Speaking directly to him, the teenager pressed him with a flood of questions in an offensive tone so that he finally reveals in what circumstances he killed the eight-year-old girl, who disappeared during a wedding in Pont-de-Beauvoisin (Isère) in August 2017. “What were his last words? “, “Look me in the eyes”, “in fact you are the waste”, she throws at him on a flow of machine gun. “You had plenty of opportunities to tell the truth, you only thought of yourself,” she tells him.
“Have this courage and this dignity as I have to speak to you”, she then continues, glaring at him, insistently demanding that he answer two questions in particular. “Did you rape my sister? and “What kept you from saying where my sister was for months?” when the body had not yet been found.
“No, I didn’t rape your sister,” replies the accused, before attempting a weak “I’ll explain myself” to the second question. “I ask you for the answers now! “replies the young girl with determination. She will not win her case, the accused, visibly embarrassed, again wallowing in silence.
Parents now divorced
Testifying just before their eldest daughter at the trial of the 38-year-old former military dog handler, Maëlys’ father and mother had described the wreckage of their existence after his disappearance.
Now divorced, they had portrayed the “heroine”, the “little angel, warrior of light” who “put a dangerous criminal in prison”. “I did not know how to protect you from the bad guys, I did not keep the promise I made to you”, launched her mother, Jennifer Cleyet-Marrel, addressing a portrait of the girl posed in front of her . “I will have this guilt in me until the end of my life,” she said, before showing the court a long slideshow of photos where the little girl appears happy, on a musical background.
His father Joachim, for his part, describes himself as a “dad lost at sea […] trying to get its head above water” and a victim of “bad luck”. He has lost “25 kilos” since the tragedy, testifies a childhood friend.
He admits to “pedophile” inclinations
Again confronted Monday morning with videos of sexual assaults of little cousins that he admitted to having committed and filmed, Nordahl Lelandais admitted for the first time to having experienced “pedophile” inclinations, while denying having felt these impulses to the young Maëlys.
He is accused of assaulting two girls, aged 4 and 6 at the time, in the summer of 2017, shortly before Maëlys disappeared at the end of August of the same year. These acts had been discovered during the investigation into the disappearance of Maëlys when the investigators had got hold of videos of the touching filmed by telephone.
” What is that ? What is the generic term for this? “, questions him during the hearing Me Yves Crespin, the lawyer for two child welfare associations after the projection before the court of the very raw videos of these acts, which upset the assistance. “Pedophilia”, concedes the accused. “Words had to be put to action. I believe this is the first time he has admitted to this pedophile bent. […] Maybe that will allow him to go a little further in the knowledge that we have of the facts, ”noted Me Crespin.
Being asked by Me Crespin if he himself had been the victim of sexual violence in his youth or in the army, Nordahl Lelandais replied in the negative. “Not at all”, he assured while the lawyer noted that “most often the attackers reproduce what they suffered”.