If some gray areas remain in the Sophie Le Tan case, the sordid personality and career of her alleged assassin, Jean-Marc Reiser are well known to investigators.
The trial of Jean-Marc Reiser opens this Monday, June 27 in Strasbourg. The man is accused of having murdered Sophie Le Tan, a 20-year-old student, during an apartment visit. In September 2018, the main suspect confessed to the murder of the young woman, while specifying that it was a “scene of violence followed by death“, after being pushed back by Sophie Le Tan. A year after the disappearance of the student, her body was found in the forest of Grendelbruch, forty kilometers from the Alsatian capital, dismembered. The 62-year-old man presents himself today in front of the foundations of the Bas-Rhin to answer charges of premeditation and murder.
This son of a forest ranger was already well known to law enforcement. His criminal record is built after a first arrest in 1997 during a traffic control. In his trunk, customs officers discover an arsenal of war : shotgun, balaclavas, narcotics and pornographic photos. Above, we discover women staged in sexual positions simulating rape. According to Jean-Marc Reiser, there are prostitutes who have been paid to play the game of his fantasies. In reality, it is his ex-girlfriend who had filed a complaint for rape in 1996, before retracting. Faced with this dubious behavior, the police trace his movements. They discover that22 year old German hitchhiker was raped in the area where Reiser vacationed. She positively identifies him as her attacker. In 2003, Jean-Marc Reiser was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for the two rapes, one of which was aggravated with the threat of a weapon.
The Françoise Hohmann affair, the other Sophie Le Tan affair
“His criminal record shows that he is a very dangerous criminal“, estimates Me Gérard Welzer, the lawyer of the family of Sophie Tran at the microphone of BFM TV. In addition to his already heavy file, there are numerous offenses such as a attempted escape, burglaries of veterinary practices but also, subordination of witnesses. However, a case where the name of Jean-Marc Reiser appeared does not appear in his file. Indeed, in 2001, he was acquitted in the case of Françoise Hohmann, a 23-year-old Alsatian who disappeared in 1987 and was never found.
The young woman, who came door to door to sell household appliances, gave no sign of life after ringing the bell for her ultimate client: Jean-Marc Reiser. “At the time, there was no mobile phone or geolocation, no DNA analysis“, explained Me Valérie Gletty on France Blue in 2018. “We have, thirty years apart, two young women who rang Jean-Marc Reiser’s apartment, and who potentially never came out alive.“, added the lawyer of the family of Françoise Hohmann. The latter is still convinced that the young woman was murdered by the man who violently attacked Sophie Le Tan.
Jean-Marc Reiser, who has already spent nearly a third of his life behind bars, this time faces life imprisonment.