• Jean-Marc Reiser will know his sentence, this Tuesday before the Assize Court of Bas-Rhin.

  • Before that, the alleged murderer of Sophie Le Tan was able to speak.

    I hope that you can judge calmly, that it is a fair, just verdict, not a summary execution, ”said the 61-year-old man.

  • He denies premeditation, he who risks life imprisonment.

The verdict will be pronounced this Tuesday, certainly in the afternoon.

This morning, Jean-Marc-Reiser spoke one last time before the jurors of the Bas-Rhin Assize Court left to deliberate.

“I hope you can judge calmly, that it be a fair, just verdict, not a summary execution”, declared the 61-year-old man, who had confessed in January 2021 to having killed the 20-year-old student who disappeared in September 2018 near Strasbourg.

“In this fury that I still cannot explain to myself today, there was nothing premeditated.

I did not particularly want Sophie Le Tan, I had nothing against her, ”he continued.

He again complained of being presented "like a monster" in a "kind of media lynching".

Then addressing the family of Sophie Le Tan, but keeping his head down, Jean-Marc Reiser said he "faced their immense pain" and understood that they could not forgive him: "I am guilty of the death of their daughter even though I didn't want her to.

It will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“Regrettable coincidence” or premeditation?

On Thursday, life imprisonment with 22 years of security, the maximum sentence, was requested against him.

The six jurors (four men and two women) and the three judges must now answer two questions: Did Jean-Marc Reiser voluntarily kill Sophie Le Tan, whose incomplete skeleton was not found until October 2019? , more than a year after his disappearance?

And did he premeditate the crime with which he is accused?

This question of premeditation contains the whole stake of the trial.

If Mr. Reiser admitted at the hearing, as he has done since January 2021, having killed Sophie, he denies on the other hand any intention of homicide and, above all, any premeditation: he never prepared or wanted her death.

He and his three lawyers hammered it: it was a "regrettable coincidence" that put Sophie Le Tan on his way.

On September 7, 2018, he saw her while he was downstairs.

She had come to visit his apartment which he had rented out via an Internet site, but he had forgotten about this meeting after having spent the previous night drinking.

According to his version, it was at his house, after the visit, that things degenerated: the young woman's rejection of his attempt at a "kiss" plunged Mr. Reiser into an uncontrollable "state of fury", he wheeled her blows, she falls heavily and remains inanimate.

Prostrate according to him for several hours, he makes the decision to cut up the body and hide it in the forest.

“It is indeed in a trap that she fell”

A scenario of the "chance meeting" and the "cable breakdown" rejected by the prosecution and the civil parties: "It is indeed a trap that she fell", concluded the Advocate General Laurent Guy, sweeping the thesis, put forward by the defence, with an impulsive gesture that Mr. Reiser would then have tried to conceal in haste.

For the prosecution, on the contrary, he published a false rental ad with the aim of trapping a young student corresponding to his taste for Asian women, Sophie being of Vietnamese origin.

For the civil parties also, the premeditation “is beyond doubt”: “He organizes himself to attract his prey into his web”, estimated Me Rémi Stephan, one of the lawyers for the Le Tan family.

On the defense side, we tried to instill doubt in the minds of the jurors, trying to convince them that their client, whom they know will be convicted, had not calculated anything and is therefore not guilty. assassination but intentional violence resulting in death without the intention of giving it.

A charge that would incur Mr. Reiser, tried as a legal recidivism, 30 years' imprisonment and not life imprisonment.

“There is no certainty with regard to Jean-Marc Reiser that he premeditated the death of Sophie Le Tan”, estimated Me Xavier Metzger, recalling that the doubt should benefit the accused.

Remains an unknown: how did Sophie die?

Has she been sexually abused?

The questions were raised during the proceedings, even though Mr. Reiser is not being prosecuted for rape.

" What happened ?

Only he knows (…) We only have the “Reiserian” version”, lamented Me Gérard Welzer, another lawyer for the civil parties.

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