Two years after publishing the biography of her idol Jean-Pierre Bacri, Valérie Bénaïm is back in bookstores with a novel dedicated to the women and companions of serial killers. In He’s not who you think published by Fayard, the columnist of TPMP spoke with women in love, lawyers, psychologists but also prison guards to try to understand how these women, heroines of her new novel, manage to love or continue to love men who have committed the worst. Guest of TPMP this Friday, February 9 to promote it, Valérie Bénaïm revealed the identity of the person who touched her the most: this is Élisabeth, the current companion of Nordahl Lelandais.
A few weeks ago, the paternity of Nordahl Lelandais made France jump: the man, although incarcerated since the murder of little Maëlys de Araujo, managed to become a father
. So who is this woman with whom the serial killer, who is also guilty of the assassination of Corporal Arthur Noyer, who maintains a love affair with the man incarcerated for the next twenty years? Valérie Bénaïm managed to meet in contact with Élisabeth, and this meeting more than touched her: “Three years of love. I met Elisabeth, and she moved me”begins the author, before revealing the circumstances of the meeting between the inmate and his partner.
A letter-writing relationship then a baby
“She doesn’t meet him at first, she hears on television that there is a reconstruction of the murder of Corporal Noyer, it’s the 1 p.m. news, and when she hears that, she also hears the journalists who say that there is a crowd saying: To death, to death, etc. And it touches her (…) She says to me: I don’t like packs that attack a single man” explains the former star host of TF1. A few hours later, Elisabeth, touched by the situation of Nordahl Lelandais, takes her courage in both hands and sends him a letter. Then begins an epistolary relationship, which leads several weeks later to a real relationship, halfway between the bars and reality: “I’m going to start an epistolary relationship like that, and at his request, she’s going to take the plunge, and will ask for a visitation authorization, which she will obtain, three times before getting it, and from there, there’s going to be a story between these two.”