By Laurent Derne
Published on
He entered the box, the closed face. A quick glance at his wife and two daughters in the front row, an imperceptible nod to ask for their unwavering support, Joel Bourgeon, 59 years oldfaces, this friday 1uh July 2022, at the Assize Court of Haute-Garonne for facts dating back to his youth.
The same group of friends
UN murder. That of Martine Escadeillasthat he has confessed in custodyin 2019 (32 years after the events, editor’s note), before retracting. In 1986, Bourgeon was familiar with the couple formed by Martine and her companion, Thierry. Parents know each other, are neighbours. Young people belong to the same group of friends. The club releases the insiders. the foot, too. The boys tinker with cars in the cellars of the Santa Fe residence, Ramonville-Saint-Agne (Haute-Garonne), near Toulouse. Couple’s love nest.
“They shared their leisure”, confirms the director of investigation, former member of the Research Section of Toulouse (SR). And it is precisely this closeness with the victim and his companion – friendship that has (re)placed him in the eye of the storm -, which the accused is trying to mitigate today.
A 36 year old cold case
A small leap back three decades. Monday, December 8, 1986, in Ramonville Saint-Agne (Haute-Garonne), near Toulouse. Martine accompanies Thierry, her lover, to the bus stop. The young man is fails car. He is forced to go to work by public transport.
The 24 year old young womanfor his part, is preparing to resume his post of accounting secretary in a real estate construction company in Portet-sur-Garonne, after a week’s sick leave. She returns home to finish getting ready. He is around 8h15-8h30. She disappears body and soul, leaving traces of blood in the stairwell, from the third floor, where she resides, to her cellar. And no one will ever see her again.
2016 investigation director avoids charging colleagues
On the grill, the gendarme at the helm recounts the resumption of surveys in 2016after two non-places pronounced by the court. Over time, the Escadeillas affair became a cold case. These unresolved cases that remain the obsession of any investigator. And families of victims. Until spectacular turn of events : thirty years after the facts, mail denounces Joël Bourgeon as a potential perpetrator of the crime.
The gendarmes are plunging back into the file. The accused was heard for the first time, nine days after the events. It had worked betterindifferenceat worst coldness, to the disappearance of Martine. “An investigating judge had requested that the investigations be deepened on him. Unfortunately, this was not done at the time, ”laments the director of investigation, who avoids overloading colleagues.
“The Bud hypothesis does not come out of nowhere”
“The Bud hypothesis does not come out of nowhere. His name is mentioned from the beginning of the first investigation, in 1987. There are a lot of incriminating elements. And they always all go in the same direction”, asserts Me Frederic Davidthe lawyer of the Escadeillas family. The shelled investigator. Joël Bourgeon knew the place very well, perhaps even having a key to the apartment of his friends for whom he had made furniture.
On the day of Martine’s disappearance, the upstairs neighbor hears screams, around 8:45 a.m. They emanate from the stairwell. She goes out on the landing, leans over and distinguishes a man above a woman whose legs she sees on the ground. The woman is crying. She perceives the word “police”.
“A witness who says everything and its opposite”
She describes a 45-50 year old malea grey hair and slight baldness. The man in the box was 23 at the time. Dichotomy in which the defense revels – ensured by Mare Eric Mouton and Jean-Baptiste de Boyer-Montégut – which does not fail to point out as soon as possible. The first quoted asserts:
“I insist on an essential point: the testimony of the neighbor on the fourth floor. Suddenly, it is used to determine the clothing of the author or the schedule of the facts; suddenly, we are told she did not see anything from where she was. A witness cannot be made to say everything and its opposite”.
A reconstitution demonstrated that the witness could not distinguish better than a silhouette: the light was off and the stairwell only received light from a Roof window.
Chopmedium sized, blue shirt clear on dark jeanslegs crossed, the accused, his eye darkened, seeming to pose a with regard to the on things. Is he the man who, in love with Martine, came to him reveal Thierry’s infidelitiesthis Monday morning, secretly dreaming of seeing her console herself in his arms?
Murder scenario?
Is he the one who, after a refusal from the young woman, hit, chased down the stairwell, dragged to the cellar, where a “large quantity of uncoagulated blood” will be found? “Proof of death of the victim, according to the medical examiner”.
This scenario does not emanate from speculation, but from findings and confessions made by Joël Bourgeon, in 2019, without the presence of a lawyer he did not want. “He had to relieve his conscience. Those are confessions spread over more than five hours, with many pauses. He clarified things that we do not know, details the investigator. the Martine’s bleeding face. The last three steps going down to the cellar that he wiped. Nobody apart from the investigators and the author could have known this detail”.
A good hideout
A month and a half after Martine’s disappearance, he leave Toulouse, abandoning his relatives “with 3-4 boxes in his Renault 4L”, without a promise of employment, while he “has just been established as a territorial agent at the Déodat de Séverac high school” in Toulouse. Yet it was a “good hideout”, according to him. He enjoyed a total freedom of movement in particular by ensuring the maintenance of the swimming pool of the establishment.
Investigators detect a “leak”. The desire to escape from a heavy environment? For Joël Bourgeon, this sudden move to the Rhône takes on the trappings of a 16 year old love affair, crossed on the beach the previous summer. He gives her a watch and a ring. The Martin’s jewelry, whom the victim’s sister claims to have recognized? “There is nothing to establish it”, plague the defense. Disturbing detail: he encourages his brunette from Lyon to opt for a blonde squareand to wear red varnish on the fingernails. Like Martine Escadeillas.
Testimony and confessions bitterly evoked
the testimonial from the neighbor above and the confession made by the accused were at the heart of this first day of hearings. And fiercely debated between the defence, the civil party and the prosecution, brought by theAdvocate General Nicolas Ruff.
The gendarmes drew their experts: a French investigator behavioral science the IRCGN (National Gendarmerie Criminal Research Institute), which helped investigators prepare for the suspect’s hearing, in 2019; a criminal research analystwho offered a murder scenario in view of the elements of the file.
Where is the body?
For them, everything converges on Joël Bourgeon, a familiar place, who never revealed where he had been able to get rid of the body. The missing piece of the puzzle. The behavioral science survey delivers its feelings:
“I believe that his confession was sincere. The 56-year-old man recognizes the acts committed by the 23-year-old young man that he was. But he does not assume the image sent back to his family, his wife, his two girls. He never specified the gestures made to the victim – which were undoubtedly very violent – nor the movement of the body “.
At the big defense dam. “I think there are a lot of assumptions in this case. And he will end up being a priori guilty ”, protests Me Sheep.
Unflattering portrait
Emotional instability. Depressed mother. Father died when he was young. An “alcoholic” military stepfather. Joël Bourgeon is described as impulsive, angry. “He exercised criminal violence on one of his companions”, indicates the analyst of the gendarmerie, who describes him “cold, without empathysmart, calculator”. Unflattering portrait if any. On charge?
“For me, the fatal mistake he made was to deposit Martine’s body in his own cellar, which he knew he was tinkering with there with his companion, but which had a (dummy) padlock. While the first the cellars at hand were open and directly accessible. But he acted instinctively”.
“Mr. President, I am innocent”
On the morning of the events, in the time slot compatible with Martine’s attack, a witness described a small man (the accused is 1.72 m tall, editor’s note), with a “slight shift”, at the level of the intercoms of the residence. The accused suffered a knee arthroscopy three months later, in Lyon, in March 1987. Coincidence?
“Mr. President, I am innocent”affirmed Joël Bourgeon in a firm voice, at the opening of the debates, at the Councilor Guillaume Roussel. Discussions resume on Monday.
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