During the seventh day of the trial of Nordahl Lelandais before the assizes of Isère, the couple who celebrated their wedding the evening of the kidnapping of Maëlys were called to testify at the bar.
Eddy, 40, and Anne-Laure, 39, expressed their anger at the accused and their regrets for having invited him to the party they organized in Pont-de-Beauvoisin, in Isère, in August 2017.
After the girl's disappearance, the newlyweds and their guests found Nordahl Lelandais' attitude very strange and expressed their doubts to the gendarmes.
At the Assize Court of Isère,
It was to be the happiest day of their lives.
Their wedding was to bring together 160 guests, friends and family members.
All gathered around Eddy and Anne-Laure in the village hall of Pont-de-Beauvoisin, in Isère.
But the guests could not tread the dance floor for long.
The evening of August 26, 2017 was marred by the disappearance, around 2:45 a.m., of a cousin of the groom, Maëlys, 8 years old.
Since then, this 40-year-old professional soldier cannot help feeling “anger” against the accused and regrets.
"I brought the wolf back into the sheepfold at my own wedding", he breathes, this Tuesday, at the bar of the Isère Assize Court where Nordahl Lelandais has been on trial for seven days for the kidnapping and murder of the girl.
This big guy with a bald head had yet "confidence" in the accused.
They met about twenty years ago and became friends.
But Nordahl was not a "near-near", he specifies.
Moreover, they had lost sight of each other in 2012 when a mutual friend left to live in Tahiti.
"We had less opportunity to party," continues Eddy.
A few days before the wedding, he receives a call from "Nono".
“I wanted to congratulate him on his marriage.
In the conversation, he told me to go to the wine of honor, ”says the accused.
Eddy had “no fear in inviting her”.
Talking to him, he had the impression “that it was the same person as before, the same valves… for me nothing had changed”.
But since that call, Eddy has been plagued by guilt.
"If I'm not there, if I don't answer,
From waking dream to “nightmare”
During the evening, Maëlys, her cousin Jennifer's daughter, vanishes.
“For 15-20 minutes I don't believe it.
But we can't find it, we start to panic, we don't believe it, ”he continues.
In a few minutes, the waking dream turns into a "nightmare".
“We are looking under the tables, she was not there, we made the cold rooms in the kitchen, she was still not there.
We did the exteriors, the parking lots.
With an uncle we did the fields around, ”recalls David, 42, a cousin of Maëlys's mother.
“When you start looking in cold rooms, in garbage cans, it's hell, you tell yourself that you won't find it.
Her parents are idle, everyone is crying.
The gendarmes arrive, the dogs search, nothing happens.
»
We ask Nordahl Lelandais if he would not have seen the little girl to whom he had shown photos of his dogs on his phone during the evening.
But the latter categorical, he did not cross her.
Just before the gendarmes arrived, the accused left "without saying goodbye, without saying anything", because he was sick, Eddy recalls.
But the groom finds it strange.
“I had seen him before he was doing very well.
"We thought it was because he had cocaine in his car," adds Kevin, the brother of a groom's witness.
“The next day, we were to be heard by the gendarmerie.
He wasn't there, so I called him.
Nordahl plays surprised.
“I told him that a little girl had disappeared.
He said to me: "Ah, you haven't found it?"
Finally, the former soldier arrives ten minutes later.
“He gave us a kiss, like a coward, as if nothing had happened.
»
"We will regret it all our lives"
His brother, Mickaël, 37, is also beginning to have doubts.
On his way back to Lyon, he stops at a petrol station and sees Nordahl Lelandais cleaning his Audi A3.
“I exchanged small talk with him.
He was thirsty, I gave him a sweet drink and left.
But one detail intrigues him.
Why was he washing his car at this station “opposite to his home”, when another station was closer to his home?
He decides to deliver this information to the investigators.
He also told them that during the evening, he "saw the accused chatting with Maëlys and asking him to go through the DJ entrance while he was going to go through the main entrance".
After claiming his innocence for six months, Nordahl Lelandais ended up admitting to having killed the girl and getting rid of her body.
But he never detailed why and under what conditions.
"He deceived us, we regret it bitterly and we will regret it all our lives," laments Anne-Laure, 39, Eddy's wife.
She has known the accused since he was 20 years old and perceived him as "someone very jovial, a good man who liked to party, boastful, very adaptable".
"I couldn't imagine for a single second that it was someone from the wedding" who had kidnapped Maëlys.
She and her husband, who are parents of two children, “just wanted to share [their] happiness” with their loved ones.
The trial continues until February 18.
The accused faces life imprisonment.
Follow the rest of this trial on the Twitter account of our journalist @TiboChevillard
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Maëlys case: "Your lies, we're fed up" ... Maëlys' sister tries (in vain) to crack Nordahl Lelandais
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Maëlys case: "I say it solemnly, I did not do it" ... Nordahl Lelandais maintains that he did not sexually assault the girl
Lyons
Justice
Isere
assize court
Nordahl Lelandais
Murder
Trial
Maelys case
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