Should we expect the end of the story or the opening of a whole new one? The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal is re-examining the case of Hélène Pastor, the Monegasque billionaire killed with her driver in Nice in 2014, on Monday.
The main defendant, Wojciech Janowski, his son-in-law and alleged sponsor of the murder sentenced to life in 2018, will plead “not guilty”, asserts his lawyer Jean-Jacques Campana to 20 minutes. And he intends to “be able to explain himself”.
Hélène Pastor’s son did not wait for the debates to begin to tell “the truth” that he “owes” to his mother. Recovering from two strokes which had kept him away in the first instance, Gildo Pastor wondered, in Paris Match and on the set of C to you Thursday, on the “duplicity” of his sister and “poses [même] the question ”of its implication.
“My mother and sister quarreled every day”
According to him, Helène Pastor “was afraid” of Sylvia Ratkowski-Pastor, who shared the life of Wojciech Janowski. “Has the investigation been pushed to the end ?, he wonders in the daily newspaper. My mom and sister would argue at the office every day. My mother complained that she was a “milking cow”. Sylvia called her “the old woman”, she only got what she paid for. The investigation however ruled out the hypothesis of a complicity of the daughter of Hélène Pastor.
The two heirs of the businesswoman will face each other in any case. He has beefed up his team of lawyers with the famous criminal lawyer Thierry Herzog. She awaits “the confirmation of the truth as it was expressed during the first hearing”, explains to 20 minutes the one who represents her Me Dominique Mattei.
The truth according to which Wojciech Janowski would therefore be the only one guilty of having ordered the assassination? Despite his initial confessions, and those formulated – then contested – by his former lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti, the 72-year-old man, and in pre-trial detention for more than seven years, intends to defend himself.
Four other alleged protagonists
His lawyer hopes “to get the jurors to ask questions about the material elements of the case”. While, for the prosecution, the motive has always been money, “notarial deeds specify that nothing came to Janowski”, assures Me Jean-Jacques Campana.
Until November 19, he will be retried alongside four other alleged protagonists. Three appealed, including Pascal Dauriac, the sports coach Wojciech Janowski allegedly charged with organizing the crimes. A fourth, acquitted at first instance, appears after an appeal from the general prosecutor’s office.