A photo of Corporal Arthur Noyer, during his funeral in September 2018. – GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP
It is one of the most anticipated trials of the year and the first for the former soldier implicated in other cases, including the murder of little Maëlys. From 10 am this Monday and until May 12, Nordahl Lelandais is tried before the Assizes of Savoy in Chambéry for the murder of Corporal Arthur Noyer. It is in this town that this twisty affair began in 2017, when the 23-year-old, stationed in the Third Battalion of Alpine Hunters, disappeared after an evening with comrades.
It took more than eight months for his family to know that the soldier was dead and almost a year for investigators to become certain that Arhur Noyer crossed the path of Nordahl Lelandais that night. And that this meeting was fatal to him. At the time of the start of the trial of the former dog handler, also indicted for the murder of Maëlys in 2017, 20 minutes traces this investigation through the dates that marked the affair.
April 12, 2017
Arthur Noyer, a young corporal from Bourges, did not appear at the 8 a.m. report to the 13th Battalion of Alpine Hunters, where he was stationed in Barby near Chambéry. It doesn’t sound like him. At the end of the day, the squadron leader reports the disappearance of the young soldier who, the day before, spent the evening and part of the night with comrades in the nightclubs of the Carré Curial in Chambéry before evaporating in nature.
Between April 12 and April 20, 2017
The thesis of the military desertion envisaged at the start of the investigation does not hold water. His managers, friends and relatives affirm that the corporal is very fulfilled professionally. The use of the images of the video surveillance allows to establish that the night of his disappearance, he circulated on foot in Chambéry until 3 o’clock in the morning, time at which he was caught one last time hitchhiking. Studying his cell phone then allows him to locate him in various towns around Chambéry, as far as the Relais d’Allevard, a few kilometers from Chambéry, where his cell phone charges one last time at 4 a.m. Given his speed of movement, the investigators conclude that Arthur Noyer, well intoxicated after his evening, was in the car when he left Chambéry.
April 20, 2017
Its various elements lead the Chambéry prosecutor’s office to open a judicial investigation for kidnapping and sequestration.
May 15, 2017
Three hundred people take part in a white march for Arthur Noyer, organized by the parents, brother and friends of the soldier who came from Bourges after his disappearance to post wanted notices in the city and try to find him.
Until the end of August 2017
The investigators identify after numerous searches and cross-checks a vehicle, spotted in Chambéry the night of the disappearance of the young corporal then in Allevard at 4 am that same night. This is an Audi A3 in which Arthur Noyer could have climbed. In Savoie alone, 2,900 owners of this car model are listed. Real painstaking work then begins for the gendarmes.
August 27, 2017
During a wedding in Pont-de-Beauvoisin (Savoie) which she attends with her family, Maëlys, 8, disappears. A few days later, Nordahl Lelandais, a 34-year-old former dog handler, was quickly blamed for the kidnapping of the child.
Beginning of September 2017
The men working on the Noyer affair are starting to take an interest in Lelandais because the former soldier owns an Audi A3 which could well correspond to the one sought in the context of the investigation into the disappearance of the corporal.
Dec. 19, 2017
The Chambéry public prosecutor’s office announces that a human skull was discovered by a walker in September. After multiple analyzes and DNA research, it appears that it is the corporal’s skull. In the undergrowth where this part of the corpse was found, no other bones were found.
December 20, 2017
Nordahl Lelandais is indicted for the assassination of Corporal Noyer. Suspected because of multiple clues, including the demarcation of his phone at the same points as that of the young soldier, the accused recognizes his presence on the scene but disputes the charges.
January 13, 2018
Not far from the skull remains discovered a few months earlier, other bones have been unearthed in Montmélian. DNA analyzes confirm ten days later that it is indeed the bones of Corporal Noyer.
March 9, 2018
Nordahl Lelandais admits having hitchhiked Corporal Noyer and dropped him off a few kilometers further.
March 29, 2018
During a new hearing, Lelandais confesses to having killed the corporal. He was transported to the place where the remains of the young soldier were found.
April 6, 2018
The Chambéry prosecutor’s office says a little more about the confessions made by Nordahl Lelandais on March 29. The accused admitted to having struck Arthur Noyer during a “fight between them”. This resulted in the fatal “fall” of the young soldier, according to the dog handler’s statements.
September 7, 2018
Seventeen months after his disappearance and one year after the discovery of part of his remains, Corporal Noyer’s funeral takes place at Bourges Cathedral. Among the many people who came to pay him a last tribute are the parents of Maëlys De Araujo, for the murder of which Lelandais is also indicted.
September 25, 2018
Arthur Noyer’s parents’ lawyer asks Nordahl Lelandais to speak. “If he really has pity, if he is human, let him remove the suffering by saying what he has done”, claims Master Bernard Boulloud.
March 21, 2019
The reconstruction of the corporal’s murder mobilized investigators all night long in Savoy, along with the accused. The ex-soldier, insulted “as an assassin” by residents despite the large white sheets installed in Chambéry to hide the scenes of the reconstruction, maintained his version of the facts which led to the death of Arthur Noyer.
June 19, 2020
The Chambéry examining magistrates decide to send Nordahl Lelandais back to the assizes for “murder” and not “assassination” as the parents of the victim wished, convinced that the death of their sons was premeditated.