Tour de France of miscellaneous facts – Brittany: a murder in a techno festival


PODCAST

This is one of the most significant events in Brittany. In June 2005, while the gathering of teufeurs of the Teknival is in full swing, the body of Mathilde Croguennec, one of the participants of the huge rave party, is found in the neighboring wood. Christophe Hondelatte recounts this extraordinary investigation.

One murder, 43,000 suspects

On June 26, 2005, as the sun rose over the Teknival, two party girls fell on the bleeding body of a young naked girl in the woods adjoining the field. In the festival, the news does not take long to spread. At the same time, two teenage girls worry about the disappearance of their cousin. This one did not go to the agreed meeting point, and she is the only one of the group not to have given a sign of life for several hours, even though her boyfriend returned home much earlier . Heartbroken, the two girls expressed their concern to the gendarmes who took over the premises. Their doubts are confirmed: the description they give of their cousin corresponds to that of the body found. It is therefore Mathilde Croguennec, 18, who for the first time had permission from her parents to attend a festival. With this information, the festival is closed, and the investigation of the gendarmerie opens. But where to start ? “She was very sociable, you know. She had to talk to a lot of people…”

The gendarmes manage to identify 20,000 identities, but at the time of the discovery of the body, many partygoers have already left the scene. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, not far from the corpse, a switchblade knife was found, which was sent to the laboratory. Indeed, according to the autopsy, Mathilde Croguennec was the victim of no less than 28 stab wounds, 15 of which were fatal to her. Her liver was perforated in six places and her lungs were filled with blood: she died of both asphyxiation and haemorrhage. Traces of touching were also observed. It’s a savage murder, with an unusual weapon. When the DNA analysis of the knife falls, her boyfriend, who returned earlier in the night, is exonerated. The investigation cell which is then formed to solve the investigation tries to go back to the killer by determining the origin of the knife and by analyzing the statements of the telephone. The investigation continues without success for months, until the day when the investigators decide to sift through the photos taken by Mathilde’s boyfriend that night. On the pictures observed, there is a man that none of Mathilde’s relatives recognizes: for lack of information, the gendarmes nicknamed him “the man in the red sweater”. Brown, tanned, smiling, he appears arm in arm with the young girl. Yet no one remembers him…

The man in the red sweater

It was at the Rennes police station that a man recognized the mysterious individual for the first time. It would be a certain Alain Kernoa, a former marine attached to the arsenal of Brest. When we enter his name in the database of the gendarmerie, we learn that he was arrested three months earlier for sexual exhibition after having masturbated in his car in public. He would have recognized the facts, and would now live with his parents in Marseille. Bingo: his bank statements indicate that he would have spent around 80 euros at the armory of Mont Saint-Michel, where the knife came from, a few months before the murder at Teknival. Alain Kernoa is then arrested. While waiting for the results of his fingerprints, his room is searched. In particular, we discover a recipe for making GHB, the date rape drug. When the genetic analysis comes back positive, all doubts are removed: this is indeed Mathilde’s murderer.

“It’s like I’m in a video game”

A crucial question still remains to be elucidated: was Alain Kernoa conscious during the events? This is the whole debate of the trial which opened in 2008 in Saint-Brieuc. Since he admitted to the murder, Alain Kernoa has continued to change versions. He first claimed to have been forced by a gang of “punks” to hit her. Then he said he “started hitting her for no reason”, implying that he had been under the influence of drugs. At the assizes, he displays a new line of defense: “I don’t really live in the real world. I thought I was in a video game, it’s as if it were plastic.” The shrinks consider that if he does not present any deficiency, this man is a manipulator, a mythomaniac. One thing is certain: Alain Kernoa does not realize the seriousness of his act, nor does he expect the penalty he will receive for his crime…

To discover the details of this spine-chilling story, listen to the dedicated episode of the “Hondelatte Raconte” podcast.



Source link -79