The courtroom is full this Friday morning, at the start of the trial of François Vergniaud, tried for the rape followed by murder of a 15-year-old girl, in Nantes. Céleste went to pick up a package on August 20, 2020, in the Talensac district. She never returned home. As the bell rings, at the opening of the hearing, part of the room stands up brandishing a white sheet. On some it is written: “The law must change”on others there is a photo of Céleste. Photos that we find on the white t-shirt worn by family and friends. We see her, at different ages, on the beach, in a dance tutu or simply smiling.
Opposite, in the box, the accused, corpulent, lowers his head. Graying brown hair, slightly bald and bearded head. A sadly ordinary physique. François Vergniaud, 50 years old, admits all the facts. And they are terrible. The president of the court read it for many minutes.
The teenager tried to reason with her attacker by telling him he could be her father
The man, in a relationship for several years, came scouting in Nantes two days before committing his crime. And he lures Céleste to this building under construction, at the bottom of a courtyard, rue Adolphe Moitié, claiming a package is too heavy to carry alone. He ties her wrists at the knees and rapes her. The young girl experienced a long ordeal, she even tried to reason with her attacker by telling him that he could be her father.
During the investigation, François Vergniaud repeated, as in police custody, that he did not intend to kill the teenager. If he strangled her with a strap, he explained, it was so that she would stop screaming. As for the bleach, it is to erase all traces of his DNA from the young girl’s body. But, when he saw that she was no longer moving, he went back to get matches in his car and set fire to the abandoned apartment, before fleeing.
He explained that he lured the young girl into the building “to satisfy an impulse”
The accused grew up in Vienna, in a family without history the middle of three sisters, with a mason father and a stay-at-home mother. At the end of his studies, he obtained an agricultural technician’s certificate. He is appreciated by his various employers: “Not great confidence, but a bit teddy”said one of them. The opposite, therefore, of the predator who lures Céleste into a dilapidated building, “to satisfy an impulse” as he told the investigating judge. He also explained that “due to the absence of his partner in the summer of 2020, he had over-consumed pornographic videos”. She is the only one today who visits him in prison.
She is also the only woman with whom François Vergniaud maintained a romantic relationship. He met her during training in 2015, after his sentence modification and his release from detention. Because the accused has already sentenced in 2005 in Poitiers to 18 years in prison for around ten rapes, attempted rapes and sexual assaults on young women. Always with the same modus operandi: he waits for his victim in the street, asks her to help him bring a package to his apartment, before raping her.
In police custody, he declares that he has fallen back into a “gear”
When the hearing resumed, at the beginning of the afternoon, the investigator, who questioned François Vergniaud three times while in police custody, was called to the stand. At first, he says, the suspect denied the facts but ended up confessing. And he begins to answer the investigators’ questions “in a monotonous tone”. “Quite frank but without any emotion” in the memory of the policeman. “Et he didn’t tell us everything unfortunately.”
Did he find the straps, which were used to rape and kill Céleste, in the building, which was under construction? Did he buy the bleach at a nearby convenience store? Or did he have this material with him in his car? The court will try to determine this during these five days of hearing. Because behind these questions arises that of reclassifying the murder as assassination.
The police officer who questioned him mentions a profile of “sexual predator”. To investigators, François Vergniaud admits that “his impulses have taken over for one or two years.” He declares that he has fallen back into a “spiral”, which pushes him to rape young women: “If that girl hadn’t died, there would have been others.”
Photos taken after the murder shown at the hearing
The end of the afternoon is a trying time for Céleste’s family and friends. Photos of the young girl, after her death, are shown on screen. His face is swollen. “Chien”we hear in the room. The accused does not look up.
Céleste was going to be 16 on September 22. According to her parents, she was full of life and always ready to help. The evening of the murder, François Vergniaud returned home, to Mésanger, in the Pays d’Ancenis. He remained prostrate for a long time in his garden, in the middle of a tomato field. But then he went to his neighbor’s house for dinner as if nothing had happened.
