In December, a court sentenced Dominique Pelicot to twenty years in jail for drugging his spouse Gisèle and welcoming dozens of fellows to their bed room to rape her between 2011 and 2020.
The trial shocked France and grew to become Mr. Pelicot into France’s most infamous sexual predator. His spouse, Gisèle, become a feminist icon.
However the police and prosecutors suspect that she used to be no longer his first sufferer. “Gisèle Pelicot fears that she herself is most effective the end of the iceberg,” certainly one of Ms. Pelicot’s legal professionals, Antoine Camus, stated in an interview.
Whilst Mr. Pelicot used to be in jail watching for his trial, the police faced him with DNA proof linking him to the tried rape of a 19-year-old girl within the Paris area in 1999. After hours of wondering, he admitted to drugging her, telling the police, “It’s me.”
He’s additionally being investigated for the rape and homicide of a 23-year-old girl in 1991. Mr. Pelicot has denied any involvement within the homicide. However prosecutors indicted him in 2022 for each crimes, which might be so identical they have got been folded into one case.
Each sufferers have been younger actual property brokers within the Paris house. Each have been violently assaulted with a blade, tied up, drugged with ether and the decrease a part of their our bodies undressed. In each crime scenes, the sufferer’s sneakers have been discovered smartly positioned within the room.
No trial date has been set.
Lately Mr. Pelicot, 72, is jailed in southern France, no longer a long way from the village the place he and his spouse, now divorced, had retired. However in 1991, Mr. Pelicot used to be operating as an actual property agent in Paris, and by way of 1999 had taken a task as a salesperson for hearth alarms and phone methods.
The girl who used to be murdered, Sophie Narme, have been operating for a month in her first task as an actual property agent when she used to be killed.
At the night time of Dec. 4, 1991, her employer found out her dead, in part undressed frame in a top-floor flat she had proven to a consumer previous that morning within the nineteenth Arrondissement of Paris. The police suspect the buyer used to be Mr. Pelicot the use of a false identify.
They detected a powerful scent of ether on the crime scene and all through the post-mortem. She have been overwhelmed, drugged, stabbed, strangled together with her personal belt and raped, in keeping with investigation paperwork learn in courtroom all through his trial ultimate yr.
Although the crime scene confirmed lines of violence, with the content material of Ms. Narme’s handbag scattered around the room, her high-heeled sneakers have been discovered sparsely positioned subsequent to the corpse.
8 years later, in 1999, a 19-year-old actual property agent met a potential consumer at the height surface of an condominium development within the Paris area for what used to be intended to be a regimen consult with to have a look at a apartment unit. The customer, whom the government once more suspect used to be Mr. Pelicot the use of an alias, requested her to take some measurements within the flat.
As she grew to become her again, he pinned her to the bottom, compelled her onto her abdominal, certain her wrists with a rope and pressed a cloth lined in ether to her nostril, in keeping with the legal professional for the sufferer, whose identify has no longer been disclosed. She attempted preserving her breath as he drugged her.
He took off her high-heeled sneakers, sparsely hanging them at the facet. She remembered feeling a field cutter in opposition to her pores and skin as her attacker squeezed her throat along with his arm.
“I used to be nonetheless slow from the product he’d made me inhale,” the girl instructed investigators in keeping with case paperwork learn in courtroom. “I couldn’t flip round, I have in mind feeling like a prisoner in my very own frame. I didn’t need him to look that I used to be unsleeping. I felt I couldn’t transfer.”
However the results of the drug quickly wore off, and the sufferer fought off her attacker after which controlled to cover in a storeroom for hours, locking it from the interior. Her attacker ultimately left.
The police amassed lines of his blood on her sneakers and at the carpeted surface. However for years, they made no growth. In 2011, the case used to be dropped.
It used to be most effective reopened when it used to be connected to Narme homicide case.
For the previous 34 years, Florence Rault, the legal professional for Ms. Narme’s mom, had persisted to pursue the homicide case, incessantly asking the courtroom to research items of proof or to discover new leads.
“I used to be doing it for Sophie,” Ms. Rault stated. “I made a promise to her mom that we’d get to the tip of this tale and that she wouldn’t die earlier than understanding the identify of her daughter’s killer.”
As early as 2004, the police had already made a connection between the 2 instances. However again then, the nationwide machine classifying DNA legal data had simply been created and used to be slightly purposeful.
Strains of sperm discovered at the 1991 crime scene have been misplaced by way of the forensic institute in command of inspecting the pattern.
In 2010, Mr. Pelicot used to be arrested for the primary time for filming up girls’s skirts at a shopping center within the Paris area, the use of a digicam hidden in a pen. He used to be let off with a positive of 100 euros, identical to kind of $104.
He used to be stuck doing it once more in 2020, in a grocery store within the south of France. However this time, the safety guard inspired the sufferers to report an respectable criticism, permitting the police to behavior an investigation.
This is when the police say they connected Mr. Pelicot’s DNA to the 1999 tried rape.
Ms. Rault is now the legal professional for that case, too. Via Ms. Rault, the girl who survived stated she had moved on and didn’t need to communicate publicly concerning the case. She did, alternatively, have interaction within the felony lawsuits and faced Mr. Pelicot in 2023 as a part of the investigation.
Through then, Mr. Pelicot had confessed to many main points of the tried rape. He instructed the police that he had long gone to an actual property company in Paris as a result of he sought after to get a really feel of his previous task and to try costs for leases.
He stated he acted on “impulse,” after assembly the agent and putting in an appointment to consult with the condominium. He then went again to his automotive to get the rope and what he described as “a product for cleansing headrests” — a bottle of ether.
“I wasn’t making plans to have family members together with her,” he instructed the investigating pass judgement on, explaining that he drugged her as a result of he sought after to have a look at her undressed frame whilst averting any violence.
“I attempted to omit that for a very long time,” he added. “I make an apology for mendacity, it used to be tricky to confess.”
His legal professional, Béatrice Zavarro, stated the remark to the police didn’t quantity to a “formal popularity” of the crime.
“He recognizes the materiality of constructing her go to sleep, he does no longer recognize sporting a knife, and he explains that if all this took place it used to be no longer with the main aim of raping her,” she stated.
The French media have also reported that the police are taking a look into two identical instances from 1995 and 2004, even though Mr. Pelicot has no longer been puzzled by way of the police about them, his legal professional stated.
As for the 1991 homicide, Mr. Pelicot has time and again denied any connection. “There’s no means he’s going to let cross as a result of he actually doesn’t need to be identified as a killer,” his legal professional stated. “As a result of he’s no longer a killer.”
Catherine Porter contributed reporting.
