FORGOTTEN BUSINESS. The Laëtitia Perrais case, this massacred teenager “born the moment she died”

Thursday October 6, 2022, France 3 will kick off Laetitia, mini-series by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade inspired by the Laëtitia Perrais affair. Consisting of six episodes, already broadcast in September 2020 by France Télévisions, it explores the different stages of an over-mediatized investigation, from the disappearance of the teenager on the morning of January 19, 2011 to the discovery of her bruised body, in a pond of the region of Pornic. But who was young Laëtitia and how did her murder become one of the most famous news stories of the early 2010s? Closer back to the case.

On January 19, 2011, Jessica Perrais, 18, found the scooter of her twin sister, Laëtitia, lying about fifty meters from her foster family’s house. The keys are still in the ignition, and the teenager’s shoes are lying on the asphalt… Without waiting, the teenager reports the disappearance of her sister, and the Pornic gendarmerie opens an investigation for a worrying disappearance. The investigators are quick to discover that the day before, Laëtitia was seen leaving her service at the Hôtel de Nantes, in La Bernerie-en-Retz, with a man named Tony Meilhon… A few hours later, Laëtitia sent her last SMS to her best friend and confidant, explaining to him that she had been raped.

“Your little body is worth thirty years in prison”

Meilhon is immediately suspected. Already convicted 13 times for acts ranging from theft to rape, the 31-year-old was arrested at a place called Le Cassepot in Arthon-en-Retz. On the spot, the investigators discovered a charred shopping cart. Inside, a knife, a striker, a hacksaw and an earring belonging to Laëtitia. Photos of the teenager, taken the day before during her meeting with Meilhon on a beach, are also discovered in the mobile phone of the suspect, and traces of blood are identified in the trunk of his car. However, none of these incriminating elements bends Meilhon. In the cell, the young man denies any involvement in the disappearance of Laëtitia and sings loudly: “Oh Laëtitia, how good were you, I wasn’t bored oh la la, your little body, it’s worth thirty years in prison…”

But Meilhon’s indifference is not enough to hide the truth. At the end of January, his ex-girlfriend guides the gendarmes to Trou Bleu, a pond in Lavau-sur-Loire where Meilhon liked to fish. In the water, the mobilized divers find a trap with macabre contents; Laëtitia’s head, arms and legs are inside. Cornered, Meilhon confesses. He claims he accidentally hit the teenager with his car and dumped her body to “disguised this accident as a crime“. An implausible version, which Meilhon himself will eventually recognize.

After Meilhon’s confessions bring the case to the political scene. On February 3, during a visit to Saint-Nazaire, the President of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, pointed the finger at the French judicial system: “When an individual like the presumed culprit is released from prison, without ensuring that he will be followed by an integration counsellor, it is a fault. Those who covered up or allowed this fault to happen will be sanctioned” he declares. A declaration which will provoke the anger of the magistrates, and will cause a strike in 170 French courts.

The body of Laëtitia Perrais found dismembered

On April 9, 2011, the bust of Laëtitia Perrais was discovered by a walker on the surface of the being of Briord, in Port Saint-Père. Forty knife wounds are counted on the skin of the teenager, proof that the murder was particularly violent. But to everyone’s horror, it is revealed that this terrible end of life may not be the only trauma Laëtitia has faced…

On August 8, 2011, two young girls filed a complaint for sexual assault against Gilles Patron, the foster father of Laëtitia and Jessica, with whom they had been placed by the Childhood Social Assistance (ASE) in 2001. Jessica reveals that she herself has been raped several times by Patron since 2006, but is unable to say if her sister was also abused. Laëtitia’s best friend, Léa, nevertheless revealed later that Patron had also attacked Laëtitia. In March 2014, Gilles Patron was sentenced to 8 years’ imprisonment for rape and sexual assault on five victims, including Jessica, but not Laëtitia, whose assault could never be proven. The man, described by experts as a pervert capable of “feel no regret, no guilt, no affect“has since been released from prison on remission. He is nevertheless the subject of socio-judicial monitoring.

Tony Meilhon was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 22-year security sentence in 2013. A decision upheld on appeal in 2015, after the Advocate General said: “It’s not a murder, it’s a massacre“Finally, Jessica Perrais has rebuilt her life away from Pornic.”She made the smart choice to leave the arearevealed Me Cécile De Oliveira, her lawyer, in January 2021. It was impossible for Jessica to continue to live in a region that was so marked by this trial, by this media coverage, by the places of macabre discoveries of the remains of the body of her twin sister..” An uneventful twin sister who has become sadly famous, who despite herself remains the face of a news item that has marked the whole of France. In 2016, in her book Laëtitia or the end of menthe historian Ivan Jablonka will declare, about the teenager: “In the eyes of the world, she was born the moment she died“.