenced on appeal to twenty years in prison the following year for murder.
In 2013, the European Court of Human Rights considers that this trial was not fair, the verdict not having been motivated. After a third trial, Maurice Agnelet was again sentenced in 2014 to twenty years in prison. The Court of Cassation dismissed his appeal.
He died at the age of 82 in January 2021, in New Caledonia where he had joined his son after his release less than a month earlier for medical reasons. This affair inspired a film by André Téchiné in 2014, “The man we loved too much”, with Guillaume Canet, Catherine Deneuve and Adèle Haenel.
Guillaume Seznec sentenced then pardoned
The Guillaume Seznec affair remains one of the great legal enigmas of the 20th century. Wood trader in Morlaix, Seznec left Rennes on May 25, 1923 with his friend Pierre Quémeneur, General Councilor of Finistère, to trade in Paris. Three days later, he returned alone, claiming to have left Quémeneur near Paris, who preferred to complete the journey by train. The latter will no longer give any sign of life.
On November 4, 1924, Seznec was sentenced to hard labor for life for murder. He will spend 20 years in prison in Guyana. Pardoned by General de Gaulle in 1946 for good behavior, he returned to France on July 1, 1947, at the age of 69. Knocked down in Paris in November 1953 by a fleeing van, he died three months later. His family continued their fight for his rehabilitation, but fourteen requests for a review of the trial were rejected, the last in 2006.