Willy Bardon is tried from Monday before the Assises of Douai for the murder and rape of Elodie Kulik in 2002. During the first trial, in 2019, the forty-something had been sentenced to thirty years of criminal imprisonment and had tried to be commit suicide, before appealing the judgment of the Somme Assize Court.
Willy Bardon's appeal trial opens Monday afternoon before the Assises de Douai.
This former cafe owner is retried for having participated in the rape and murder of Elodie Kulik, a young 24-year-old banker, in January 2002 in the Somme.
At first instance, in December 2019, he was sentenced to 30 years of criminal imprisonment.
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"I have nothing to do with it"
He had been suspected because he was part of the close entourage of a young man, Grégory Wiart, identified by DNA as the rapist of the young banker, and who has since died in a car accident.
What accuses Willy Bardon? Her voice, recognized by relatives on the recording of the phone call that Elodie made to the firefighters just before her assault. The young woman had just been pushed into a ditch at the wheel of her car. No other material element makes it possible to implicate it.
During the first trial, Willy Bardon never ceased to proclaim his innocence and when the verdict was pronounced, he had attempted to commit suicide by swallowing a pesticide.
Before this appeal trial, the accused decided to speak publicly to reaffirm his innocence, saying that he could not bear to be accused of a crime he claims not to have committed.
"I am reproached for facts in which I have never participated. As I always say, I have nothing to do with it. Today, I am ready to speak to explain that it is not me, quite simply, and to make people see that everything that I have been criticized for is false. "
Élodie's father "asks for life imprisonment"
However, several witnesses formally recognized her voice in the middle of Elodie's howls in the recording of the call to the firefighters that she had spent a few seconds before her assault. Willy Bardon's protest of innocence does not make Jacky Kulik, Elodie's daddy, doubtful. "Nobody is fooled", he expresses at the microphone of Europe 1. "He may try to appear, his lawyers may try to pass him off as someone respectable, it is not Anyway, so for me, no doubt. I dare to hope that this time, the treatment will be even more severe. Me, I ask for life imprisonment. "
Released after the first trial, Willy Bardon was reincarcerated a few days ago for violating his judicial review. He had contacted one of the witnesses at the trial.