A long-awaited trial. Nordahl Lelandais is on trial from this Monday, and for three weeks, by the Grenoble Assize Court for the murder of Maëlys de Araujo in 2017. The inhabitants of Pont-de-Beauvoisin, where the girl had been kidnapped during a marriage, are always traumatized. Four years after the tragedy, they hope that the trial will allow them to turn the page.
“It’s awful”
Four and a half years after his disappearance, Maëlys’ face and large black eyes are still present in Pont-de-Beauvoisin, displayed on large signs at the entrance to the city. The inhabitants have not forgotten the little girl and the ordeal she experienced.
“Of course, we always think about it,” says a resident of the village at the microphone of Europe 1. “People talk about it regularly, even four years later. Of course, we talk about all that. I’m sick of it. to know that this little one was thrown like a piece of paper in the forest. It’s terrible”.
The inhabitants remain very marked by this long period of uncertainty and anguish between the disappearance of Maëlys and the moment when we found his bones, six months later. It was like a “nightmare that would never end”, explains Philippe, who owns a tobacconist in town. “People, it traumatized them. Here, we feel a kind of leaden screed in relation to this story. I think it will be for life. When we talk about Pont-de-Beauvoisin to people, they draw the parallel with little girl,” he explains.
The evocation of Nordahl Lelandais makes one shudder
The other shadow that hangs over the city is that of Nordahl Lelandais, the local guy that everyone liked here, but whose mere mention today makes one shudder. Évelyne, a former neighbor, struggles to talk about it. “You see how I am and it’s been four years already. When I think he was walking past my house and I had my little girls, it’s scary,” she says on Europe 1.
Turn the page
These inhabitants are therefore impatiently awaiting this trial and the conviction of Nordahl le Landais to finally also try to turn the page. “This man must finally be judged. Everyone is waiting for him, especially the parents of Maëlys”, considers Yves Crespin, lawyer for the association L’Enfant bleu (civil party) and representative of the association La Voix de the child at trial. “We want him to say what happened and why he beat Maëlys to death. We expect sincere and genuine answers”.
The challenge of the trial is therefore to understand why Nordahl Lelandais fell into the most total horror.