Jean-Marc Reiser, 61, was sentenced on July 5, 2022 by the Bas-Rhin Assize Court to the maximum penalty he faced, life imprisonment with 22 years of security, for the assassination of student Sophie Le Tan in 2018. When the verdict was announced, Jean-Marc Reiser remained stoic, hand behind his back, looking down. In his last speech, he demanded a sentence “just” and reaffirmed that he never wanted or premeditated Sophie’s death. This verdict is in accordance with the requisitions pronounced the day before by the Advocate General.
The end of a trial during which the culprit admitted the facts, that of having killed a young woman who was celebrating her 20th birthday, but refusing to recognize a premeditated act. For the prosecution, however, it was clear that a trap had been set to bring down the student – false advertisements for real estate rentals – who was brutally murdered and whose body was found a year later.
During the trial, the complex character of Jean-Marc Reiser was deciphered and his past as a sexual predator sends chills down the spine. It was in 1997 that justice truly discovered this man, previously a father and an uneventful civil servant. It was during a routine customs check that the gendarmes discovered in his car, says The Parisian : “a switchblade more than thirty centimeters long, a scalpel, a 6.35 mm pistol, a pump-action shotgun, a balaclava, a pair of ‘thumbsticks’, a torture device used to crush extremities, two crowbars , cords fitted with metal tips that could allow strangulation, a bottle of Halothane, a list of forest houses in Bas-Rhin and photos of naked women found a few years earlier by [son ex-compagne] Joëlle, supplemented by new.”
Asked about the reasons for such paraphernalia, Jean-Marc Reiser explains today: “I had planned to change my life. I was considering a robbery. I’ve always loved guns. My father initiated me. We fired with his service weapon and he took me to the stand.“As for the photos, he will say that they are”stagings” of “prostitutes”. This evidence will make it possible to reopen files, that of a German hitchhiker, Nina, whom he raped. As for the Françoise Hohmann case, the evidence will remain too thin and he will succeed in being acquitted in 2001. More than twenty years later, this time, Reiser did not escape justice.