“The bloodthirsty Nancy”, the “grinder killer” or even “Manie Nova”… There was no shortage of nicknames for Simone Weber, sentenced in 1991 to twenty years of criminal imprisonment for the murder of her lover Bernard Hettier.
The murderer, who had however been acquitted of that of her second husband Marcel Fixard, died Thursday morning at the age of 93 in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes), announced her lawyer Liliane Glock. She has been established on the Côte d’Azur since her liberation in 1999.
Tirelessly claiming her innocence, Simone Weber hit the legal headlines in the 80s and 90s.
Bernard Hettier, a chemical industry worker who disappeared at the age of 55 on June 22, 1985 in Nancy, had previously been harassed for months by Simone Weber, of whom he no longer wanted to speak. After months of searching, the police found the missing person’s car in a garage in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes), rented by Simone Weber under the false name of “Ms. Chevallier”.
Véronique Genest played her
A human trunk recovered on September 15, 1985 in the Marne, in Poincy (Seine-et-Marne), was finally, after long, hesitant and contradictory expertise, attributed to the missing person. For the prosecution, Simone Weber had cut off the victim’s head and limbs with a concrete grinder, immediately after killing him in his apartment in Nancy.
The former philosophy professor, until then considered “the good lady of Nancy”, then distinguished herself by a vigorous defense, notably against her investigating judge, Gilbert Thiel.
Dismissing her lawyers one by one, she maintained the same composure during an epic trial before the Meurthe-et-Moselle Assize Court lasting thirty-one days. The jurors did not find premeditation for the murder of Bernard Hettier.
On the other hand, they had acquitted her of the poisoning of her second husband, Marcel Fixard, 80 years old, met in a marriage agency and died suddenly, on May 14, 1980, in Rosières-aux-Salines (Meurthe-et-Moselle), of a heart attack.
In 2016, she was outraged by the broadcast of a TV film devoted to her case, “an unthinkable ignominy”, denounced the one who explained that she had been living “a perpetual assassination” since her conviction.
“I am the opposite of this woman with filthy manners that we see on the screen,” she protested, not recognizing any physical resemblance to the actress Véronique Genest.