The Foix courthouse, in Ariège, November 17, 2023 (AFP / Lionel BONAVENTURE)
The trial of the double crime of which a nurse and her lover are accused began Friday in Foix (Ariège) in the examination of their personalities, the picture of a man under influence, in search of the affection of his co-accused , emerging according to the first testimonies.
Marie-José Montesinos, a 61-year-old nurse, and Jean-Paul Vidal, a 53-year-old stunt mechanic, are accused of having murdered the caregiver’s ex-companion in November 2017, and of having subsequently killed her 18-year-old girl who was present by chance during the ambush they had set on the landscape gardener.
The Ariège Assize Court began the six-day hearing with hearings from experts and witnesses able to enlighten the jurors on the background and psychology of the two accused.
For Jean-Paul Vidal, the court heard the “incomprehension” and the “stunnedness” of his colleagues and friends when they learned of the facts of which he was accused.
According to the elements listed by a personality investigator, he was unanimously considered “calm, temperate, helpful, affectionate”. Diligent in his work, engaged in voluntary work and a loving father, Mr. Vidal was also a man who “had difficulty saying no, to oppose”, who fled conflicts, in search of affection.
– The “caricatured” accused –
With Marie-José Montésinos, with whom he had an extra-marital relationship three times during the 2010s, he confided during the investigation to having found someone who gave him “attention”.
The study of her personality was to occupy the court on Friday afternoon and from the opening of the trial, her lawyer, Me Laurent de Caunes, expressed “reservations” regarding the absence from the debates due to maternity leave of the expert responsible for investigating his personality, “an essential element of this file” while this, according to him, has been “caricatured in and outside the file”.
Mr. Vidal and Ms. Montesinos are accused of having, six years ago, beaten Christophe Orsaz, a 46-year-old landscape gardener, with iron bars on November 30, 2017, before throwing him, dying, into a pit septic. They had ambushed him by asking him to come and draw up an estimate for a construction site, in an isolated hamlet in Ariège, deprived of a mobile telephone network.
Witness to the crime, Célia Orsaz, daughter of the gardener, is then executed in a forest, with a gunshot to the head. The Orsaz’s car was then set on fire and abandoned a few kilometers further along a mountain road, on the edge of the Aude department.
– “Praying mantis” –
In this case of the “disappeared from Mirepoix”, the town where Christophe Orsaz resided, various scenarios are considered, up to the confessions of Jean-Paul Vidal during his police custody, seven months later.
Lawyer Laurent de Caunes (D) in the courtroom of Foix, Ariège, November 17, 2023 (AFP / Lionel BONAVENTURE)
Vidal, known in the region for his stunt shows, admits to having contacted the victim under a false name by calling him with a cell phone purchased for the occasion. He said he acted to satisfy the designs of the nurse who, according to the prosecution, could not bear to see Mr. Orsaz leave her.
“There is a form of influence, control or manipulation. Mr. Vidal is a bit like the strong arm of Ms. Montesinos. He is responsible for his actions, he does not intend to give up,” assured his lawyer Mathieu Monfort.
Cornered during her police custody, Marie-José Montesinos will also end up confessing. According to her lawyer, she actually wanted to “correct” and “scare” Mr. Orsaz but she “never wanted” either his death or that of Célia, her daughter.
He describes his client as “a person full of angles, fractures, roughness, in permanent depression.”
“It’s a praying mantis,” Xavier Orsaz, Christophe’s brother and Célia’s uncle, told AFP on the sidelines of the hearing. “I can’t understand how he (Mr. Vidal) fell into the trap like that.”
Admitting to feeling “a lot of hatred” towards the accused, he said: “I expect them to be punished as heavily as possible”, I hope that they end their lives in prison given the age they are” .
“We will never mourn, we think about it every day (…) we live with that and it’s the hardest,” he added.
The court’s verdict is expected next Friday.