On the fifth day of the trial of Jean-Marc Reiser, charged with the 2018 “murder” of Sophie le Tan, a psychologist drew the portrait of a man with a “double” personality, endowed with “very good social skills”. but with “psychopathic, perverse and narcissistic” disorders.
At the wheel, Peggy Allimann seems self-confident and speaks without hesitation. She presents herself as a “psycho-criminologist” who became a detective in 2020, a qualification she did not possess in 2018 while attending the suspect’s hearings in police custody.
She describes a man who “exhibits very good self-control and attempts to control his environment” who is capable of “multiple manipulative techniques.”
For the jury set to rule on Jean-Marc Reiser’s guilt at the end of two weeks of debates, closing a case file that required three years of investigation, it offers an attractive reading of events in its simplicity, but no doubt are too slick, to take into account the full complexity of the facts.
According to her, the defendant tried to “trick” his victim by posting “a false ad for rented accommodation” on the Internet. If he targeted a stranger, it was only to “reduce the risk of being associated with the offence.” And choosing the appointment at his home made it possible “to reduce the risk of being seen and to have more time to commit his crimes”, emphasizes the clinician.
At the end of his demonstration, Peggy Allimann confirms that his analysis grid allows him “to classify him as a sadistic type of sexual murderer”. “These are people who generally act with foresight and take actions with the intention of leaving as little footprint as possible.”
The defenders, who had little taste for this representation, quickly tried to show its limitations.
“The embarrassing thing is,” says Me Emmanuel Spano, “that one starts from a postulate about the investigators’ cunning that one takes at face value,” he criticizes.
“In any case,” replies the psychologist, “I would never have allowed myself to question their work.”
But at the time of his activity “the investigations only started two days ago”, emphasizes the lawyer and laments an analysis of “a dishonest subjectivity”. “What if investigators get it wrong?” he asks.
Court President Christine Schlumberger regained control of the debates and questioned the “state of exhaustion” that Jean-Marc Reiser says he experienced “for two hours” after suffering the fatal blows to Sophie Le Tan had transferred.
The victim, Sophie Le Tan AFP
“We find this condition in the authors of an impulsive action, where the primary intention was not to kill,” specifies the psychologist.
Earlier, the court had heard the coroners examining the body of Sophie Le Tan, which had been discovered – incompletely – at the edge of a forest more than a year after her disappearance.
The decomposition of the corpse prevented the determination of the exact cause of death. The defendant’s version that the victim died of shock after falling after being hit leaves experts skeptical.
“It’s very unlikely, but we can’t completely rule it out,” says Dr. Laurent Berthelon to. “In the vast majority of cases, you would have expected a coma to occur, which would likely result in death.”
However, the young woman’s skeleton showed a small, non-fatal wound on the top of her chest caused by a knife.
“Can we imagine a person armed with a knife holding it down on the victim so he doesn’t scream or demand something of her,” the president asks, implying a forced sexual assault.
“Your question contains an intentional element, it is not up to medicine to answer it,” replies Doctor Laurent Berthelon.
Jean-Marc Reiser, who was questioned in turn, denied using a blade, except when he removed the body parts from the plastic bags in which he took it to bury them.