Four years after Arthur Noyer’s death, his murderer was found guilty. On May 11, 2021, Nordahl Lelandais was sentenced to 20 years of criminal imprisonment for having kidnapped and killed the 23-year-old corporal in Savoie in April 2017. The epilogue of a long investigation, while the main suspect was already at the heart of another affair: the death of Maëlys de Araujo in Isère. Arthur Noyer, Alpine hunter, was reported missing during a nightclub party in Chambéry. Remains of a human skull were found six months later, in September 2017, on a hiking trail, but investigators have not yet made the link with Nordahl Lelandais, a former dog handler aged around thirty. It was the disappearance of Maëlys de Araujo, a few months later in August 2017, which focused suspicion on the soldier, a guest at the wedding where the 8-year-old girl was. Among other clues, a very particular element will lead to his indictment for assassination, as recounted RMC Story in a number of Let the accused enter dedicated to Secrets of Nordahl Lelandais, broadcast Sunday September 17, 2023.
These strange searches found in the Nordahl Lelandais phone
Investigators discovered that the cell phones of Nordahl Lelandais and Arthur Noyer were limited to the same locations on the evening of his disappearance in Chambéry. His car, a black Audi, was also traced along his victim’s route. But a particular clue helped to confirm the involvement of the former dog handler in the death of the young soldier: Google searches found on his phone: “decomposition of a human body”. In December 2017, eight months after the disappearance of the victim, the main suspect was placed in police custody, denying the alleged facts despite the overwhelming elements of the case. “I love the documentaries on RMC Découverte, I watch them regularly and following this report, I wanted to do some research to see if what was said in the report was true or not”he would have justified, according to comments reported by the investigating judge Emmanuelle Bouyé, questioned in the documentary of Let the accused enter dedicated to Nordahl Lelandais.
Nordahl Lelandais escaped life imprisonment
Finally, the skull found several months earlier was definitively attributed to Arthur Noyer thanks to DNA analysis. It was not until March 2018 that the main suspect confessed to the murder of the young soldier. According to his version of the facts, he would have hitchhiked his victim and a fight would have broken out, which would have caused an accidental fall leading to death without the intention of causing it. The investigators’ firm conviction is that the criminal, looking for a male sexual partner, would have killed his victim with stones after being rejected. Even today, it is unknown how exactly the victim, whose body was found reduced to bones, lost his life. All causes are possible, including that mentioned by his murderer himself. Premeditation was in any case ruled out, reducing the maximum sentence to 30 years and not life imprisonment.