Here, he thought, no one would come looking for lice in his head. An ideal hideout. Five months earlier, as the May 8 ceremonies approached, Frédéric had been dislodged by the police from the Étoile district, where he was begging. Hat screwed on his emaciated face, his bright purple tent on his back, the homeless man had taken up residence in the bushes bordering the Paris ring road. Between the Bois de Boulogne, on the other side of the expressway, and the Porte Dauphine. Terribly noisy certainly, with the traffic below. But little frequented, apart from a few joggers and local residents walking their dogs.
However, this Friday, September 20, the homeless man noticed an unusual scene a stone’s throw from his shelter. The still silhouette of a young man sitting on a tree trunk. In his twenties, dark complexion, dark hair. For more than two hours, he stood there like a clay pigeon, his eyes fixed on the woods on the other side of the ring road. Frédéric ends up calling out to him: “What are you doing there, are you from the police? Do you want to steal my stuff? » The man gives him a dazed look and then leaves. It’s a little after 7 p.m. Frédéric doesn’t know it yet, but he has just encountered the main suspect in a case that will set the entire country in turmoil.
At the same time, in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, in Yvelines, Loïc and Blandine Le Noir de Carlan are at each other’s throats. Their daughter Philippine was to join them after school to spend the weekend with family. However, the word “delay” is not part of his vocabulary. The student, penultimate of a close-knit family of six children, has always been astonishingly precocious.
The suspect, Taha O. in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
© DR
At 19, she is in her third year of a bachelor’s degree in economics and financial engineering at the highly rated Paris-Dauphine-PSL University. She is the pride of her father, a physicist at the Automatic Energy Commission, and her mother, a mathematics teacher. “Phiphi”, as those close to her call her, is one of those beings who seem to go through existence with grace and ease, as if they had received instructions at birth. At the age when we only think about partying and one-night stands, she builds her life diligently but always in a good mood.
Everyone who knows her describes her as a model student, keen on literature, theater and pottery. Driven by an ardent faith, like her entire family, she is involved in the prayer group of her parish of Montigny-Voisins. Her boyfriend, Thibault, whom she met five years earlier, became a resolute Catholic through her contact. An experienced member of the Scouts and Guides of France, Philippine takes her responsibilities as leader very seriously. Luckily, this walking enthusiast has a perfect playground next to her faculty to stretch her legs after classes.
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Frédéric, a homeless man, said he saw Taha O. wandering in the woods on the day of the murder. Paris, September 25.
© Pascal Rostain
On this still summery Friday, September 20, after having lunch in the university canteen, the young girl heads towards the nearby Bois de Boulogne. This will be its last sign of life, captured by surveillance cameras installed around the park. A few hours later, his parents and one of his sisters reported his disappearance to two police stations. His cell phone is geolocated by his relatives in an area of the woods overlooking the ring road.
A relentless three-day hunt
The next day, a hunt of around fifty people found the device. Philippine’s body was discovered about twenty meters away, partially buried. Some witnesses will say they saw, on the same day and in the same area, a man with a pickaxe and his face hidden by a surgical mask… In all likelihood, the murderer therefore remained near the crime scene for part of the fateful day and the next day, in an attempt to cover up his misdeed. The conclusions of the autopsy, carried out at the Paris Medico-Legal Institute, have not been made public. But according to “Le Parisien”, the student died of asphyxiation, despite the absence of signs of strangulation.
For the sleuths of the Paris criminal brigade, it was the start of a fierce three-day hunt. A trace of foreign DNA found at the crime scene is unusable. But, quickly, investigators discovered that an individual had withdrawn money from a bank in Montreuil using Philippine’s bank card on the very evening of the murder. Then began a meticulous work of cross-referencing telephone data in this neighborhood and in the woods, but also video surveillance images and information from police files.
He was someone who was always afraid, afraid of others.
Abdel, a former high school friend of Taha O.
Forty-eight hours after the discovery of the body, the alleged killer was identified. On Tuesday, September 24, he narrowly escaped the police, who located him in Annecy, because he was reckless enough to turn his cell phone back on. It was finally at the Geneva station that the man was arrested a little later by the Swiss police, armed with his photo transmitted by the French authorities. He is now the subject of a judicial investigation opened against him on charges of murder preceded, accompanied or followed by another crime, rape, theft and fraud, all as a repeat legal offense. His extradition could take up to several weeks.
It is an understatement to say that Taha O. is, according to the established expression, unfavorably known to the justice system. This Moroccan from the Oujda region arrived in France in June 2019, at the age of 17, thanks to a tourist visa. According to statements from his former lawyer, Me Laura Beauvais, he first passed through Spain, where his father abandoned him to go and start a new life in Germany. With Paris Match, Moroccan friends describe a difficult childhood with a father subject to outbursts of violence. “He was someone who was always afraid, afraid of others,” says Abdel, a former high school friend.
On August 31, 2019, Taha O. raped a 23-year-old student
Salim remembers “a bit of a special guy” and is surprised to have “never seen him talk to a girl”. On August 31, 2019, while living in a home where he was placed by Val-d’Oise child welfare, Taha O. raped a 23-year-old student. The attack took place on a nearby forest path, in Taverny. Confused by his DNA, the man whom the departmental police chief at the time described as a “very dangerous sexual predator” was placed in pre-trial detention.
In 2021, the minor was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Val-d’Oise juvenile court. Through automatic sentence reductions, he was released from the Joux-la-Ville detention center, in Yonne, on June 20, 2024. Direction: the Metz administrative detention center, with a view to his expulsion.
Nearly 3,000 people attended the funeral. At the head of the procession: her parents, Loïc and Blandine, her brothers and sisters and her boyfriend. September 27, At Saint-Louis Cathedral in Versailles.
© Pascal Rostain
Because, two days earlier, the prefecture notified Taha O. of an obligation to leave French territory. A late measure, some believe, given the delays in obtaining from countries of origin the consular passes essential for expulsions. A fatal spiral then begins. On September 3, while recognizing a risk of “reiteration of criminal acts”, a judge of freedoms and detention decided to release the ex-rapist on the grounds that his behavior had not disturbed public order in the fifteen last days. And that the Moroccan authorities remain absent subscribers (and for good reason, the Yonne prefecture did not send its first request to the good Moroccan service).
The prosecution does not appeal. Supposed to be under house arrest in a hotel near Auxerre, the young man will immediately disappear into the wild. The next day, September 4, the consular pass was finally sent by Morocco. Too late. On September 18, the Yonne prefecture reported to the courts that Taha O. was not respecting his summons. Philippine only has two days left to live.
On the right, we are calling for a toughening of the criminal justice system
The administrative and judicial dysfunctions of the affair give rise to a political free-for-all of the sort that only France seems to have the secret to. On the right, we are calling for a toughening of the criminal justice system while Bruno Retailleau, barely installed in Beauvau, says he wants to “evolve our legal arsenal”. On the left, conversely, we swear by the prevention of recidivism. A climate at odds with the overwhelming dignity expressed at Philippine’s funeral.
This September 27, nearly 3,000 people crowd in and around the Saint-Louis cathedral in Versailles. During the tribute he paid to his fiancée, Thibault confided: “Today, we both went to mass, as usual. In reality, I didn’t imagine the scene like that. I rather imagined you in a beautiful white dress. » Father Grosjean concludes for the one who is already missed by so many: “We will see you again. This hope does not prevent our tears, but it enlightens them. »
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