For RTL, Monday February 13, 2023, Gaëlle Bardosse, the investigating judge in the Maëlys case, came out of silence for the first time. She recounted her face-to-face with Nordahl Lelandais and assured that it was a “unique file” in her life.
One year after the sentence of life imprisonment for the kidnapping and murder of little Maëlys, 8, during a wedding party in Pont-de-Beauvoisin (Isère) on August 27, 2017 from Nordahl Lelandais, Gaëlle Bardosse, the investigating judge in this case, has agreed to break the silence. Monday February 13, 2023, she answered questions from our colleagues at RTL. For four years, with two other colleagues, she led all the investigations of this terrible news item. The opportunity for her to come back to his face-to-face with who was found guilty in this case. “During his interrogation, he will deny everything. The day before, I had received the result of an expertise revealing that Maëlys’ DNA had been found on the ignition button of the headlights of his vehicle. Despite this, he continues to contest“, she said, referring to the police custody of September 3, 2017 of the criminal.
His struggle to confess Nordahl Lelandais lasted six months. “When he is shown the CCTV images of Pont-de-Beauvoisin which captured his passage, he will formally deny that it is his vehicle, that the white shape on the passenger seat is Maëlys. We do not understand why he shuts himself up in this negation. While the gendarmes, the experts, the parents, we the magistrates, we saw Maëlys, with the round collar of her dress. But no, he won’t admit it“, she continued before having managed to crack him with the discovery of a tiny trace of blood in his trunk.
Gaëlle Bardosse: “There was a lot of adrenaline, anxiety, stress”
Now 51 years old, Gaëlle Bardosse is convinced that this case is “a once-in-a-lifetime record“. She went through all the stages of emotion and was overwhelmed. “There was a lot of adrenaline, anxiety, stress. My relatives talked to me about it every day. It’s a whirlwind, personal, professional. I had never experienced this pressure. That’s what was infernal“, further explained the examining magistrate.