The trial of Ludovic Bertin, 29, for the murder and attempted rape of Victorine Dartois in 2020 opens this Monday before the Isère Assize Court.
Four years after the murder of Victorine Dartois, an 18-year-old student found dead in a stream in Isère, the trial of one of her neighbors opens Monday in Grenoble with an accused who admits to having strangled her but denies any attempted rape.
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Death of Victorine: the suspect admits to having strangled the young woman
Ludovic Bertin, 29, faces life imprisonment in this case, which caused great emotion throughout France.
The debates will begin Monday afternoon before the Isère Assize Court with the hearing of a first personality witness. They are expected to extend until December 6.
Victorine Dartois, an 18-year-old BTS student, had disappeared September 26, 2020 as she was walking back to the family home in Villefontaine, about thirty km southeast of Lyon, after an afternoon of shopping with friends.
His body was found in a creek less than 48 hours laterhis pants removed. The autopsy established that she had been strangled and drowned.
Ludovic Bertin, a business manager aged 25 at the time, was arrested in Villefontaine twenty days later thanks to the report of a relative in whom he confided.
This father of a young child had already been convicted ten times for common law offenses but without going to prison thanks to reduced sentences.
In custody, he admitted the murder of the young woman but denied any attempted rapeclaiming to have encountered the victim while jogging then, after an involuntary shove and an argument, to have “panicked” and “squeezed the neck” of the student before hiding her body.
His defense should not vary during the trial even if he is “ready to say things” and intends to address the victim’s family from the start, declared his lawyer, Maître Arnaud Adelise, on BFM in early November.
On the day of the events, his client had “used cocaine”he argued. As for the sexual motive, it is “denied by the analyses” of the young girl’s bodyhe said.
Tried for murder preceded by an attempted rape of Victorine Dartois, Ludovic Bertin will also be tried for the violent rape of another young woman in September 2018 in the Rhônewhen she was twenty years old.
