“I had two miscarriages in 2018 and 2019…“While Nordahl Lelandais’ trial will begin on January 31 before the Isère Assize Court, Jennifer de Araujo reveals the difficulty of recovering from the tragedy that changed her life in a book, Maelys, named after his 8-year-old granddaughter, abducted and killed in August 2017.
At the time, the whole family went to a cousin’s wedding, which Nordahl Lelandais attended, without really having been invited. The little girl talks to him then disappears and will not be found alive despite intensive searches. Suspicions quickly fall on this lonely man who came alone, but it will take several months for evidence to finally come to light and for him to be indicted.
He is waiting today to know his sentence. Jennifer de Araujo, who never calls him by his first name, is waiting for her to know details, to understand what he never gave. Yet she no longer expects much from him who has never spoken much and prefers to focus on his clan which has suffered so much for four years.
With Maëlys’ father, Joachim, they have now divorced. “The climate had become too heavy, too heavy. We were so sad! We did not go through the phases of mourning at the same time, we were out of step” she explains. She had first had two miscarriages, in 2018 and 2019, before making the decision to leave.
Blow of fate even more difficult to live with for these parents, already bereaved: the two babies should have been born in November, like the late Maëlys. So their mother decided to move away, to breathe and try to move on, supporting her eldest daughter, Colleen, aged 17.
“It drove us even further apart, it felt like we were only attracting death around us. So I decided to leave. I blamed myself for Colleen and Maëlys, but I was suffocating. It was a matter of survival.“Today, and despite the divorce, the family is united and will unite at the trial to try to get answers about the last moments of the little girl, buried in Isère. Her mother’s book, entitled Maelys, announces itself as a last love letter to his little girl.