The voice is firm, tonic and a slight Belgian accent points when Françoise Malgouyres, 62, speaks at the helm of the Assize Court of Hérault. She relives the evening of October 5, 2017 in the garden of Saint-Adrien, in Servian, when two strangers burst into the couple’s home. Near the pool, she comes face to face with “great Sir” all in black with a balaclava and of which she can only see the eyes, “I said to myself that it’s someone from the garden who wants to play a joke on us for Halloween”. Except that this man has a gun, point to his temple of Françoise Malgouyres and announces to him: “We’re coming for the safe”.
An obsession: the safe
In fact, there are two of them, Richard Bruno and David Viers. Indeed, they are there to rob the safe of which Françoise Malgouyres is the only one to know the combination and which is supposed to contain 100,000 euros. “There are some who were like a machine”, he kept repeating “We were told you have a safe”. Françoise Malgouyres formally denies it until, she says, her husband insists that she takes them to this safe and gives them the combination. She doesn’t give in, “Even if they cut off my fingers, I wouldn’t have given anything. It’s my character.”
Victim of a conspiracy or sponsor?
In the minutes that follow, while Richard Bruno keeps Françoise Malgouyres at bay on the ground floor, Daniel Malgouyres is in the room on the first floor alone with David Viers. He shoots down the burglar 44-year-old with a gun that was on the cabinet and grabbed it. No weapons were found near the victim. Daniel Malgouyres maintains, however, that he killed him in self-defense. Once arrested, the second burglar will say that it is the owner of the premises who organized this false home-jacking for the sole purpose of stealing his wife’s money.
A wife who asks herself questions
Through the voice of Me Berton, her lawyer, Françoise Malgouyres, who is a civil party, ensures that she “neither in one camp nor in the other. She is just looking for the truth”. But she judges the behavior of her husband more than suspicious the night of the drama. She considers that he did not react as she would have liked him to react, that is to say that he defended her against the blows of the attackers, against the threats of death. “The only time he did it was to ask me to take them to the safe”.
Françoise Malgouyres resents the “thugs” that they attacked her and wondered “What did I do to these people to go through what they put me through?”