• Mathieu D., 26, appears at the assizes of Gard from this Monday for the assassination of Claire, a 39-year-old hitchhiker, killed with 17 stab wounds.

  • Throughout the procedure, the man acknowledged the facts, explaining that he wanted to satisfy a "desire" that he had been nurturing for several years.

  • He faces life imprisonment.

“You can't know if you like a dish until you've tasted it. The comparison is so absurd, aberrant even, that it could give rise to a smile if it were not hiding a crime of incredible violence. From this Monday and for three days, a 26-year-old man is on trial for murder before the Gard Assize Court, suspected of having killed a hitchhiker one evening in June 2018. With the sole motivation of the desire to experience the feeling of taking life away. "When I returned to my vehicle, I said to myself that it was an isolated place, that it was dark, that there was no one and that it was an opportunity to kill," he said. confided bluntly during his custody.

Mathieu D. surrendered himself to the authorities, two days after committing his crime. To the dumbfounded gendarmes, he tells the scenario of a gratuitous crime. On June 19, he began, he hitchhiked Claire, 39, who wanted to go from Montélimar to Sommières, between Nîmes and Montpellier. He has not planned to go to this small town nearly an hour and a half from his home, but nevertheless agrees to drive his passenger there. On the spot, he says, they visit the city together, dine on a pizza, go for a walk in the surroundings. In the evening, Mathieu D. offers her a sexual relationship which she declines. As she asks him to leave, the man pretends to go back to his car, grabs the small dagger that was hidden there, and goes after his victim. 17 shots, first in the carotid, then the head and the heart.

A "murderous desire"

When did the bloody mechanism kick in?

The accused claims to have acted in this way to satisfy a "murderous desire" that he had nurtured for years.

In police custody, he even specifies that he told his victim who implored him that his gesture was not personal, that she or another, it would have been the same.

"This crime is the meeting of a fragile soul and a criminal soul", sums up the lawyer for Claire's relatives, Me Anthony Chabert.

Once the murder was committed, the man explains that he went home, simply went to bed.

The next day he went for a walk.

Neither in front of the gendarmes, nor in front of the examining magistrate or the psychiatric experts, Mathieu D. expressed regrets or expressed a form of guilt.

“Throughout the interview, he remained stoic and showed no emotion or expression on his face,” notes the gendarme who took him into custody.

He just admitted not having liked the feeling of killing, disappointed in particular not to feel the pleasure or the adrenaline rush he imagined.

This is also one of the reasons why he surrendered even before the body was discovered (he was on his instructions).

“The family greatly fears this face-to-face and the coldness of this man, confides the lawyer for the civil parties.

Will he have the same detachment before the court as during the investigation?

»

A dynamic “found in serial killers”

Three psychiatric expert reports deliver substantially the same diagnosis: the accused does not suffer from any psychiatric disorder and is therefore fully accessible to a criminal sanction. His clarity of mind that evening is “complete” and “his intentionality is beyond doubt”, assures one of the experts. The dangerousness of Mathieu D. is above all of a criminological nature and all underline a non-negligible risk of recidivism. The young man also recognized it, if he had liked the feeling of killing, he would not have been returned. A behavior that makes Roland Coutanceau, a psychiatrist accustomed to the courtrooms, say that the dynamic of Mathieu D. is “that which we find among serial killers”. His act, he explains in his report, is for him a way of marking his singularity and constitutes "an achievement", even "a work".

There remains one question that will undoubtedly be at the heart of the debate: that of premeditation.

At the end of the investigation, the qualification of assassination was retained, in particular because Mathieu D. had harbored the intention to kill for a long time – to the point of discussing this desire with his parents – and had hidden a dagger in his car. "if the opportunity presents itself".

An analysis refuted by his lawyer, Me Jérôme Arnal.

“If he considered a murder, he did not mature the project to kill this woman whom he did not know a few hours earlier, in this place in which he had never been before.

There is a dramatic combination of circumstances in this case.

The nuance is important: murder, which therefore requires premeditation, is punishable by life imprisonment, murder by 30 years in prison.

Justice

Chevaline massacre: The lawyer of a man questioned nine years after the facts denounces an "unjustified" police custody

Society

"Scream": The return of the film awakens the memory of the assassination of Alice near Nantes, twenty years ago

  • Crime

  • Languedoc Roussillon

  • Montpellier

  • Trial

  • Justice

  • Assassination

  • 0 comment

  • 0 share

    • Share on Messenger

    • Share on Facebook

    • Share on Twitter

    • Share on Flipboard

    • Share on Pinterest

    • Share on Linkedin

    • Send by Mail

  • To safeguard

  • A fault ?

  • To print