the family refuses Jean-Marc Reiser’s request for forgiveness

The question he asked was quite risky, if not daring. Me Pierre Giuriato will tell us that he improvised it at the time. Friday 1^er July, at the very end of the three-hour interrogation of his client Jean-Marc Reiser, the lawyer asked him: “Mr. Reiser, would you be willing to ask Sophie Le Tan’s family for forgiveness? “. It was aiming very high because for three and a half hours, Jean-Marc Reiser spent almost all his time eluding the most embarrassing questions: the beatings that led to death, the dismemberment of the body in the bathroom, its disposition in the two suitcases. Sometimes he even evacuated them in a weary and annoyed tone by offhandedness: “The little suitcase was too small, that’s it. I didn’t think of going to buy a bigger one, that’s it”. Elsewhere, about a blade he allegedly used in addition to the saw: “I didn’t use any blades, only the saw. I’m sorry, you’ll have to settle for that.” (To the Advocate General). The facts, which are worth his presence in the box, he considered them successively as “incident”, “gross stupidity”, “bullshit”. His meeting with the young girl, of “unfortunate, deplorable, regrettable coincidence”.

To Sophie Le Tan he “put a slap” (he does not say slap) before “punch”. And after proving her death, “I no longer felt her pulse, I was prostrate, her eyes were fixed, that’s what”, he hesitated to call the police but “considering my criminal record…I had shame for my family, my mother, my daughter”. He “arguably” made “the wrong decision to make the body disappear and deny”. So, from the bench of the civil parties, for so many words retained, for too many flights of fancy, about, for example, psy experts, who gave: “We are in a society of experts, it’s fashionable. We hear them all year round in all areas, they bicker and contradict each other”. For all that, for his years of lying, for those long months when without their Sophie’s body they ceased to live – he who knew where he was! – from the bench of the civil parties, by way of forgiveness the voice of the father pronounced “No, No, No” without violence, but while waving a hand which said: Never.

“I dare not even look at the family”, he allows himself to declare

The insistence of the questions of the President of the Court Antoine Giessenhoffer, who demanded further details on each point, fighting against: “I would prefer to avoid talking about it, Mr. President. The Court knows what happened. Do I have to repeat all this in front of the family? “. The persistence eventually paid off. Let’s concede to Jean-Marc Reiser real tears, which flowed when he took us to the cellar, carrying the body of Sophie Le Tan cut out of two suitcases. He had gone there to get the saw, “I had no other solution than to cut off the legs so that it would fit in the suitcase and saying that, he collapsed: “I never wanted what is arrived, Mr President. I dare not even look at the family”. Sobs shake her body. The President: “But why didn’t you say anything! “. – To kill a young girl who is old enough to be mine, to dismember the body, that will pursue me all my life. We can’t admit that, Mr President. Ten times I wanted to speak, I didn’t have the courage, I was a coward. Anything I say won’t appease the family. I would like to go back, stop time, I can’t. I hope that one day they will forgive me. I don’t deserve their forgiveness.” He would later say “I was in complete denial for two and a half years. It relieved me of a blow when I spoke to the judge ”. One of the two family lawyers, Mr. Gérard Welzer, asks him: “On a scale of 1 to 7, how would you rate their suffering? – 7. I would have the same pain if someone had done this to my daughter. What the family is feeling is completely normal.”

.He gave potential tenants fake dates

The Court will have to be satisfied with the version of the accused, these confessions that he served to the examining magistrate, after she closed the file. Spontaneous we doubt it: to deny until the Assizes in front of such confounding elements would have made his defense untenable. “I told my lawyers: no one will ever believe me”. Jean-Marc Reiser therefore met by chance Sophie Le Tan, sitting at the bus stop while he was looking for his shopping in his car. He forgot that he had an appointment with her to show her around the studio. They went up together while two witnesses say they saw Sophie Le Tan take the elevator alone. Questioned on this point by the Advocate General Laurent Guy: “You know, I know full well that they have not seen Sophie Le Tan. They came together to give their testimony. So. On September 10, there were photos of her on the door of the building and everywhere in the neighborhood (the search notice ndlr) They saw these photos for ten days, and were not questioned by the police the 21st, six days after my incarceration, when I was a monster in the media. I’m just noticing here. The rest, you can deduce from it what you want. Sophie Le Tan, he just wanted to “kiss her on the cheek”. She “misunderstood my intentions, I lost control”. Will the eight-line Lycamobile ‘ghost’ tell the President he used for tours? “Between 2010 and 2018, I had forty or fifty, not always for very legal activities”.

He gave potential tenants false appointments: “You know, Mr. President, I was not very serious at that time, not well in my skin, in my head”. Jean-Marc Reiser canceled an appointment scheduled for the evening of September 7, 2018 with his then girlfriend, on the grounds that he had an appointment in the morning for the studio visit, which she confirmed at the bar . Canceling the evening for an occupation in the morning astonished all those involved in the trial: “She has no memory, mixes up everything and does not know how to hold her tongue” replies the accused. – Why didn’t you say so at the hearing or when she came to the bar? interrupts the President. “What I mean, Mr. President, if you don’t interrupt me…” – If you were really answering the questions…but since a while ago, you’ve been doing what the shrinks described yesterday. “Why, if I had criminal intentions, cowardly raising my voice a bit – talking to my partner about an apartment date? That’s it, Mr President. The latter questions him about the “ten to fifteen punches” while Sophie Le Tan pushes him away. Why ? “I’ve been asking myself this question for four years. Maybe the psychiatrist we hear on Monday can explain that to you. (Follows the tirade on shrinks) Several times he will say, speaking of so and so: “…that we heard at the bar” as if he were commenting on a trial, sitting on a public bench. Jean-Marc Reiser cleaned the studio thoroughly. “There weren’t such significant traces of blood. I wiped with a sponge, then a mop, and I stripped the floor. Like many people, I am interested in criminal matters, I know the Bluestar”. – So why didn’t you clean the walls and the hot water tank? “I didn’t see any tracks. If I had seen any, I might have taken a new sponge, I didn’t think of that”. He will say later: “From the moment I decided to get rid of the body, I had come to my senses, obviously I took precautions”.

Next Tuesday, July 5, after the hearing of the psychiatrist, the requisitions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the pleadings of the civil party and the defence, the Court will have to rule on the premeditation. Me Francis Metzger, another lawyer for Jean-Marc Reiser, sketched out two lines of defense this Friday: “By confessing, Mr Reiser, you expose yourself to a whole series of checks on your truth by investigators, the forensic expert… “This what I said is the truth, I can’t make it up. » And the lawyer to submit to him: « If you were looking for Asians, you could just as well have posted an ad on dating sites, even more anonymous than the ad on Leboncoin…? Meet at your place who would have gone there, or move around…? And finally, he reminded the audience that his client was wearing a mask (surgical note) until Friday. “Why did you take it off? he asks her. – Because you asked me to. “Why did you accept? – To not give the impression that I was hiding.

But his only truth earned him no forgiveness.