At the Assize Court of Isère
She should have danced like crazy. Certainly led by his mother in the middle of the farandole. Only, when the Rednex hit “Cotton Eye Joe” began to resound in the village hall of Pont-de-Beauvoisin, Maelys never came on the dance floor. A sign that does not deceive, because the 8-year-old girl loved this song. Jennifer, her mother, immediately looked for her, surprised at her absence. It was 2:46 and 52 seconds, this Sunday, August 27, 2017. Forty seconds earlier,
Nordahl Lelandais flipped her cellphone to airplane mode, speeding away at the wheel of her car, with the child sitting in the front passenger seat.
On the fourth day of the accused’s trial, tried for the murder of Maëlys, the gendarmes took turns at the bar to draw up an ultra-precise chronology of the facts with which he is accused. The conclusion is frightening: the child’s life has changed in the space of a minute. Perhaps less.
2:45 am, the time at which Maëlys is seen for the last time at the wedding
At 2:45 a.m., a couple of guests, who were about to leave the wedding, came to kiss her goodbye. They are the last to have seen her alive. The gendarmes are formal on the schedule. They cross-checked their testimony with the time at which the song, which they remembered, was played in the room. “At that time, Maëlys was next to the buffet and near the kitchen exit room,” says chief warrant officer François Tixier, criminal research analyst.
The rest, everyone knows it: the child got into the car of the accused. How and for what reasons? For now, the mystery remains. Lelandais always contented himself with explaining that the little girl had begged him to take her home to see his dogs. A version that the civil parties do not believe, convinced of the kidnapping for ulterior motives.
The story, delivered with precision by the gendarmes, freezes. Five minutes before being seen for the last time, Maëlys spoke with her grandparents. They too were on their way. “His grandmother offered him to go back with them,” says François Tixier. But the little girl declined, preferring to stay and play a little longer. In the courtroom, everyone redid the scenario in his head.
The first shots at 2:49 a.m.
The investigators have acquired the certainty that the death was given very shortly after. Barely two minutes after leaving the site, Lelandais’ Audi was spotted by CCTV cameras. On the images projected at the hearing, Maëlys is indeed present in the vehicle. It’s 2:48 a.m. “At 2:49 a.m., Nordahl Lelandais will strike the first blows,” said Warrant Officer Olivier Doudet, director of investigation.
Shot with cocaine, the former soldier then heads towards the railway track which is a hundred meters after his home. “He will stay there for about 14 minutes before returning to his house to change his clothes,” adds the gendarme. Today, we know with certainty that he deposited the body of the child in this precise place. Before coming to pick it up at 4:10 a.m. and going to bury it on the heights of the Attignat forest.
The trial continues until February 18. The accused faces life imprisonment.