The trial of Jean-Marc Reiser, alleged assassin of Sophie Le Tan, opened Monday afternoon before the Assizes of Bas-Rhin. Paris Match attended the hearing of a man already convicted of rape in 2003 and then acquitted for lack of evidence in another disappearance case in 2001.
On the Court side, understanding the president, his assessors, the prosecutor, the six jurors, the lawyers for the civil party and those for the defence, Jean-Marc Reiser, 61, (in Alsace we pronounce “raillezer”) is the only one to wear a surgical mask. “I would prefer that he removes it… but he seems concerned about his health”, ironically Me Francis Metzger, one of his three lawyers. Implied: he will have to drop the mask. This was not really the case on this first day of hearing. After the long reading -1h30- of the indictment, President Antoine Giessenhoffer asks him if he has anything to say. “Who is the author of this summary note? Dare Jean Marc Reiser from the top of his eighty-seven meter dressed in a khaki T-shirt and sand-colored pants. – It’s me, answers, annoyed, the President. “I find your presentation quite complete, continues Reiser. (Pause): I recognize the mortal blows but there was no homicidal intent on my part. I dispute the premeditation”. This is indeed the only issue of this two-week trial since the accused – for the time being legally presumed innocent – will end up confessing before the investigating judge to have killed Sophie Le Tan on September 7, 2018, the day of her twenty year. Despite confusing elements, JM Reiser denied the facts for two years. His lawyers will push him to speak, otherwise they would have abandoned his defense. The suspect’s position was becoming untenable.
A Sim card under a false name
“Individual rents F1 ½ in Strasbourg, 35m2, electric heating, bathroom, separate kitchen, balcony, €350 including tax, good condition, 5th no elevator. Would suit student”. On September 7, 2018 in the morning, Sophie Le Tan, a student, left the Hôtel des Princes where she was the night receptionist. She responded to this ad on Le bon coin a few days earlier and is going to Schiltighein, north of Strasbourg. She must then find her family to celebrate her birthday in a restaurant in Cernay, near Mulhouse. After a last text message at 9:17 a.m., she will not give any more news. In his reminder of the facts, the president cites the testimony of three young girls who also responded to JM Reiser’s announcement. Each time, they will say, “the lessor remained evasive on the description of the property, on the furniture found there and on the exact address”. He indeed arranges to meet you on rue… du Chasseur, while the studio is located on rue Perle. It is on the rue du Chasseur that gives the window from where “the lessor could see the binoculars which presented themselves”. He will not receive any of the three young girls “because they came accompanied”. For nearly an hour, one of them will send an insulting message to the suddenly silent cell phone. Another will report the individual to the police, because it seemed to her that on the phone “he was seducing her”.
The study of Sophie Le Tan’s cell phone will establish that she was in contact with JM Reiser, who used a Sim card “under the fanciful identity of Mrs. Agnès, on which one can say that he fabricated his anonymity” . Jean-Marc Reiser was arrested on September 15, 2018 at 10:35 p.m. at the wheel of his Ford Fiesta. During the first search, the investigators note that the studio is “in a flagrant state of cleanliness”. The blood revealer reports traces in the bathroom, where the owner “took care to dismantle and clean the siphon”. There are, among other things, two Sim cards, two jerry cans of gasoline, latex gloves, two rolls of adhesive tape, a cutter blade, chloroform. And in the cellar, a hacksaw with dubious traces. During his first police custody, at the end of which he will be imprisoned, JM Reiser denies being the author of the announcement. Chloroform, he tried it on himself to see what effect it had. As for the adhesive tape, it is for the insulation of the window. But the neighbors say they smelled “a smell of decomposition and putrefaction” in the hall and “saw maggots”. They will make the connection with this “cold, freezing and badly polite” man whom they will see crossing the courtyard with “two heavy and dark garbage bags”. Reiser will explain that Sophie Le Tan arrived home with a wrist injury and that she wanted to change her dressing. But two witnesses passed him in the street in great shape.
Sophie Le Tan caught his eye
On October 23, 2019, walkers, including a young policeman, who went to mushrooms in the forest of Grendelbruch discovered a human skull and a rib cage. It is the analysis of a tooth that will identify Sophie Le Tan. Re-examined, Reiser still denies that his cell phone ended up in the corner, where he did, as a teenager, an internship for the National Forestry Office (ONF) where his father worked. Advised by his lawyers, he asks to be heard. His version, in June 2021, recalled by the President of the Court of Assizes: he drank a lot on the night of September 6 to September 2018, “mixed pastis with medication”, slept little. Sophie Le Tan caught his eye, they had a drink and discussed this and that. “She asked me to go to the bathroom to wash my hands, I brought her a towel.” He “just wanted to hug her and kiss her”. After: “I don’t know what got into me, she pushed me away, insulted me, called me a pig and a pig, she was screaming and I lost control”. A punch and “she fell on the toilet bowl like a mass, like a groggy boxer”.
A total silence suddenly reigned in the room when the president told the continuation: the two wheeled suitcases that Reiser went to seek in the cellar. The dismemberment of the body on the bathroom floor. The two sawn off legs he put in the smaller of the two suitcases. Then the head which he cut off, because the trunk did not fit into the larger one. A “fairly complete” presentation that Sophie Le Tan’s mother would not have borne to hear: as soon as the hearing opened, at 2 p.m., she lost consciousness and was taken away by the Red Cross.