Called to the bar one after the other on this seventh day of the trial in Grenoble, the two spouses, he a soldier, she an administrative executive, expressed their pain and regret at having opened their doors to Nordahl Lelandais in that evening in August 2017, when they had lost sight of him at the time and he was not on the guest list.
Marriage turns into a ‘nightmare’
It was during this wedding that Maëlys De Araujo, aged eight, suddenly disappeared from the party around 3 a.m. Quickly suspected and imprisoned, the former dog handler in the army will take months to admit that he killed her, according to him “unintentionally”, and to lead the investigators to the place where he had abandoned her body, in an isolated mountain site.
At the time and although he hadn’t seen him for some time, the groom explained that he had “a certain confidence in” Lelandais, whom he had known for twenty years. He tells how Nordahl Lelandais contacted him in the days preceding the wedding to congratulate him and that he “naturally” came to invite him to the reception, “as I could have invited other friends lost to sight” . He feels at this moment “no fear”.
But the marriage turns into a “nightmare” when the child disappears from the village hall of Pont-de-Beauvoisin (Isère) where the evening takes place, he says then. “I don’t believe it for a quarter of an hour-20 minutes. And then we start to panic.”
The groom then said he detected a certain number of “warning lights” relating to the behavior of Nordahl Lelandais, who returned to the wedding after dinner: he notably slipped away before the arrival of the gendarmes without offering to participate in the search with his dogs. .
This impression is further reinforced by the coldness of the accused and also when it is reported to him that Nordahl Lelandais was seen the next day cleaning his car. “I said ‘it is absolutely necessary to call the investigator'”, he says.
When everyone was busy looking for the little girl, the bride meets the former soldier at the entrance to the village hall and asks him if he has seen her. “I remember his words very well, he said to me ‘But what kid is it?’ with a natural tone that aroused no suspicion” in the young woman, she recalls.
“We did not imagine for a single second all the darkness of the accused”, continues the wife. “That summer, we just wanted to share our happiness with our family.” For her, there is no doubt that the accused “is dangerous and should not return to society”.
“To try to understand”
The sexual motive is at the heart of the trial. And in addition to the murder of the child, Nordahl Lelandais is also on trial for sexual assault against two of his little cousins, aged 4 and 6. Confronted with the videos that he himself had shot of these attacks, he admitted on Monday for the first time to having felt “pedophile” inclinations and affirmed that he was working with psychologists in prison to “try to understand”.
On the other hand, he repeats that he “did not rape Maëlys” but remains vague about the circumstances in which he took the girl with him in his car before killing her. His lawyer Me Alain Jakubowicz made him re-clarify on Tuesday that his sexual obsessions were “limited” to women and not to “children”.
The accused admitted having made a series of pornographic photomontages by sticking the faces of women he liked on bodies in more than suggestive positions. In particular with the photo of a young supermarket cashier from the region who had turned him down when he had tried to seduce her.
“I thought she was cute,” he replies when President Valérie Blain asks him why he produced these montages. Already sentenced in Chambéry in May 2021 to 20 years’ imprisonment for the murder of young soldier Arthur Noyer, the accused faces life imprisonment for the murder of Maëlys.
The verdict is expected around February 18.