Sentenced to life imprisonment in June, Gabriel Fortin, nicknamed the “HR killer”, will be tried on appeal next spring. The hearing must be held, this time, before the Grenoble Court of Appeal from May 13 to 28, 2024, indicated Denis Dreyfus, counsel for the relatives of Patricia Pasquion, Pôle emploi executive killed at her workplace in Valence, confirming information from Dauphiné Libéré.
The accused will once again have to answer for three assassinations and an attempted assassination committed in Alsace, Drôme and Ardèche. He appealed less than twenty-four hours after the verdict.
To justify his appeal, Gabriel Fortin denounced a lack, according to him, of “investigations into the financial links between the companies which dismissed him and the lawyers who refused to defend him” before the industrial tribunal during his dismissals. .
“Experiencing a second trial will be difficult for the families”
The prison sentence of the man who was nicknamed the “HR killer” by the press was accompanied by a security period of 22 years. The court having recognized an alteration of its discernment at the time of the facts, without reducing the penalty incurred.
Denouncing the “cruelty and monstrosity” of Gabriel Fortin, Denis Dreyfus stressed that “living through a second trial will be difficult for the families” of the victims.
Gabriel Fortin, a 48-year-old unemployed engineer, was found guilty at first instance of having murdered Estelle Luce on January 26, 2021 in Haut-Rhin, and attempted to murder Bertrand Meichel at his home, about forty kilometers away. .
He was also convicted of the assassination at their workplace, two days later, of Patricia Pasquion, an employee of the Pôle emploi agency where Fortin was registered until 2013 and, less than thirty minutes later, by Géraldine Caclin. He was arrested following the assassination of this human resources director.