This sordid criminal story, marked by a quintuple assassination, shook the whole of France two decades ago. Didier Le Pêcheur made a TV film from it, The Dream Life of Others, which will be broadcast on France 2 on Wednesday February 28 at 9:10 p.m.
Reality can sometimes turn out to be more terrifying than fiction… Because if the TV movie The dream life of others, worn by Arthur Dupont and Charlie Bruneau, is chilling, it will never be as frightening as the news item that it adapts to the screen. In 2003, when Mario Leblanc reported to Le Grand-Bornand the disappearance of his mother, Graziella Ortolano, his stepfather Xavier Flactif, a wealthy real estate developer, and the three children they had together, Sarah, Laetitia and Grégory, all scenarios are considered. From voluntary departure for financial reasons to kidnapping, including homicide and road accident. If the investigations stalled a little at the start, two people, occupants of one of the chalets rented by the Flactif, quickly emerged as suspects in the eyes of the investigators: David Hotyat, mechanic and former peacekeeper, and his partner Alexandra Lefèvre.
DAVID HOTYAT INTERPRETED SIX MONTHS AFTER THE TRAGEDY
The couple indeed seem to feel a fierce hatred towards the missing and do not hide it during the particularly vehement statements made in front of the cameras. During an interview given to Seven to eight on TF1, they undermine the morals of the victims: “Flactif, he’s an idiot. He took people for slaves,” explains Alexandra. The investigation accelerates when the use of luminol reveals traces of blood erased in the Flactif house, containing the DNA of all members of the family. Then, their vehicle, a Toyota 4 x 4, also cleaned from top to bottom, was found in the parking lot of Geneva airport. The analysis of a blood sample different from theirs found at their home attests to the presence of another person on the premises. Compared to those of the Flactif entourage, it allows David Hotyat to be incriminated. Finally, the latter was arrested six months after the tragedy with his three accomplices, and admitted to having killed the Flactif family, transported their bodies and burned them in the forest. The case concluded in 2006, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a security sentence of twenty-two years.