Since the beginning of the debates, doubt has hovered over the murder weapon: who did this Opinel-type knife belong to? Where did he go? Guillaume Lieury always said that it belonged to the victim but changed his version several times about how it ended up in his hands. “The knife fell” he said at the start of his hearings, then Guillaume Bertincourt would have thrown him in the back, he finally revealed during the reconstitution in August 2023.
Guillaume Lieury’s brother, present with him on the evening of the murder, initially accused himself to the investigators, “out of a fraternal spirit”. He had said that the knife had fallen from Guillaume Bertincourt’s pocket and now assures that he did not discover the presence of a knife and that a blow had been given because the two brothers were hiding behind a store. He didn’t see the gun but believed his brother.
An opinel found in the victim’s bag
Did the small knife with wooden handle described belong to Lieury or Bertincourt? “No idea,” replied one of Guillaume Bertincourt’s two friends at the hearing, who confirmed that his 35-year-old friend often had a knife in his pocket. “Could the knife belong to Guillaume Bertincourt? », asks the president of the Assize Court.
“Like Guillaume Lieury,” he replies. An opinel, stored away, was found in Guillaume Bertincourt’s bag. For the civil party’s lawyer, there is no reason to have two knives.
Despite their search, multiple searches at Guillaume Lieury’s brother and at his home, investigators never found the weapon. The accused had first declared having thrown it in the Scorff, then hidden it and ultimately still does not know, three years after the murder where it had gone?
“When we got home, I went to bed. Guillaume went about his business,” relates his brother. And outside, a man was between life and death.
Belgium
