In a new documentary series, Julie Denayer returns with judge Denis Goeman to the sordid “Daval affair”. Between family confessions, archive images and unpublished documents, “Intime conviction” will be available to you this Tuesday at 8:25 p.m. on RTL tvi.
While Jonathann Daval gave several versions of the events which led to the death of his wife, her mother will meet him in police custody. She will, on the advice of her lawyer, present him with a photo that will change everything.
Alexia’s family had gathered with the lawyer. The latter, when Isabelle Fouillot (the mother) shows a photo of her daughter’s cat, which meant a lot to her and to her husband Jonathann, immediately understands that there is a move to be made. “I told him that’s the angle of attack. Show him this cat. Talk to him about this cat, about what he’s become now. You’ll touch it and maybe it’ll tip over“, says Gilles-Jean Portejoie, the family’s lawyer.
When it comes time to meet her son-in-law, Isabelle has his photo in her bag. “When I arrived, II say hello to him Jonathann and there, I catch his look and he says hello to me, as if I had seen him the day before, as if nothing had happened“, she remembers.
“Very quickly, Madame Fouillard adopted a unique position. Not the position of the grieving mother who has lost her daughter and who is sobbing“, recalls Etienne Manteaux, the public prosecutor who attended the exchange. “She had a rather astonishing posture of benevolence towards Jonathann.“
“I spoke about forgiveness”, continues the mother“that I had to understand and that he could start his life again and that we could perhaps forgive“. “Afterwards, I talked about Happy (the cat, editor’s note). I told him: ‘Happy, you forgot her, you don’t think about Happy anymore, don’t you know what’s become of her?‘”. Isabelle then holds out the photo in which we see Alexia with her cat.
“He started to caress the photo and then he started to cry“, remembers Isabelle Fouillot. “After a few minutes, Jonathan Daval, who was in the process of liquefying, comes to stand in front of Madame Foulliot and kneels“, reports Etienne Manteaux. “He sobs. It’s confusing, we don’t understand well. But what we understand through his sobs is that he repeats what he said during the fifth hearing in police custody: ‘It was indeed I who killed him, but It was an accident, it wasn’t premeditated, I lost everything'”.
“He was crying. I know it’s stupid, but I picked him up, hugged him and cried with him“, confides the victim’s mother.
After that, Jonathann will no longer deny having killed his wife, as he had done for a long time until then.
Watch “Intime conviction” with Julie Denayer and Denis Goeman this Tuesday evening at 8:25 p.m. on RTL tvi and streaming on RTL play.
Intimate conviction affair of daval murder
