The emotion was palpable this Thursday at the Court of Vevey (VD), during the trial of a Vaudois farmer. He is accused of having intentionally set fires in his farm on four occasions between 2012 and 2016, in order to receive compensation from ECA insurance to finance a change of activity. In fact, the economic situation of his family deteriorated in 2012, because the quality of the milk from his cows had deteriorated. Her daughter, her son-in-law and her husband were heard as witnesses in the morning. All three agree on one thing: “There’s no way she could have consciously lied to us for over ten years.”
The accused is also categorical: “Someone came to set our house on fire.” She briefly mentions a neighbor from another village already condemned in the past for at least one intentional fire. According to the defendant and her husband, the man knew how to enter the family estate and knew every nook and cranny of the farm, because he watched over the farm when the family went away for the weekend. The husband, however, refused to attribute bad intentions to him: “If he started the fires, he did it to be of service, so that we would have a beautiful house for the future.”
Rubbish according to the prosecutor. Convinced of being in the presence of the real arsonist, the magistrate argues that a confession is impossible, “after twelve years of lies”. The prosecutor had already said at the start of the day: “The defendant is trying to smoke out the entire court.” A reaction that the defense lawyer did not fail to repeat later, in the afternoon, by asking her client: “When the Public Prosecutor accuses you of being at the origin of the fires, What do you have to say?” In tears, the Vaudoise responds: “I would give everything to have the farm again that I had. I’m fed up, I want to be allowed to live.”
