Eloise Bertil
modified to
10:43 a.m., December 19, 2022
“We receive the update of the file. It says that the parents of Maëlys were summoned by the judge less than 48 hours ago, and that during this hearing, they were told that their daughter was certainly dead… But why ?” In episode 4 of the “Le Coupable” podcast, Marine Régnier, who was then an associate of Alain Jakubowicz, recounts for the first time in detail this fateful moment in the Maëlys affair, the one where the defense of Nordahl Lelandais sees all his certainties crumble…
It all starts with reading the expert report carried out on Nordahl Lelandais’ vehicle. Alain Jakubowicz and Marine Régnier discover that a micro drop of blood has been found in a remote place in the trunk. The probability that it is that of the missing girl is close to 100%. “We realize that what we have read and thought about the file does not correspond to reality”, admits Marine Régnier, who had been working for several months to demonstrate the innocence of Nordahl Lelandais. “It’s the tsunami. The silence. I don’t know how long it lasted, an eternity. We were unable to speak,” says Alain Jakubowicz.
At this stage of the investigation, Nordahl Lelandais is already indicted in two cases: the “Maëlys” case therefore, but also the “Arthur Noyer” case, named after this corporal who mysteriously disappeared in Chambéry. In both cases, Alain Jakubowicz continues to see the evidence accumulating against his client, who continues to deny any involvement. With this drop of blood, his hope of proving the innocence of “the most hated man in France” collapses. Little Maëlys did find herself at one point in Nordahl Lelandais’ trunk. The man therefore knows what happened to the little girl, where he deposited her body… In the podcast “Le Coupable” produced by Spotify and Europe 1 Studio, he shares the thoughts that cross him when the truth comes out: “ You can’t get out of it anymore, it’s not possible. So you’ll do the job until the end. But I would have given myself a few well-deserved slaps.”
However, Alain Jakubowicz does not see this shift as a defeat for the defense lawyer that he is. “Nordahl Lelandais played, he lost. He lied, he will pay the consequences. It’s up to me to ensure that the consequences are the least terrible for him”, he analyzes. There is only one thing left for him to do: “I will bring the news [de la découverte de cette tache de sang, NDLR] to the one who knows it, but who thought he was the only one in the world to know it…”
To find out more about Alain Jakubowicz’s story of the five years spent defending Nordahl Lelandais, listen to “Le Coupable”, an eight-episode Original podcast produced by Spotify and Europe 1 Studio, available exclusively and free of charge on Spotify.
