At the trial of Jean-Marc Reiser, the destroyed family of Sophie Le Tan

Europe 1 with AFP 9:51 p.m., June 29, 2022

A young girl "ray of sunshine", whose death is a "daily horror": the destroyed family of Sophie Le Tan, killed and dismembered on her 20th birthday, delivered her ordeal on Wednesday before the Assize Court of Bas-Rhin facing a presumed assassin, Jean-Marc Reiser, looking down.

"I loved my daughter very much. I would like her to come back, but how?" Said in a stifled voice Thi Huong Le Tan, 50, Sophie's mother, whose words in Vietnamese were translated by an interpreter .

Sophie Le Tan's mother lets go

On the first day of the trial on Monday, this discreet woman had collapsed, coming close to fainting the moment Jean-Marc Reiser entered the dock.

"It was Sophie the main person in the family, now she is no longer there," said Thi Huong Le Tan, sentences broken by sobs.

Her daughter disappeared on September 7, 2018, the same day she was to celebrate her 20th birthday.

A student in Strasbourg, Sophie Le Tan was going to visit an apartment in the north of the city, she will no longer give any sign of life.

His dismembered body was found in the forest in October 2019.

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After several minutes of painful testimony, Sophie's mother finally let go: "I'm in too much pain, I want to stop".

One of the defense lawyers, Me Francis Metzger, then stands up: "Madam, we bow to your pain".

Face down, Jean-Marc Reiser, usually impassive, takes off his mask briefly and wipes his eyes.

"The family has not yet received a pardon from their daughter's killer," then says her father, Tri Le Tan, also speaking in Vietnamese.

"Sophie is no longer there, for the family it's like a phoenix that has lost a wing, injured and forever."

"The horror is unimaginable, like a small fire that burns slowly every day and it doesn't stop," he continued.

Sophie Le Tan had "a key role in the family"

Sophie Le Tan, whose worker father arrived in France from Vietnam in 1988, grew up near Mulhouse in a close-knit family before studying economics and management in Strasbourg.

To avoid being a burden on her parents, she had a job as a receptionist in a hotel.

Speaking French, Vietnamese, German and English, she who saw herself working in tourism between Vietnam and France, was often the interpreter for her parents and helped them with administrative procedures.

"She had a key role in the family," said her older brother Philippe, 24.

It was she "who made me move forward".

Her relatives described her, to an expert commissioned by the examining magistrate, as feeling good about herself, a faithful friend, an independent and responsible daughter, a caring sister.

A "ray of sunshine", for Nadine, her cousin, "the most benevolent person" she has met for Mathilde, her friend.

Reiser's confession that is "not a desire for redemption"

"Sophie was a great person, she brought a lot of good to those around her," confirmed Sylvie, her younger sister, at the helm.

Since her death, "there is no more joy, no way to be happy", blows the one who had not yet found the strength to appear in court since the start of the trial on Monday.

On Wednesday afternoon, the hearing focused on the long investigation carried out from the disappearance of Sophie Le Tan in 2018 to the discovery of her body in 2019, then to the partial confessions of Jean-Marc Reiser in January 2021.

Confessions which are "not a desire for redemption, but a wish to minimize the extent of his responsibility", considered an investigator, also underlining "the extreme meticulousness he showed both in the cutting and in the transport of the body, leaving no trace".

Throughout the investigation, the telephone will have been central to pinning down the man who had opened multiple lines, under false names, serving to respond to three classified ads for an apartment that "would suit a student".

A scheme according to a police commissioner

For a police commissioner who came to testify, there is no doubt that it "was indeed a ploy" to attract young girls.

There was a "reflective nature of his goal before he acted out".

What the three defense lawyers sought to challenge, who refute the premeditation.

The state of Sophie Le Tan's incomplete skeleton has made it impossible to know the cause of her death and, apart from the erased traces of blood, the sequence of events in Jean-Marc Reiser's apartment remains a mystery, depending on the sole word of the accused.

But "it's his truth", recalled the investigator.