Missing the Saône-et-Loire : the murderer sentenced to life imprisonment, twenty years after – The Figaro

The man was convicted of having raped and killed a young student, whose body had been found torn of 123 strokes of the knife, in 1996.

This is a trial that ends more than twenty years after the fact: the court of assizes of the Saône-et-Loire, sentenced, on Thursday, Pascal Garden to life imprisonment for having raped and then killed 123 stab wounds in 1996 one of the “disappeared” of the Saône-et-Loire, Christelle Blétry.

Pascal Jardin, who appeared since the 23rd of January, had confessed to the murder, in 2014, before “withdrawing” his confession and claimed his innocence, recognizing, however, a sexual relationship “consensual”. He had maintained this line of defense during the nine days of the trial. The penalty, in accordance with the requisitions of the advocate general – who had described “a murder with a savagery unheard of” – is accompanied by a safety period of twenty years. First immobile, Pascal Jardin has greeted the verdict with tears in her eyes.

It is in the night of December 27, 1996, that the student of 20 years old is brutally murdered. After spending the evening with friends, Christelle Blétry walk back to his home, located two kilometres. On the way, she encounters a man who drove up in his vehicle. She tries to escape, but is caught by his assailant armed with a knife. The body of the young woman, hacked to 123 times, was found the next day by a postman to the output of Blanzy (Saône-et-Loire), near a pond.

During his time in custody, he shall know of the murder and rape of the young woman before retracting, a month later.

The survey will remain open until September 2014: the investigating judge and the judicial police decide to re-run the DNA analyses on the entirety of the seals. The laboratory is successful in detecting fingerprints on the victim’s clothes and climb back up to the suspect, listed on the national register of dna fingerprints.

This case is only one among those of the folder “Disappeared from the A6″. In total, nearly a dozen young women, aged 13 to 23 years old, have mysteriously disappeared or been killed between 1984 and 2005, along the highway that crosses the department of Saône-et-Loire. The case of Christelle Blétry becomes the third case solved “Disappeared from the A6″, after Christelle Maillery and Anne-Sophie Girollet. The murderer of the first, Jean-Pierre Mura, was sentenced in June 2016 to 20 years in prison on appeal. The second, Jacky Martin, has been sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in October 2016. He has appealed and is awaiting his new trial.