He keeps thinking about it and telling himself that his wife knew she was going to commit suicide. “It was premeditated. She did everything to be alone”, sighs Jérôme Pader in his pretty brick farmhouse in Bourlon (Pas-de-Calais), a village in the Cambrésian bocage south of Lille. In July 2023, Delphine, his wife, suddenly urges him and their son Jarod, 19, to go and enjoy a vacation in Agde, in Hérault. A few days later, on July 31, when no one could contact Delphine, the latter’s mother decided to go to Bourlon. She enters the house through the back door and discovers the lifeless body of her daughter on the bed in the marital bedroom.
Delphine Pader, 49, killed herself by ingesting medication. On the large desk in the living room, the one who was a prison guard for twenty years left several scattered handwritten letters. “I’m at the end of my rope, I’m no longer a mother, a woman, or even a professional, she wrote in one of them. I feel like I’m considered a criminal, like I no longer exist. » These words still chill Jérôme Pader, who explains: “For nearly four years, Delphine was pilloried by her own administration, which considered that she had switched to the side of a detainee. »
From RDX: in the language of pyrotechnicians, this acronym designates an explosive whose deflagration can destroy everything within a radius of 5 meters. A substance usually handled in war zones. In 2019, Delphine Pader was accused of having introduced this powder inside the Douai remand center in order to help an inmate escape. Despite her denials, the supervisor was indicted and suspended, then fought against these decisions until she could no longer.
Bitter twist
On September 8, 2023, a bitter twist: the Lille prosecutor’s office requested a dismissal of the case in its favor. ” All that for this, laments his lawyer, Me Damien Legrand. If justice had not been so slow, my client would certainly not have killed herself. This file is unlike any other. » This drama tells, of course, the time of justice which is not that of the accused, but also a very particular profession, of which Delphine Pader was so proud, that of prison guard, with its life in isolation, its codes and its secrets.
It all started with a meeting on October 26, 2018, at Douai prison, according to what Delphine Pader explained to the police. The chief supervisor of building B, the wing for the most sensitive profiles, found detainee Murat G., prison number 45562, that day behind the door of a cramped room where household products were stored.
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