Gabriel Fortin appeals to the Court of Cassation

Gabriel Fortin was again sentenced on appeal to life imprisonment for murdering three women in January 2021 and attempting to murder a man.

Gabriel Fortin nicknamed the “HR killer” is appealing to the Supreme Court after his new conviction to the maximum sentence on appeal on Tuesday, France Bleu Drôme Ardèche learned on Wednesday May 29 from one of Gabriel Fortin’s lawyers, confirming information from the Dauphiné Libéré.

The 49-year-old ex-engineer was once again sentenced on Tuesday to life imprisonment for three murders and one attempted murder, at the end of his appeal trial in Grenoble. The verdict was pronounced in front of an empty box, the accused refusing to appear in court, as since the start of the trial.

Hervé Gerbi, lawyer for the civil parties in this case, declares that he is not surprised by the cassation appeal. Her “Celerity, barely hours after his conviction, demonstrates that the scenario had been mulled over by him for a long time.” For the lawyer, this appeal is “a final provocation, a headlong rush that he imagines will have no end, but, very soon we hope, he will find himself facing definitively closed doors”. The lawyer believes that “all of this demonstrates, at the same time, how the decision rendered was justified and necessary for the protection of all, but still raises questions about the limits of the law and the impossibility of a real life sentence for this type of serial crime.”

The Isère Assize Court considered that the accused was suffering from an alteration of his judgment at the time of the facts, committed in January 2021, but decided not to apply a reduced sentence. Imprisonment is, as in first instance, accompanied by a security period of 22 years.

This verdict is in accordance with the requisitions of the attorney general, who had highlighted the“extreme dangerousness” of the accused. Not only did Gabriel Fortin not explain and even less regret his action, but he refuses to submit to treatment, which makes him even more dangerous, the civil parties’ lawyers argued.

His deadly journey in January 2021 plunged the country into fear. Three of his victims had been associated with his dismissals and the fourth worked in a Pôle emploi agency in Valence which he had frequented. The investigation quickly established that his action had been carefully prepared and that he still had other targets in his sights, against whom he had accumulated various grievances.