Since Monday September 23, Sandrine Bruneau has been tried for murder before the Loiret Assize Court. This 51-year-old woman is accused of having, in November 2021 in Châteauneuf sur Loire, killed her mother-in-law, Marie-France Lenormand (widow Bruneau), her father’s wife. The victim, aged 71, had been killed with a crowbar. This Tuesday, during this second day of hearing, the relationship between the two women was discussed. A tense relationship against a backdrop of social misery.
Through the various witnesses and experts who spoke on September 24 at the Loiret assizes, the jurors heard the story of two miserable existences which collide and which have led to the irreparable. First, there is the journey of the accused, unemployed, consumed by alcohol. Sandrine Bruneau does not suffer “of no mental illness“but she is described by the psychiatrist expert as”anxious, rigid, suspicious“more than normal and with deep resentment, a”deep grudge“towards his mother-in-law.
Anger and resentment
For Sandrine Bruneau, it is she, this mother-in-law, Marie France Lenormand who is the responsible for his father’s deathwho died of cancer in 2019. Hospital documents attest to this illness which suddenly took away this father, Joseph Bruneau. Despite this, the accused persists, she even mentions poisoning. Marie-France Bruneau is the cause of her father’s malaise, she took advantage of “his kindness, from his house“. Anger is also not having been informed of her hospitalizationworse from the day of his death.
The court proceedings shed light on another existence, that of the victim. Swindled with incessant money orders sent to Africa, she has almost more money to support oneself. “She gave me some money to buy a box of pâté for her and the cat.” testifies a neighbor, a member of the social services of Châteauneuf-sur-Loire. She takes out loans with fake signaturesnotably that of Joseph Bruneau for credits amounting to 60,000 euros.
An unsanitary house
Described by witnesses as manipulative and dissolute, her house is unsanitary.It was very, very, very dirty with cat feces everywhere.” said the nurse who was giving him his care. The town hall will have to intervene but after cleaning the dirt comes back. In court, her three children, who have all cut ties with her sometimes for years, demand justice in tears. A mother is a mother.I didn’t like him, I still don’t like him” declared the accused to the court at the end of the hearing.
