Like an impossible rehabilitation, a dive into hell in which he leads those who cross his path, near or far. Nine years after being officially recognized as the victim of a miscarriage of justice, which led him to spend six and a half years behind bars for a murder he did not commit, Marc Machin is back in court on Monday Assize Paris, tried for a rape preceded by a burglary, which occurred in April 2018 in the 11th arrondissement. And this time, the specter of a mistake is slim.
Arrested almost a month after the facts, the man, now 39 years old, confessed during his police custody, to be the author of the crime, delivering a version similar to that of the victim. That evening, he explains, he was wandering the rue Saint-Maur, looking for a place to sleep, although he has a room in a social hotel on the street. Around 4 a.m., he spots a young couple – in reality, work colleagues – who rush into a building. He follows them, falls asleep in the stairwell before being woken up in the early morning by a slamming door. From where he is, he sees the young man hiding his keys under the doormat then hears him address his friend: “I put the bunch of keys so that my friend can come in.” Moments later, he steals the keys with the intention of committing a burglary and then heads home to retrieve a balaclava and gloves.
DNA on the victim’s clothes
During his hearings, he said he was convinced that the young woman, then 22, had slipped away during this time. However, when he enters the apartment, he sees her asleep. He doesn’t turn back, however, tiptoes around the main room. Just awake, this employee of a streetwear department store goes to the bathroom. It was there that she came face to face with Marc Machin, his face hidden under a hood, a knife in his hand. He gives her a fellatio and then forces her to take a shower and brush her teeth. Investigators are convinced he was trying to remove his tracks. Before leaving, he grabs his victim’s credit card.
In 2001, already, during his arrest after the murder of Marie-Agnès Bedot, on the Neuilly bridge, Marc Machin had recognized, during his police custody, the crime before retracting. During his review trial in 2012, he explained that his confession had been obtained under pressure from the police but also from his father. This time, however, besides the details he delivered, his DNA was isolated from the victim’s clothing, one of his tattoos was also visible in CCTV footage from the vending machine he visited with the young woman’s bank card.
“His career is synonymous with the failure of institutions”
During the investigation, Marc Machin spoke of an “impulse” under the influence of alcohol and cocaine, hammering to have entered the apartment for a “simple” burglary. What about the 663,000 euros in compensation received after his review trial? Dilapidated on trips, drugs, prostitutes or hotels in a few months. “His career is synonymous with the failure of institutions, from his placement in a foster family where he was raped by another teenager until his release from prison,” said one of his lawyers, Me Elise Arfi, who defends him alongside Adrien Gabaud. And the one who hopes that the trial will make it possible to understand the roots of the passage to the act of insisting: “How to think that a poor person, destroyed by an unjust incarceration, to whom one gives a lot of money and that one sends on the TV sets will be okay? “
Since his release in 2009 – after a homeless man admitted to being the real perpetrator of the Pont de Neuilly murder – Marc Machin has never been far from the judicial and prison system for long. Six months after being released, he sexually assaulted three young women, two of whom were minors, then followed convictions for violence, concealment, contempt or carrying a knife … The latest: two months suspended for domestic violence . This time, he faces 20 years of criminal imprisonment.