This is the last chapter of his life in his chaotic and murderous journey. The life in prison of Nordahl Lelandais was approached by the Assize Court of Isère, Wednesday February 2, at the end of the three days devoted to his personality. The 38-year-old accused has been incarcerated since September 2017 at the Saint-Quentin-Fallavier prison center. In pre-trial detention for the murder of little Maëlys de Araujo, for which he has been on trial since Monday, he is also serving a final sentence there after his sentence to twenty years in prison last May for having killed Arthur Noyer.
Has this prison experience transformed the man in the white shirt who stands in the cubicle? The accused and his defense have every interest in demonstrating this. Hands crossed in front of him, Nordahl Lelandais looks back with gravity and humility on his first months behind bars, when he still denied having killed the 8 and a half-year-old girl he met at a wedding in Pont-de-Beauvoisin on August 26, 2017 . “How to explain? The denial, the shame, the lie… And everything that happens in prison, the insults, but that’s nothing”he explains.
In January 2018, shortly before his confession in the two cases, he applied for release when everyone accused him. “I made everyone believe that I had nothing to do with it”, he pleads. Cornered by the discovery of a stain of Maëlys’ blood in the trunk of his car, he admits having killed him and then is hospitalized in psychiatry for five months. “I’m ashamed to say this, but it was a horrible time in my life”, he confesses. Since his return to the cell, in solitary confinement, he “reads a lot, on the teaching of the dharma [un concept bouddhiste] who learns to accept his anger. If we accept them, we manage to face them”.
“I try to rebuild myself, to move forward, to understand. I no longer want to be the person I was before.”
Nordahl Lelandais, accusedin front of the Assize Court of Isère
The president of the court, Valérie Blain, tries to understand. “Who are you Mr. Lelandais?” “Today, I am Mr. Lelandais Nordahl in an Assize Court box and I have to explain myself to very serious facts.” “But who have you been?”insists the magistrate. “I don’t even know, Madam President. I was lost, lost. It’s not to make people cry in the cottages. I found a job, I didn’t like it, I found a girlfriend, I didn’t like it no, I was doing anything and today I’m here.”
Since the beginning of this new trial, the Assize Court of Isère has been looking in the accused’s biography for the point of “seesaw”. According to the famous maxim that “Violence begets violence”, she scrutinizes the episodes of life that could have led Nordahl Lelandais on the path to crime, with a sexual problem. Even if the latter is not returned to justice for the rape of Maëlys, for lack of evidence, this motive remains central in the debates, as it was in Chambéry.
In the absence of a key event revealed by the person concerned or his relatives, a puzzle takes shape according to the testimonies and his own declarations. In this family where the son believed his father to be a doctor for a long time when he was a sales associate in pharmaceutical products and where the mother thought her youngest child was precocious when she no longer knows with what diplomas he left the school system – no –there is something “pathological” and a serious “communication problems”. This is the analysis of the medico-psychological center of Pont-de-Beauvoisin, read at the hearing by the president.
We are in 2008 and Nordahl Lelandais consults for “panic attacks” and of “agoraphobia”. It’s been three years since he walked out of the army and scuttled his future as a dog handler. Returned to live in the parental home, he “deconstructed” and “scatters”in his own words, when all his friends “build” their professional and sentimental life. “I open my PC, I drink my coffee, I watch a video [pornographique], I smoke a cigarette, I take cocaine, I take a coffee, a cigarette. These are my dayshe describes in front of the court, recognizing a “sex addiction”.
Nordahl Lelandais knows that it is indecent to put on the victim’s costume here. “I am responsible, I am solely responsible”he assumes. “Responsible for this life choice?” asks the president. “Yes and of the consequences of why I’m here todayhe adds. With the work done since my incarceration, I have understood many things.” The contrition exercise seems successful. But the reading of the report of the penitentiary administration, versed with the debates, comes to blur the image.
It confirms some of the statements to the Dauphiné liberated (paid item) of Elisabeth, an ex-companion met in prison. This woman in her fifties contacted Nordahl Lelandais by mail and obtained a visit permit. A relationship was formed. The couple even benefited from a “UVF”, a 24-hour family living unit. “This person paid you a lot of money, emphasizes the President. More than 10,000 euros between July 2018 and December 2021. What did that allow you to do? “Canteens”retorts, embarrassed, the accused. “And the phone that brought in for you ma’am?”
The exploitation of this portable revealed consultations of “porn sites”of “stuffed animal sites” and exchanges with another woman for whom the detainee also requested a visitation permit. How did he meet her? “I created a Facebook account”, admits the interested party. Fabrice Rajon, lawyer for Maëlys’ mother and sister, draws attention to other letters exchanged with a “high school girl”, before the prison administration stopped these exchanges. And on the “12 visits” by Nordahl Lelandais on the girl’s Pinterest account. “Connection was jumping”justifies the latter.
“Do we change the whole Nordahl Lelandais software or just one or two small things?”
Fabrice Rajon, civil party lawyerin front of the Assize Court of Isère
The civil party lawyer gives the final blow by citing searches with keywords “ambiguous” of the accused on a pornographic site which contains a “teenage section” and “another ‘small’ category, featuring young girls”. “I’ve never been on a child pornography site!” freezes Nordahl Lelandais, also tried for the sexual assaults committed on two little cousins. Aware that his client will be put in difficulty on this point in the rest of the proceedings, his lawyer Alain Jakubowicz asks him the question: “Have you ever been on a child porn site?” The denial fuses: “Never !”
The famous criminal lawyer then brandished the testimony that his ex-partner Elisabeth had written, with a view to his summons to court. Left by Nordahl Lelandais at the end of December, she gave up coming to read it herself at the helm: “I know his dark side, he has never hidden anything from me but he is also full of light. (…) I know that I risk shocking but Nordahl is a caring and calm man, he is loving, benevolent and very protective.” “It’s the new Nordhal Lelandais, it’s not the one who committed the facts”asserts the defense.
Tuesday and Wednesday, two former companions frequented before the facts also described a man “charming, funny, seductive and helpful”with one side “dark”, “tender” corn “a bit detached from everything”. Afterwards, “I felt like I had a relationship with Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde”, summed up Laura. The accused faces life imprisonment.