Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: Loic Venance/AFP 6:30 p.m., March 8, 2024, modified at 6:32 p.m., March 8, 2024

Jonathan Boillet, accused of dousing his partner with gasoline then burning her alive, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with a security sentence of 20 years.

This was what was requested against him by the attorney general.

The 36-year-old accused ended up confessing to the facts during the trial, while claiming to have no memory. 

“You belong to me, you can never leave me. The day you leave me, I will die,” Jonathan Boillet had threatened a few days before burning Sandy Cucheval alive, the attorney general recalled on Friday during his requisitions in the latter's trial.

The 36-year-old man is accused of dousing his partner with gasoline then burning her alive.

30 years in prison, including a 20-year security sentence, were requested against him by Attorney General Xavier Alloy.

“Jonathan Boillet is guilty of the murder of Sandy Cucheval”

“There is no other explanation, he voluntarily caused the death of Sandy Cucheval,” said the public prosecutor, also demanding that Jonathan Boillet be, at the end of his incarceration, subjected for ten years to a obligation of care to combat his addictions to alcohol and cannabis.

The accused, who had maintained the thesis of the accident until the trial opened Tuesday before the Pas-de-Calais Assizes, ended up admitting on Thursday that the evidence overwhelmed him, while ensuring that he had no memory.

"I'm taking a step aside (...) I'm saying it: Jonathan Boillet is guilty of the murder of Sandy Cucheval, let it be said," admitted the accused's lawyer, Anne-Céline Lemonnier, on Friday.

“I would like to apologize, but if my apologies are not acceptable to the family, I understand very well,” Jonathan Boillet simply declared, with sobs in his voice, before the court retired to deliberate.

Jonathan Boillet is on trial for the murder of Sandy Cucheval, who was burned alive in her car on November 10, 2020 and died a week later in Lille hospital, at the age of 33.

Already convicted eight times in the past, including four times for violence against a previous partner, the mother of his children, the man was released from prison on June 29, 2020. He was the subject of socio-judicial monitoring at the time of the facts, an “outstretched hand” that he did not grasp, underlined the attorney general.

A feminicide “unique in its monstrosity”

"For 'feminicides' and more particularly for this one, quite unique in its monstrosity, the sentence must be commensurate with the suffering of the victims", hopes the lawyer of the daughter and the ex-mother-in-law by Sandy Ccheval, Nathalie Tomasini.

With Jonathan Boillet, with whom she had been in a relationship for three months at the time of her death, Sandy Cucheval was "locked up", points out Cherifa Benmouffok, her mother's lawyer.

He also threatened to burn her and her children.

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94 feminicides recorded in 2023, or -20% in one year, according to the ministry

On the last day of the trial, a series of photos of the victim were broadcast, notably in the company of her children and still smiling.

Then a photo presented by Me Nathalie Tomasini shows the victim, the face completely charred, the skin blistered and scorched, the scalp without hair.

Astonishment and sobs invade the family benches.

Jonathan Boillet looks down.

He refuses to admit to intentionally starting the fire

But he is not changing his position, now that the alcohol consumed throughout the day of November 10, 2020 - beers and vodka - led him to a "blackout" from which he only woke up when the car caught fire.

Certainly, “it was I who doused her with gasoline, we cannot say the opposite,” he admitted Thursday, cornered by overwhelming expert opinions.

But he refuses to admit to having deliberately started the fire and to having wanted to kill her.

This alcoholism, as well as his addiction to various drugs, is linked according to him to rapes suffered when he was a child, committed by an uncle.

Abuse that he “carries across his shoulder, like a totem of immunity”, accuses Nathalie Tomasini.

“You killed Madame Cucheval, you kill her a second time by not offering the victims this truth that they so need,” asserts Alexandre Braud, lawyer for two of the victim’s children.

On average, a homicide involving a woman occurs every three days in France.

The Ministry of Justice has counted 94 femicides in 2023. "You belong to me, you can never leave me. The day you leave me, I will kill you", he had threatened Sandy Cucheval a few days before the facts, recalled the Advocate General during his requisitions.