the highly anticipated trial of the murderer opens this Monday

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In 2020, Victorine Dartois, 18, was found drowned in a stream near her home in Isère. Four years later, the trial of one of his neighbors, who admitted the murder but denies any attempted rape, opened in Grenoble.

Ludovic Bertin, 29, who faces life imprisonment, will be tried for two weeks by the Isère Assize Court for this murder which aroused great emotion throughout France, and for a rape which occurred two years ago. earlier.

Found dead in a stream near her home

On September 26, 2020, Victorine Dartois, a BTS student, walked back to her family home in Villefontaine, near Lyon, after an afternoon of shopping with friends. After a final phone call to her family, at 6:50 p.m., to say that she was “coming in 20 minutes,” she disappeared near a stadium adjoining a wooded area.

This area runs along the Turitin stream, shallow and cluttered with branches, where his body was discovered less than 48 hours later, his pants nearby.

Strangulation and death by drowning

The autopsy findings mention bruising on the neck and confirm the young woman’s strangulation and death by drowning.

Twenty days after the events, a suspect was arrested by the GIGN in Villefontaine thanks to the report of a relative in whom he had confided.

Ludovic Bertin, a neighbor of Victorine, in court

This is Ludovic Bertin, a business manager aged 25 at the time, who had already been convicted ten times for common law offenses but without going to prison thanks to reduced sentences.

In police custody, he claims to have encountered the victim while jogging. After an involuntary shove, then an argument, he allegedly “panicked” and “squeezed the neck” of the student before hiding her inanimate body in a torrent.

Even though he denies any sexual motive, he is indicted for murder preceded by attempted rape. For justice, he removed the girl’s pants but was hampered by the young woman’s resistance and the arrival of a third party.

Cocaine on the day of the murder

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, said his lawyer, Maître Arnaud Adelise, on BFM TV early November.

According to Me Adelise, “the sexual motive is refuted by the analyzes which have been carried out since there is no dermabrasion on the genitals”. On the other hand, his client had “consumed cocaine” that day, he said. “He then finds himself in a particular mood and the facts arise at that moment,” according to him.

An accusation of rape against another Victorine

A few months after his arrest, the suspect, married and father of a son, was placed in police custody again, another young woman accusing him of having raped her in 2018 in the Rhône when she was elderly twenty years old.

But for Me Adelise, this woman, who is also called Victorine, “never wanted to come forward” for a confrontation and it is therefore an “allegation (which) is not supported by anything”.

Victorine’s family will speak at trial

For her part, Maître Kelly Monteiro, who has defended Victorine Dartois’s relatives since the beginning of the case, did not wish to speak before the trial, but indicated that the family would speak “as part of the legal debates “.

The disappearance and death of the young girl had caused strong emotion in Villefontaine and the surrounding area. Nearly 6,000 people paid tribute to him during a white march on October 4, 2020.

Three days later, more than a thousand people also attended his funeral in Bourgoin-Jallieu, to support his parents, his two sisters and his brother.

The decision of the Assize Court is expected around December 6.

AFP

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