The former French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel was found dead, hanged, on the night of Friday February 18 to Saturday February 19, in his cell in the prison of Health, in Paris, announced the Paris prosecutor’s office. An investigation to find the causes of death was opened, entrusted to the third judicial police district.
Accused by several former models, he had been indicted at the end of June 2021 for “rape of a minor over the age of 15”. He had already been indicted and placed in pre-trial detention in December 2020 for “rape of a minor over 15 years old” and “sexual harassment”.
The septuagenarian was also suspected of having played the role of tout for the American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, also found dead in his cell in August 2019. He had been placed under the intermediate status of assisted witness for acts of “aggravated human trafficking to the detriment of minor victims for the purpose of sexual exploitation”.
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The death of Mr. Brunel means the extinction of public action in this case, unless other people were to be implicated.
He was arrested in December 2020 at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport as he was about to take a flight to Dakar and was imprisoned following his indictment. He had been released under judicial supervision for a few days in November 2021, before being returned to detention by decision of the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal. He had lodged an appeal in cassation against this judgment.
A billionaire financier, Mr. Epstein was charged in July 2019 in the United States for having organized, between 2002 and 2005, a network of young girls whom he allegedly sexually exploited.
The Paris prosecutor’s office, alerted by the potential existence of French minors among Mr. Epstein’s victims, opened a preliminary investigation in August 2019. A complaint was filed two months later against Mr. Brunel for acts of “sexual harassment” which were not prescribed, contrary to several charges against him.
According to concordant sources, the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP), in charge of the investigation, had carried out more than half a thousand hearings.