“I’m a soldier, I had a job to do,” says Cathy, the former prison guard at the helm

In Aix-en-Provence, 16 people are on trial for a double murder at Bastia airport in 2017. A story of revenge between heirs of the Corsican mafia clan of Brise de Mer. In this trial, an accused attracts all eyes : Cathy Chatelain, “Cathy the matron”.

The former guard of Borgo prison is accused of having designated the targets for the killers, by kissing them. Monday May 13, she is questioned at the Aix-en-Provence Assize Court in a trial which is expected to last two months. Cathy Chatelain stands out in the huge glass box among the other defendants, with her imposing build and her long black hair. She is the only woman, and also the only one, not to have grown up in Corsica, but in the Paris suburbs.

At 48, Cathy has never been convicted, she has five children, dreamed of being a flight attendant and ended up as a prison guard. When she speaks of the detainees before the Assize Court, she says “my detainees”. “My inmates, with whom I liked to talk.” They filled his social life “nothing”, she said, and it was actually an inmate who told her about Corsica. She was promised that she and her children would be protected there. A bit like a new family, explains a psychologist at the bar.

Cathy asked to be posted to Borgo and there, she developed a passion for the Corsican language, music, culture… and for organized crime. According to experts, it was to break away from her somewhat too smooth life that she joined the clan. “I chose him”Cathy had even claimed to the investigators.

A radical fascination with the mafia

“Cathy the matron” has pledged allegiance to the clan, explains a psychiatrist at the stand. There was a mechanism of adhesion, a little sectarian, we are not very far from religious radicalism. She is very attached to the clan, she says it herself: “I am a soldier, I had a job to do”. She goes all the way, the expert further specifies. According to the accusation, the prison guard communicates on an encrypted telephone, exchanges at night with hooded men, gives information on the leave of absence of an inmate – one of the two targets – and comes to kiss him while no one, at Bastia airport, just before the shots. The kiss of death. All this in exchange for a six-figure sum. Today in the dock, Cathy keeps her head held high, cool, while she risks life imprisonment.