confessions, denials and separate destinies

[En 2011, deux plaisanciers repêchent une valise contenant un corps dans la baie de Lorient. Commence alors une enquête pour découvrir les circonstances de la mort de cet inconnu. Un récit de Pascale Robert-Diard en six épisodes.]

In detention, Maëlle reads Task, by Philippe Roth, and The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. Sabrina borrowed from the library The Prisoner’s Guide, Words of prisoners and Chief Medical Officer at the Health Prison. Maëlle logs her lessons, she is enrolled at the university, in the first year of psychology. Sabrina joins the bakery workshop of the prison every day. Maëlle says that at this point in her life, prison ” do well ” and she bonds with the supervisors. Sabrina is indignant at her incarceration, alerts the Keeper of the Seals and the President of the Republic to “the risk of an Outreau 2” and had his fellow inmates sign certificates in his favour. The fates of “little Breton” and the ex-caïd des Mureaux, indicted for “kidnapping, sequestration and assassination”, separate, each prepares its defence.

Also read the previous episode: Article reserved for our subscribers “A man overboard”: the candlestick, the cord and the mirror

In front of the examining magistrate, Maëlle reiterates her confessions of police custody on the murder of Mickaël. She was there, she wanted nothing, decided nothing, but she helped. She extends them in a long letter of five pages with impeccable spelling and style. “Madam judge, you told me that I could write to you and I feel the need to do so because you seem to me to be the person who has the most perspective on this case…” Sabrina, “the female counterpart of Cahuzac”as the investigators dubbed her, continues to deny any participation in the crime with which she is accused and claims that she is the victim of a conspiracy.

White adhesive mask

The judge confronts the two women in her office. Maëlle maintains her story. On June 20, 2011, Mickaël arrived unexpectedly at the rue Moncey salon, to have an explanation with Sabrina. The conversation escalated, he wanted to leave, Sabrina chased him and hit him on the head with a candlestick, then strangled him with the printer’s cord. Maëlle held the other end. Afterwards, she said, she remained prostrate in the hallway. His story becomes blurry. “It was Sabrina who took care of everything else because I told her that I didn’t want to see. » She only remembers having helped her put Mickaël’s body in the suitcase they had gone to buy after the crime in a shop on the Champs-Elysées. “I had to press on the legs to get them in. » He was wrapped in a tarp, his limbs shackled and his face entirely covered with a white adhesive mask. The medical examiner concluded that the victim died of“asphyxiation by suffocation”.

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