Do the "similarities" with his previous crimes make him a "culprit"?

The Assize Court of the Somme must rule this Saturday on the case of Jacques Rançon, against whom a sentence of thirty years of criminal imprisonment with two-thirds of security was required for the rape and murder of Isabelle Mesnage in 1986 . "In the head of Jacques Rançon, everything is sexual, a violent sexuality", launched the general counsel Anne-Laure Sandretto during her requisitions, on the fifth and last day of a trial "trying for everyone", in the words of the defense.

This 61-year-old warehouse worker had already been sentenced in 2018 to life imprisonment for the rapes and murders of two women near the Perpignan station in 1997 and 1998. He confessed in 2019 to having raped Isabelle Mesnage, a computer scientist 20-year-old girl found dead in July 1986, on the edge of a wood near Amiens, having strangled her, then cutting her sex and her breasts to erase her DNA.

He had repeated his confession before the examining magistrate, before retracting by mail.

A man "in reinforced concrete who has no emotional vibration"

For more than an hour and a half, Anne-Laure Sandretto painted the portrait of a man "in reinforced concrete who has no emotional vibration", "unfathomable", "silent" and "dangerous", passing "from a banal life to a life of horror when he is unleashed by his impulses ”. In front of an impassive defendant, his head lowered in his box, she detailed the list of "charges", in particular the place of the facts, "hunting ground" of Jacques Rançon, close to his home at the time, a place that he "knows perfectly" and where he "already made two known victims".

The Advocate General also noted the "concordance" between the time of the disappearance of Isabelle Mesnage and a "moment of freedom to travel alone in his vehicle".

As for the "mode of operation", she recalled the "similarity of the wounds" inflicted on Isabelle Mesnage, Moktaria Chaïb and Marie-Hélène Gonzalez, the two victims of Perpignan, whose bodies had also undergone significant mutilations, in particular organs. genitals.

Under deliberation for 1 p.m.

Invoking "the spark of humanity" of Jacques Rançon, the defense called on the jurors to "stick to the facts" and denounced the media treatment of this file which "guided public opinion" before the start of the trial . “We would like to condemn Jacques Rançon on similarities, hypotheses. But we need certainties and not guesses, ”said Xavier Capelet, lawyer at the Perpignan bar. According to him, his client "invented" confessions "obviously suggested". If he had committed this crime, "how can he show up for his date without a drop of blood on him?" At 5 pm, a few minutes after the supposed time of the facts, he asked.

"The experts have said it: he is not a pervert, he does not take pleasure in the suffering of his victims", he added, inviting the jurors to "put aside the horrors of Perpignan" to rely on their "intimate conviction" before they retire to deliberate, around 1 pm.

According to Me Corinne Herrmann, lawyer for civil parties, the sentence required by the prosecution is "already very heavy for a first-time offender" since "it would be his first murder".

"I understand that the prosecution cannot apply for life imprisonment", she reacted to the press, recalling that her clients are not in "a process of revenge" but of "desire for justice".

Justice

Jacques Rançon, the "killer of the Perpignan station", tried in the Somme for the murder and rape of Isabelle Mesnage in 1986

Miscellaneous

Jacques Rançon, the "killer of the Perpignan station", heard about a 33-year-old murder

  • Picardy

  • Assize Court

  • Disappeared from Perpignan

  • Murder

  • Justice