The son of the famous perfumer is called to appear in the Versailles court: Stéphane Guerlain must be tried for “violence” and “threats”, facts of which his father’s companion, Christina Kragh Michelsen, accuses him. The latter has been in open conflict with Jean-Paul Guerlain for years.
On November 20, Christina Kragh Michelsen filed a complaint against Stéphane Guerlain for “attempted murder”. Last episode of 15 years of hatred between the son and the father’s companion, who will meet again in court on Monday.
A couple formed in 2005
The Guerlain family is nevertheless tight: Jean-Paul, the father, creator of dozens of perfumes and craftsman of the rise of the brand that bears the name of his family, had only one son – Stéphane, therefore – with his first wife, Monique de Barral, married in 1959. Divorced, he remarried in 1970 with Catherine, then lived in concubinage with Decia Ruspoli di Poggio Suasa – which had already been the object of the mistrust of the son, according to Le Monde between 1985 and 2003.
He then met Christina Kragh Michelsen, a Franco-Danish, during an equestrian event – the other passion of the perfumer – in 2005. The couple quickly settled in a sumptuous property near the forest of Rambouillet (Yvelines). And from 2007, the couple wanted to get married, but the son was against it.
Stéphane obtains guardianship from his father
In 2013, son Stéphane was warned by a lawyer that his father’s partner had tried to sell a Delacroix belonging to his father. It was enough for the son to be convinced: his potential mother-in-law is trying to get hold of his father’s heritage, taking advantage of his declining health. He is twenty years older than her.
He then requested and obtained in court the reinforced guardianship of his father, then in 2018 his guardianship.
None of the eight procedures launched by Christina Kragh Michelsen to obtain a change of guardian succeeds.
The tone goes up a notch in 2021: after a complaint from the son, Christina Kragh Michelsen is acquitted of the accusations of harassment and neglect which targets her, but the court agrees that she was able to “obstruct the care” of her companion .
Ever louder accusations
The legal soap opera does not stop there, quite the contrary: this time, the father’s companion files a complaint for attempted murder, against Stéphane Guerlain.
Christina Kragh Michelsen’s lawyer brought a bailiff to his home three times, between November 16 and 23. Bailiff who would have found that “the temperature is cool in the house, below 15 degrees, and that the humidity is high”, according to France info which reports the words of the lawyer.
According to an ex-employee of the couple, the companion would have “only one idea in mind: to marry then place Mr. Guerlain in Ehpad and sell the property”, according to Le Figaro.
What to reinforce the fears of the son? Not sure: according to Le Monde, which quotes Jean-Paul Guerlain’s ex-concubine, Decia Ruspoli di Poggio Suasa, the son has always been suspicious of his father’s companions: “He gave me a reputation as a little terrible good woman who ruined her father. He would have already… prevented the couple’s wedding.
The state of health of the father in question
Does Jean-Paul Guerlain suffer from Alzheimer’s, as Stéphane Guerlain says and as evidenced by an expert? Christina Kragh Michelsen says no. Like… the main interested party himself: in October 2020, under guardianship for two years, he nevertheless declared to be “of legal age and vaccinated” and to have the right to marry whomever he wants.
Alas: at the end of the year, the court of Versailles, already, discovered a letter presented by Stéphane Guerlain and signed by the hand of his father, with the unequivocal text: “I reiterate that I do not wish to marry Christina Kragh”. Justice has its work cut out…
In January, Stéphane Guerlain was already summoned to court for acts of non-public insult, harassment and death threats: he had been discreetly recorded insulting and threatening his father’s companion in 2020.
A near miss accident
And on December 10, Christina Kragh Michelson reportedly went to the Rambouillet gendarmerie, after narrowly escaping an accident near the estate: “There is a car coming behind me which I cannot see at all and which hits me in the hip. I threw myself on the ground on the right of the road in the bushes to avoid the car, ”she told the gendarmes.
Before designating… Stéphane Guerlain: “He’s a psychopath (…). Next time, what will it be? I will be in a wheelchair, even dead, ”she said.
Racist remarks condemned
Still in the section of miscellaneous facts, it is the father who was tried, twice, for racist remarks. In 2010, he declared in full television news on France 2: “For once, I started to work like a negro. I don’t know if the Negroes have always worked so much, but anyway…”. Statements which earned him the end of the collaboration with the luxury giant LVMH and, on the judicial level, a sentence of a fine of 6000 euros in 2012.
In March 2012, Jean-Paul Guerlain allegedly told three agents from the Eurostar company, who had come to help him at Gare du Nord, while he was in a wheelchair: “France is a shitty country, it’s a box of shit and what’s more, we’re only served by immigrants”. Two of them were black, the third Asian.