Maëlys trial: Nordahl Lelandais delivers his version of the murder

Europe 1 with AFP, Jean-Luc Boujon 9:29 p.m., February 11, 2022

Nordahl Lelandais admitted, this Friday, February 11, during his trial for the murder of little Maëlys, having struck him “voluntary blows”, but without the intention of killing him or sexually assaulting him.

The 38-year-old former soldier has been on trial since January 31 before the Assizes of Grenoble for the murder of the child preceded by kidnapping and kidnapping, as well as for sexual assaults against two little cousins ​​aged 4 and 6. .

"It's time to explain"

"It's time to explain to you, you have the floor," President Valérie Blain told him in the introduction to this highly anticipated first interrogation on the facts.

But Nordahl Lelandais did not go back on his previous positions.

"Whatever I say, I will not be believed," he said repeatedly, saying "the truth today".

Returning to the night of the facts, he admitted crying that “the blows were intentional, it was not an accident.

But I had no intention of killing Maëlys.

According to him, the eight-year-old child, met at a wedding in Pont-de-Beauvoisin (Isère) in August 2017, had a few brief interactions with him during the evening about dogs, then joined him. willingly in the parking lot as he was about to drive off to look for cocaine.

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"And stupidly, I tell her get in and she opens the door," says Nordahl Lelandais.

“I recognize it's crazy, it's completely crazy, I had no bad intentions”, he relates

“She started hiccuping”

To explain the presence of the little girl, whom he did not know a few hours earlier, in his vehicle, he indicated that he had gone home to “look for cocaine, I tell myself that it will make him happy to see my dogs”.

“There on the way, it does not happen at all as it should have happened unfortunately”, he continues.

"She started hiccuping."

Nordahl Lelandais says he then felt the same “fear” as the night of April 2017 during which he killed young Corporal Arthur Noyer.

“I had killed a man before, it was something that was on my mind constantly and I turned my head and felt completely crazy,” he says.

"I turned, I kicked."

Having tried in vain to take the pulse of the little girl, he ends up dropping her off in a first place near a railway line before going home to change and return to the wedding to have “a form of alibi”.

The body of Maëlys transported to a forest

"I do not know what happened.

But it was me, of course it was me who did it,” he said, again presenting his “apologies” to the family.

"We would like me to say that it is a sexual crime but not at all," he added.

"I wasn't into that sexual view at all, far from it."

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He will later transport the body to a forest “to hide (his) crime”.

The morning had been devoted to the hearing of the former prosecutor in charge of the investigation at the time of Maëlys' disappearance, Jean-Yves Coquillat, and had given rise to a lively exchange with the defense lawyer Me Jakubowicz.

For the former prosecutor, Lelandais is “extremely dangerous”

The former prosecutor, now retired and of a “completely free speech”, had strongly criticized the “defense system” of the former soldier.

"They are excellent poker players, they wait to see each other play, they bluff," he said.

As for the accused, he is someone “extremely dangerous”, according to him.

He is “a liar, a boaster, a dissimulator, a seducer, someone very organized and very adaptable”, he estimated.

His intimate conviction?

"What I think is that Nordahl Lelandais kidnapped Maëlys to rape and kill her, you don't kidnap a child to go see dogs, it's neither head nor tail," he said. said.

His presentation was brutally interrupted by Mr. Jakubowicz, who declared that he had “never seen such a direct attack” against the defense and demanded an interruption of the session and the presence of the President of the Bar.

Sentenced for the murder of Arthur Noyer

“Clearly, Mr. Coquillat came to settle his accounts.

(…) It's an indictment before the hour!”, he thundered. Jean-Yves Coquillat “put his guts” into this file and “was never fooled by Nordahl's strategy Lelandais”, estimated Me Fabien Rajon, lawyer for Maëlys' mother after the hearing.

According to him, the former magistrate had "well identified the personality, the dangerousness" of the accused.

Already sentenced in Chambéry in May 2021 to 20 years' imprisonment for the murder of Arthur Noyer, the accused faces life imprisonment for the murder of Maëlys.

The verdict is expected next Friday.