How did a passionate hiking nurse and a mechanic, a stuntman in his spare time, end up setting a deadly ambush on a father and killing his 18-year-old daughter? The trial which opens this Friday before the Ariège assizes should allow those close to Christophe and Célia Orsaz, “the disappeared of Mirepoix”, to understand the mechanisms of a Machiavellian plan with a sordid outcome.
Almost six years ago to the day, on November 30, 2017, when the two future victims boarded their Kangoo in Mirepoix, Christophe, an independent gardener, thought he had an appointment with a notable who was counting on him to set up a tourist project tree houses. Célia, who had just reconnected with her father after many years of estrangement, was waiting to be dropped off at a station, on her way to join her boyfriend in Toulouse.
But there is no enthusiastic entrepreneur at the end of the road, in an isolated hamlet in the commune of Bélesta. On site, armed with iron bars, were Marie-José Montesinos, the ex-partner of Christophe Orsaz, flanked by Jean-Paul Vidal, his lover of the moment. It was the confessions of the latter which, seven months later, allowed investigators to find the remains. Christophe Orsaz, severely beaten, had been thrown, still dying and restrained by ties, to the bottom of an abandoned septic tank. The body of Célia, presented by the accused as an embarrassing and unexpected witness to the first murder, was camouflaged under branches, in a forest in Aude, about ten kilometers from Bélesta. Jean-Paul Vidal, father of four children, admitted to having shot him in the head at close range.
A “cold” and methodical preparation
The investigation showed that the two accused had not envisaged a simple beating. Marie-José Montesinos bought the two prepaid card phones which her lover used to contact Christophe Orsaz under a tempting false pretext. The two acolytes inspected the hamlet of Bélesta several days before the trap, noting the advantage of being in a white zone, untraceable, and even raising the opening of the septic tank. “Like habitual delinquents, they were capable, coldly, in conscience, of preparing an assassination,” underlines Arnaud Levy-Soussan, who defends the relatives of two victims.
But then why? Christophe Orsaz had been separated from Marie-José Montesinos for about a year, there is nothing to indicate that Jean-Paul Vidal knew him other than having crossed paths with him from time to time. For the lawyer of the civil parties “The key is her. It was in his mind that things were hatched. Because he had the presumption, he insulted her by wanting to leave her.”
A “narcissistic” woman
Who is this woman who, out of pride, planned the sordid assassination of her ex, and, as the reconstruction showed, unlocked the trunk of a car to allow her accomplice to seize the rifle that killed Célia? His lawyers declined to comment before the trial. But during the investigation the nurse earned her stripes as a “manipulator”. In the months preceding the assassinations, she harassed Christophe Orsaz, threatened him, broke into his home, obtained the addresses of several of his employers to discredit him with them. She even wrote anonymous letters to herself to brandish them in front of Jean-Paul Vidal and convince him that she was in danger. She also sent some to the legitimate wife of her accomplice, to increase tension.
A first psychiatric expert described her as “narcissistic”, noting “a low capacity for empathy with regard to her environment and a low emotional investment”. A second, commissioned at the request of the defense, noted the same “narcissistic flaw” but also detected “a severe personality disorder, with a depressive and anxious tendency”. The now sixty-year-old is described as “cold” by colleagues who have worked with her. Ella also said she was a victim of incest at the hands of her father. Did she derive a vengeful hatred towards men in general? While the facts are no longer a mystery, only she can really explain the motive.
Cold-blooded executioner or “puppet” under the influence?
The families of Célia and Christophe, however, refuse to make a distinction between the co-defendants who face life imprisonment. “The degree of responsibility is exactly the same. At no time does Jean-Paul Vidal try to dissuade her, at no time does he back down,” insists Arnaud Levy-Soussan.
Mathieu Monfort, the mechanic’s lawyer, does not have the same reading. “The intrinsic dangerousness of the two accused is not the same,” says the man whose client “owes the truth to the Orsaz family, now that he has emerged from the fog and the lie that Marie-José Montesinos had constructed around him “. For the theory of the “brain and the performer”, he substitutes that of the “brain and the puppet”. To end up killing two quasi-strangers in cold blood, the lawyer wants to demonstrate that Jean-Paul Vidal was under the “control” of a woman who knew “his deficiencies and his faults”. The accused were not their first love affair.