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The trial for the murder of Maëlys opens on January 31. The eight-year-old girl went missing at a wedding party she was attending with her parents. Six months later, Nordahl Lelandais had confessed.
The evening of Maëlys’ disappearance, in August 2017, Nordahl Lelandais is not on the guest list. But he knows one of them, and is invited to the reception. He gets to be able to come back for dessert. He strikes up a conversation with Maëlys, and offers her to join the animals in the parking lot. He leaves the party, and hits the road with the eight-year-old girl on board. We will never see her again. The next day, he will strip his car. Despite this, the investigators will find a microscopic trace of Maëlys’ blood. Faced with this overwhelming evidence, he confesses, specifying that he did not want to kill her. “I gave him a very violent blow, I can’t understand.“
After his confession, Nordahl Lelandais led the investigators to a ravine where the body of Maelys. Forensic pathologists note that it would given over to a strange ritual, due to the little girl’s torn clothes, and the missing locks of hair on her head. If the qualification of rape was not retained, the investigators discovered that a week before the murder of Maëlys, he sexually abused his little cousins, while they slept. The former dog handler has already been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of a soldier. For the kidnapping, sequestration and murder of Maëlys, he faces life imprisonment.