Jacques Rançon is back in the news because of his appeal trial for the 1986 rape and murder of 20-year-old Isabelle Mesnage. The 62-year-old former forklift operator was sentenced at first instance to thirty years’ imprisonment. In 2018, the one who is nicknamed the killer of Perpignan had already been brought to justice for other facts: for having raped and killed two women in 1997 and 1998. He was also accused of having tried to rape another. and to have left a fourth for dead. During the trial, he had been confronted with one of his sons, Damien (the first name has been changed). A painful encounter during which the despicable and upset personality of the murderer emerged.
Several people had to face Jacques Rançon and his lawyers during his trial in 2018 for facts that date back to twenty years earlier. Among these, his eldest son. The website Slate retraced this difficult episode. Tall young man at the “diaphanous complexion and peroxide blonde hair“. He reconnected with his biological father at the age of 25 through the companion of Jacques Rançon, lolita : “She asked me if I wanted to see my father, so I got off at Perpignan. I stayed fifteen days, three weeks, with him, Lolita and the two children. Especially Lolita and the two children.”
A young man who had already seen his father in the visiting room, had entrusted his mother to the bar: “Not happily, but because she felt he needed it. She tried to dissuade him“The boy needed to understand. A few letters were exchanged. Nothing more.”I had no existential expectation, so there was no downfall“, specifies the son of Jacques Rançon who did not want to see him again when he was recontacted, older: “It was too late.“
It was then that the presiding judge asked a shocking question to the young man. At first, he asks him if his father took the fact that he is homosexual. He simply replies:Pretty good. He told me that he wasn’t his thing, and that’s it.“Then the magistrate said to him:”You knew, it’s in the file, thathe had asked Lolita to sleep with you in order, he said, to put you back on the right track?“In front of the audience, the son of Jacques Rançon replied in the negative and specified that his “mother-in-law” did not try anything at all. When he expressed his feelings on seeing the killer on television, he explained, the sobbing voice, to be in pain”for people who have been through this” and Dand misunderstanding for everything else“.
Hearing the accused cry “I missed everything, I missed everything…”regarding his relationship with his son is unbearable to him.”Do I have to listen to the sequel? Do I have to hear the whole thing?” he declares. He now has changed name, his mother having seized the Family Affairs judge after this trial so that he could get rid of this heavy surname. There can be only one Ransom, and that is “a despicable person“, explains the mother of Damien who was a companion for five years of this murderer.