• The trial of Jean-Marc Reiser opens this Monday in Strasbourg.

    He faces life imprisonment if the murder of Sophie Le Tan is retained.

  • "This is one of the most terrible trials in terms of the suffering of the civil party and the atrocity of the facts", sums up at

    20 Minutes

    Maître Gérard Welzer.

    The lawyer will defend the family of the 20-year-old student, killed in September 2018.

  • “I think he will speak because there are still gray areas and will defend himself.

    He will not go back on his confession”, explains for his part Maître Pierre Giuriato, who will represent Jean-Marc Reiser with Francis Metzger.

Seven days of hearing on the program, twenty-six witnesses and ten experts called to testify, three rooms reserved to absorb the public and the media... The extraordinary trial of Jean-Marc Reiser opens this Monday at the court of Foundation of the Bas-Rhin in Strasbourg.

The same place where Pierre Bodein, known as "Pierrot le Fou", and "the strangler of Robertsau" Nicolas Charbonnier had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007 and 2016.

The body of the young woman found a year later dismembered

Anyone who confessed to the murder of Sophie Le Tan faces the same penalty.

For having killed the student in 2018, Jean-Marc Reiser is being prosecuted for murder as a legal recidivism.

Recidivism because in 2003, he had already been sentenced in Côte-d'Or to fifteen years in prison for two rapes in 1995 and 1996. This time, on the scale of horror, the case is even more serious.

"This is one of the most terrible trials in terms of the suffering of the civil party and the atrocity of the facts", summarizes at

20 Minutes

Maître Gérard Welzer, who has nevertheless seen others.

The lawyer will represent the Le Tan family, "annihilated since September 7, 2018".

On this date when the eldest of their three children, Sophie, disappeared after visiting an apartment in Schiltigheim, just next to Strasbourg.

On the very day of his 20th birthday.

His body was only found a little over a year later in the forest of Grendelbruch, about forty kilometers from the Alsatian capital.

Dismembered.

"After this interminable wait, it was a new damage given the dramatic conditions of the discovery", further testifies the council which will face his colleagues Francis Metzger and Pierre Giuriato.

With a main issue: will premeditation and therefore assassination be retained?

"He will not go back on his confession"

Facing the judge, Jean-Marc Reiser, who had been imprisoned very quickly, rather evoked “a scene of violence followed by death”, according to Pierre Giuriato.

“He says it was not a trap, that he misunderstood the feelings of the victim and that he lost his footing when she pushed him away”, continues the lawyer.

“It was then, in the bathroom, that he gave her a series of blows in the face, that she fell backwards and lost consciousness.

A version that bloodstain experts and the medical examiner have corroborated.

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The accused, reputed to be silent, will perhaps say more.

“I think he will speak because there are still gray areas and will defend himself.

He will not go back on his confession, "the lawyer still believes he knows when speaking of the" stroke of old "of his 60-year-old client.

“He has been in solitary confinement [à la prison de Strasbourg] from the start and that has obviously had an effect on him.

He lost 15-20 kg, much grayer hair.

Psychologically, it has ups and downs.

He's not the type to act out a lot.

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Our file on the Sophie Le Tan affair

"We don't expect much from Jean-Marc Reiser," says Maître Gérard Welzer.

“He adapted his statements as the investigation progressed.

He has not stopped lying and will continue.

For us, he is an assassin with a very charged past who is going to be tried for a terrible crime.

Above all, we will do our best to talk about Sophie who was a courageous young girl esteemed by all.

It should not be forgotten.

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Justice

Strasbourg: Before the trial in the Sophie Le Tan case, Jean-Marc Reiser sentenced in another case

Justice

Sophie Le Tan case: The reconstruction lasted more than eight hours, Jean-Marc Reiser "without any empathy towards his victim"

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