Lucas L., 21, was indicted on Thursday for the murder of Justine Vayrac, 20, whose body was found by investigators on the suspect’s family property in Beynat, about twenty kilometers from Brive. (Correze). “A judicial investigation has been opened on the counts of rape, kidnapping and murder preceded, accompanied or followed by another crime” announced Limoges prosecutor Baptiste Porcher. The penalty is life imprisonment.
Placed in pre-trial detention, the suspect confessed at the end of his police custody “to have killed the victim” after an evening at the nightclub La Charrette in Brive-la-Gaillarde, on Saturday night see you on Sunday. Justine Vayrac would have felt bad during this evening, would have left the establishment around 4 am, where she would have met Lucas L., whom she had already met a few times in the nightclub. The young woman, originally from Lot and mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old child, will no longer give any sign of life.
What happened from that moment on? Between the confessions of the suspect, but which does not precisely explain the entire course of the evening, the testimonies collected, and the first findings of the investigators, several gray areas still appear in the investigation. 20 minutes make the point.
“I have other things to do than think about your drunk friend”
Le Figaro collected the testimony from an acquaintance of Justine Vayrac, disturbing to say the least. Théo would be the last to have seen Justine Vayrac alive, before she disappeared with Lucas L. Théo says that the young woman would have come to find him around 4 a.m., in the nightclub, to tell him that she felt bad. and she wanted to go out. He then accompanies her outside the nightclub, where they would have crossed paths with Lucas L.
If Theo does not know Lucas L. he understands that the young man and Justine know each other. “Justine wanted to rest in her car. Lucas also wanted to rest and asked me to come back in an hour”, assures Theo. Cautious, he still asks Lucas L. for his phone number before leaving them. Theo comes out of the establishment around 4:40 a.m. and finds that the young woman and Lucas L. have vanished. Theo then calls Lucas L. who claims to have gone home after leaving Justine in his car. An exchange of SMS is linked between Theo, and Lucas L., who ends up letting him go: “I have other things to do than think about your drunk friend. Still according to Theo, Lucas L. would have called him back around 6:20 a.m., telling him that he had heard from Justine, and that she would be with a certain “Noé”.
Could Justine have been drugged?
Toxicological analyzes must take place, in particular to determine if the victim may have been drugged during the evening. A member of Justine’s group of friends is in any case convinced to have seen Lucas L. give a glass of champagne to the young woman during the evening. “I think my champagne tastes weird,” Justine reportedly told Theo during the evening, again according to the testimony of this young man in Le Figaro. Then, “when Justine was throwing up, she kept repeating: ‘I’m sure someone put something in my drink'”, Theo recounts.
Rape or consensual sex?
If the suspect was indeed indicted for “murder” and “rape”, he explained during his police custody “having killed the victim when they were both at his home and they had just consensual sex”. The investigation will have to clarify this point, while the suspect’s versions and explanations often seem to contradict each other.
One punch or multiple punches?
Another question will have to be raised, relating to the circumstances of the death of Justine Vayrac. Lucas L. told investigators that he “punched him, which would have caused the death” of the young woman, then used an “agricultural machine” to “bury the body” in the forest, according to the prosecutor Baptiste Porcher. Searches of the area led to the recovery of the body. But “the first findings establish a plurality of blows to the face, including at least one with a blunt weapon” maintains the public prosecutor.
A suspect with a profile that remains to be clarified
21-year-old farmer Lucas L. is described as “sociable “, “nice”, “happy”, “well in his skin”… We also speak of a young man “seductive” and absolutely “not violent. “He is a person who did not pose any problems in the town until today”, declared Thursday evening to the press the mayor of Beynat Jean-Michel Monteil, “totally upset by this tragedy” and “sad for both families.
However, some elements come to dent this rather flattering picture. Starting with the fact that he went on Sunday, after the crime, to the match of his Beynat football team. If he has also never been convicted, Lucas L. had however been indicted in a procedure for destruction by dangerous means and degradation, after setting fire to a barn in 2020. “As part of this procedure , he had been indicted and placed in pre-trial detention until April 12, 2021, indicates the public prosecutor of Limoges. Since that date, he had been subject to a judicial control measure, the obligations of which he complied with. »
“At school, Lucas was turbulent but we never had any problems with him,” added the mayor of the town. “He barely realizes both what he is accused of and what he has done,” his lawyer Michel Labrousse told AFP, believing that his client was “somewhere relieved of the position he has taken. decided to adopt.