After 20 years on the run, Thierry Ascione has reappeared. Sentenced in absentia by the French courts in 2001 for the double murder of a French couple in Guatemala, he is now in Indonesia and is the subject of an extradition procedure.
He reappeared last October, after an accidental shipwreck in Indonesia, while seeking to reach New Caledonia. Retained since by the local authorities, Thierry Ascione waits to be extradited to France to be able to explain himself.
The case dates back to December 1991. A couple of restaurateurs, Bernard Béreaud, 52, and his partner Marie-Antoinette Perriard, 44, were murdered in Guatemala City as they were preparing to leave on a holiday cruise. the end of the year. The bodies had been found excruciatingly mutilated, recalls Le Parisien in a vast investigation.
Three suspects in this double murder
Quickly, several individuals were suspected by investigators: Jean-Philippe Bernard, the restaurant owner’s nephew and a friend, Philippe Biret. They were then accused of wanting to steal the couple’s money, and although having always claimed their innocence, were sentenced in 1995 to 30 years of criminal imprisonment. A third individual, Thierry Ascione, also drew the attention of the authorities. He had already been sentenced to 7 years in prison for a robbery, and had arrived in Guatemala in 1991 to work for a transport company linked to the military junta.
Shortly after the double murder, Thierry Ascione went to Miami, where he is accused of having emptied the bank accounts of the two murdered victims, by cashing checks in their names. However, for several years, the man disappeared from radar. He resurfaced for the first time in 1995, when arrested in Thailand in possession of a stolen passport. He was then sent back to France to be tried for “complicity in murder”, “forgery and use of forgery” and “fraud”, according to Le Parisien.
Back to France
The story could have ended there, but a few months before his trial, Thierry Ascione obtained a favorable response to a request for release, and took the opportunity to flee. He was therefore tried in absentia, that is to say without being present at the hearing, in June 2001, and sentenced to life imprisonment. There had been no news from him since, until last October.
After his run in Asia and Latin America, Thierry Ascione, who says he suffers from a respiratory infection, now wishes to return to France for treatment. At the beginning of October, the fugitive made the decision to return to his country, and took the road to New Caledonia by boat. Due to bad weather, however, he was forced to land on an island in Indonesia, where he was quickly arrested by the authorities.
Without a passport and subject to an Interpol file, and an arrest warrant issued by the Paris Court of Appeal in 2019, he cannot leave the country and must wait for his extradition to France. In a video posted on YouTube, Thierry Ascione claims to be “taken hostage” for two months in Indonesia, still claims his innocence and accuses the authorities of having lied and botched the investigation. “I’m going to prove what I’m saying,” he says in this video.