In November 2014, a woman’s confession shook the city of Toulouse. Those of Edith Scaravetti, an uneventful carer. For four months, this 27-year-old mother carried the weight of a terrible secret : the murder of his companion, Laurent Baca. In The time of the crime dedicated to this affair, Jean Coadon, journalist at La Dépêche du Midilooks back on the life of the young woman.
“Edith Scaravetti was just 17 when she met Laurent Baca, who was a friend of her brother. She got pregnant very quickly. She was just 18 when she had her first daughter. Then quickly a son and another daughter . She worked as housekeeper with elderly or sick people. She was often appreciated by those people who felt thatshe was caring.”
The idyll is short-lived. “We will discover in the investigation that Laurent Baca was more of a domestic tyrant than a man in love,” continues the journalist. In front of the investigators, the young woman testifies to the violence physical, sexual and psychological that this man subjected her to, and the influence of which she was the victim.
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The Laurent Baca affair: the walled-up corpse
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The ordeal that Edith describes ended on August 6, 2014, when the young woman shot her partner. An accidental shooting according to her. Edith Scaravetti explains that she removed the magazine from this weapon that her partner owned, and with which he had already threatened her. She didn’t know, and he probably didn’t know either, thatthere was one ball left. The one who killed him.
A version that investigators struggle to believe given the actions of Edith Scaravetti, after the death of her companion. Because for four months, the young woman pretended to have disappeared by hiding her corpse in concretein the family’s own home.
In 2018, the Assize Court recognized Edith Scaravetti as a victim of Laurent Baca. Victim of ten years of ordeal that he did to her. Sentenced to three years in prison for homicide without intent to cause death, she emerged free from the hearings. Faced with this decision, the prosecution appealed, opening the way to a second trial, this time very different.
“We witnessed, if I may say so, an atmosphere of hunting against this woman, without, at any moment, or very little moment, one being able to consider that this woman must have had the status of a battered woman”, regrets her lawyer, Me George Catala. Sentenced to 10 years of criminal imprisonment on appeal, Edith Scaravetti has since been released from prison.
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