Jacques Rançon (right) during his trial in March 2018 before the Assize Court of the Pyrénées-Orientales – RAYMOND ROIG / AFP
- The body of Isabelle Mesnage, 20, was found on July 3, 1986 in a wood in the town of Cachy, a village in the Somme located a dozen kilometers from Amiens.
- 33 years later, Jacques Rançon, who was sentenced in 2018 for the rape and murder of two other women in Perpignan, admits the facts in police custody.
- Although he returned to his confession, Jacques Rançon is tried from Tuesday before the Assize Court of the Somme. He faces life imprisonment.
Isabelle Mesnage disappeared on June 28, 1986 near Fouilloy, in the Somme. That day, the young 20-year-old computer scientist was to go to a gathering of Catholic youth in the neighboring department of Pas-de-Calais. A few days later, on July 3, his body was found by a farmer in Cachy, a small town east of Amiens, lying near a hiking trail. His clothes were partially torn and objects belonging to him were found scattered near the corpse. A judicial investigation was indeed opened on July 11. But for lack of information, the investigating judge issued a dismissal order in 1992.
33 years later, rebound. Placed in police custody by the gendarmes of the Amiens research section, Jacques Rançon, nicknamed the “killer of the Perpignan station”, ended up admitting to having raped and killed Isabelle Mesnage in June 2019. The one who was convicted in March 2018 to life imprisonment – with a safety period of 22 years – for the rape and murder of two young women between 1997 and 1998, compared again, from this Tuesday, before the court of ‘Assises de la Somme. A place that is not unknown to him. In 1994, he was convicted of a rape committed two years earlier, near the wood where Isabelle Mesnage was found.
“They want justice to be done to Isabelle”
His trial is as much awaited as feared by the parents of the victim. “It is scary to go to a trial of this importance, with a criminal who has already been heavily convicted”, explains one of their lawyers, Me Corinne Herrmann. “On the one hand, they simply want justice to be done to Isabelle, to know finally. And at the same time, they are afraid of the details which, in this matter, are particularly difficult and painful. “
The prosecution decided to reopen the investigation in 2018. Forensic expertise was then carried out to compare the murderer’s modus operandi with that of Jacques Rançon, who lived at the time not far from the place of the discovery of the body. Isabelle Mesnage. In November 2018, the two investigating magistrates ordered the exhumation of the young woman’s body so that it could be autopsied again.
The analyzes “allowed to conclude to very strong similarities with the modus operandi of Jacques Rançon” during the rapes and murders of Moktaria Chaïb in 1997 and Marie-Hélène Gonzales in 1998 in Perpignan, had indicated the prosecutor of the Republic of Amiens. in a press release. In view of these new elements, investigators from the research section, the criminal cell of the Somme and the behavioral sciences department of the gendarmerie made the trip to Béziers with the investigating judges to hear it.
“There are many avenues that have not been explored”
In front of the gendarmes, he explained that he kidnapped the young woman on the day of her disappearance while she was hitchhiking. He hit her, raped her, strangled her. Since then, Jacques Rançon has gone back on his confession. “I have the feeling that we are trying to get him into this case with a shoehorn,” said his lawyer, Me Xavier Capelet, who said he was “less and less convinced” of his involvement in this affair. “He makes the ideal culprit. But I do not have the impression that this is the case ”, he adds, specifying that he awaits“ like everyone else the judicial truth ”. “There are a lot of avenues that haven’t been explored. There is matter to be discussed. “