In 2001, an uneventful couple discovered a bomb under their bed in Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard. A few days later, a student and her music teacher are arrested in Portugal after executing Dutch tourists. The two cases are linked.
If the homicides in Portugal were judged, French justice stumbled for two decades because the “couple” refused extradition. She now has the two former lovers on hand. They will be judged at the end of the year before the assizes in Nîmes for the “assassination attempt” which occurred more than two decades ago in the south of France. She is under judicial control, asks him to come out of detention before the trial. Lovers today are irreconcilable.
A bomb under the parents’ bed
Twenty-two years that justice awaits their explanations. How could a model girl, an exemplary law student, be able to carry out this terrible plan which was to eliminate her parents?
At the start, however, on April 20, 2001, when the gendarmes were called in the middle of the night to note the presence under the parental bed of a bomb, their daughter was not singled out. How can you imagine that your own child can develop such a scenario?
The soldiers discover 50 liters of gasoline stored in cans under the mattress. A device that is connected to an electrical outlet and a timer programmed for a firing on April 20 at 2:45 a.m., when the parents were to be in the arms of Morpheus. It was the father of the family who discovered this device after several hours of research.
On April 19, 2001, when he returned to his villa, he smelled a strong smell of petrol. He inspects the surroundings of his house, his garage, thinking of a hydrocarbon leak. He goes through all the rooms with a fine-toothed comb but finds nothing.
Parents life insurance for a life with her lover
He ends up telling himself that the smell comes from outside. But, over the evening and the night, his nostrils are titillated by this essence. He returns to inspect his house and his garden, in vain. He goes to bed worried, his wife at his side. While sleep envelops the house, the owner of the premises jumps and looks as if in a saving reflex under his mattress. He sees at the foot of his bed a socket plugged in with an electric wire, an ingenious system which is connected to a timer. He unplugs the plug and immediately calls the police. There remains an unanswered question: who can blame this couple of calm and uneventful executives?
Quickly, a track will appear: the day after this discovery, there is radio silence at Delphine, the couple’s daughter. A brilliant law student, she lives the week in a studio in Montpellier. The apartment of his music teacher, eleven years his senior, is searched because he too has disappeared.
They have had a passionate relationship for a few weeks. He abandoned his wife, children and profession to live this adventure. “He is very in love, but so is she. They live a fusional story at that time, which is very badly experienced by the parents of the young woman who do not accept that their only daughter frequents a mountebank, a little musician, ”notes Me Baptiste Scherrer.
The day before, they buy everything necessary to make a bomb
Because quickly, by searching the apartment of this man in Montpellier, “the truth will appear and target Delphine and her companion at the time, Vincent, underlines an investigator who worked on this file at the start. In addition, there was a very important life insurance which was to go to Delphine and her brother if the parents were to die”.
PODCAST. Jamel Leulmi, the man who killed for life insurance
In the accommodation of Vincent, 34 years old at the time of the events, electric wire and documentation of the manufacture of homemade bombs are found. Worse, on April 18, 2001, the eve of the events, Delphine’s brother accompanied his sister and her companion to a supermarket in Hérault to buy… wires and other utensils needed to make this homemade bomb. The perpetrators have been identified, it remains for the gendarmes to find them.
A double murder during their run
Two arrest warrants are issued. The couple disappeared the day after the events in Pont-Saint-Esprit. We find their murderous traces in Portugal a few days later. Near Lisbon, they executed a couple of Dutch tourists at point-blank range to steal their motorhome. The victims are abandoned in a ditch. “Bonnie and Clyde” continue their journey before being arrested by the Portuguese authorities. They will be heavily sentenced in this country and will decide to serve their sentence in the Iberian Peninsula, rejecting all the requests of the French judges.
After twenty years, Delphine decided to finish her sentence in France, two years ago, in the greatest discretion. She managed to get out of prison, under judicial supervision (contacted, Me Olivier Constant, her lawyer, did not respond to our requests). His relations are now completely severed with his former companion who remains in detention.
“The sponsor is her and she is outside”
“I don’t understand: she’s the one who manipulated everyone, she’s outside and I can’t get out of detention. In addition, in Portugal, everything was proven during the hearing and it was she who shot and killed the couple, ”defended Vincent in public hearing recently before the Nîmes chamber of instruction.
He is still serving his Portuguese sentence. “He is sick and in a wheelchair, in addition his place is not in prison, we are twenty-two years after the facts”, pleads Me Julie-Gaëlle Bruyère. “He is the tool that was used to make the bomb and to place the device, but the sponsor is her and she is outside,” adds the criminal lawyer Me Scherrer, for Vincent.
