four years later, the trial of the neighbor accused of having killed her begins

She was found dead in a stream in Isère. Four years after the murder of Victorine Dartois, the trial of one of her neighbors opens on Monday, November 25, in Grenoble (Isère). The accused, Ludovic Bertin, 29, admits to having strangled her but denies any attempted rape. He faces life imprisonment in this case, which caused great emotion throughout France.

The debates, which begin Monday afternoon before the Isère Assize Court with the hearing of a first personality witness, are scheduled to last until December 6. Victorine Dartois, an 18-year-old BTS student, disappeared on September 26, 2020 while walking back to her 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 later, his 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 police custody, he admitted to the murder of the young woman but denied any attempted rape. He claims to have encountered the victim while jogging then, after an involuntary shove and an argument, to have “panic” et “tightened the neck” of the student before hiding her body.

Ludovic Bertin is “ready to say things” and intends to address the victim's family from the start, declared his lawyer, 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 body, he said. During this hearing, he will also be tried for the violent rape of another young woman, in September 2018 in the Rhône, when she was twenty years old.