A single letter. If this crow is not the most prolific in the history of criminal cases, his one and only missive will have had a decisive role in the Anaïs Guillaume case. On April 3, 2019, Philippe Gillet, a farmer in Fromy, in the Grand Est region, was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison by the Ardennes Assize Court for the murder, without premeditation, of the young woman. She disappeared on April 16, 2013. The same day, he was acquitted for the death of his wife, which occurred a year before the disappearance, in 2012.
But the day after the verdict, his conviction was overturned due to a defect in the deliberation of the jurors.. A second trial will take place. Meanwhile, the farmer’s lawyer will receive a letter that can change everything…
A tumultuous relationship from the start
The story between the accused and Anaïs Guillaume began in a banal way. She met Philippe Gillet in September 2011. He is a farmer, she began an apprenticeship for a vocational baccalaureate on his farm. Involved and hardworking, the young woman appeals to the farmer, who falls in love with this 21-year-old blue-eyed blonde who dreams of one day having her own farm. Quickly, an adulterous relationship develops between the student and her 38-year-old guardian, father of two children.
A few months later, on January 3, 2012, Philippe’s wife, Céline Gillet, died in extremely rare circumstances. Her husband explains to the emergency services that the 34-year-old farmer was crushed by a cow which fell on the straw of the milking parlor soaked by the rain. By trying to get up, in panic, the animal would have again lost its balance to collapse with all its weight on the victim.
At first secret, the romance between Anaïs and Philippe gradually becomes official after the death of Céline Gillet. But the lover is jealous and angry, and the conflicts follow one another. On June 9, 2012, Anaïs’ parents go so far as to lodge a complaint with the gendarmerie after yet another dispute. “Our daughter was beaten, she was damaged,” they testify at the time. Assessment: Three days of temporary interruption of work (ITT). Philippe Gillet denies having touched his companion, the case is closed without further action.
All the elements lead to the abandoned lover
The following year, an event will definitively distance the two protagonists. Anaïs Guillaume, pregnant, decides to have an abortion in agreement with her companion. “There was a break from the abortion performed on April 5, 2013,” said Maître Damien Delavenne, the Guillaume family’s lawyer, to Marianne several years later. The young woman met a man of her age, a calmer and less violent boy than the farmer. A few days after announcing her intention to leave him soon, Anaïs disappears. On the evening of August 16, after having a drink with friends, she returned with Philippe Gillet to his home. This is the last time she will be seen.
Assure him that she slept in the marital bed, before leaving in the night. “A habit,” he says. In the times that followed, the abandoned farmer saw the disappearance with great detachment, according to his entourage. And many elements lead the investigators to suspect him: Anaïs’ car found charred and without a plate, the driver’s seat too far from the pedals for a person of her size…
The suspect tries to create an alibi
Its exploitation has been scrutinized. No traces of the missing young girl, but bags of lime were bought the day of the disappearance, and Anaïs’ SIM card was found in an old telephone at Philippe Gillet’s. They exchanged text messages during the night of the disappearance. The investigators deduce that the suspect tried to “artificially recreate a discussion with Anaïs Guillaume” to constitute an alibi.
Philippe Gillet fiercely denies. But the investigators do not budge. In 2017, the file of his late wife is even reopened. The thesis of accidental death seems unlikely. The version of the crush by a cow is questioned by a medical expert and a veterinary expert. The accumulation of elements has its effect, and the farmer is therefore accused of the murder of his wife and that of his mistress.
The crow indicates where the body is
Incarcerated since 2016, then sentenced for the first time before the cancellation, as we mentioned at the beginning of this story, the farmer therefore has a second chance. A new trial is scheduled for April 2020. And there, a twist. In September 2019, Maître Ghislain Fay, Philippe Gillet’s lawyer, received an anonymous letter posted from Belgium. No date, no signature, just seven lines typed on the computer:
“The culprits of Anaïs’ disappearance are still at large. Anaïs was alive until April 2016. She was held against her will in Belgium. With everything in the gazette, easy to load the culto. Since the manure pile that cops searched in front of her farm in 2015 was still there, she was buried with quicklime underneath and is still there. The number plates for the car and the mobile phone are in the river at the bottom of his little meadow after the soccer field in Linay. Do the research, return the body to the parents and arrest the real culprits. »
Anaïs would therefore have been alive until 2016, when Philippe Gillet was then incarcerated. What exonerate the “culto”.
The indications of the letter are a real twist and an extraordinary lead for the investigation. But justice, accustomed to letters of all kinds in this type of business, is slow to seize it. Victoria Gillet, the eldest daughter of the accused, is impatient. She, who defends her father’s honor and manages the farm in his absence, decides to take matters into her own hands. Helped by a farm employee, the young woman rents a backhoe and decides to go and search the pile of manure on October 28, 2019. After only a few minutes of a scene filmed by Victoria Gillet, a bone appears. The gendarmes go on the spot and discover the remains of a remains. The DNA analyzes are final, it is Anaïs Guillaume.
“This plot had already been searched in March 2015 by the gendarmes without result, notes Me Ghislain Fay a few days after the discovery, And four years later, the body is found in the same place. But during all this period, Mr. Gillet was in prison… He was therefore unable to bury the body of Anaïs Guillaume himself. »
The daughter of the “culto” ends up confessing
The crow was therefore telling the truth. Well almost… Since if it is indeed the body of the disappeared, the analyzes also reveal that the skeleton is that of a 21-year-old person, that is to say the age of Anaïs Guillaume at her disappearance in 2013. She does not could therefore be alive in 2016. Doubt settles in the minds of the investigators. Especially since, due to the flooding of the field, only the manure pile had been excavated in 2015. The earth below had not been turned over. So the hypothesis that Philippe Gillet was able to bury the body in 2013 still holds.
Other elements raise questions. The speed with which the remains are found by Victoria Gillet, and especially the presence of lime on the skeleton. The gendarmes take advantage of the postponement of the second trial, due to Covid-19, to summon Victoria Gillet. She finally cracked in August 2020: she was the one who wrote and posted the famous letter.
But if she is the author, the initiative does not come from her but… from her father. After three years of smuggling money and cannabis into prison, managing the farm for him, the young woman is “confused”, in her own words, and remains convinced of her innocence. Also, when he tells her about an anonymous handwritten letter that was slipped under her cell door, she can only believe him. The testimony of a stranger who would clear him of any accusation: “You got fucked by everyone in the newspaper. The culprit put Anaïs’ body back in the manure pile opposite your house with lime on it. The plate of the car and the telephone are in the river at the end of your fields in Linay, after the soccer field. It was done April 2016 when all your fields were sown. The newspaper killed you and the Guillaumes laughed.
The handwriting was that of the accused
But why didn’t Philippe Gillet himself send this letter to the authorities? Facing the judges during his second trial, in 2021, the one now nicknamed the “Bull of the Ardennes” explains that no one would have believed his version according to which he received a letter in prison. According to his daughter’s confession, he therefore instructed her to reformulate the so-called mail, to add mentions of Belgium to it and to post it from the other side of the border.
The defense is collapsing. In April 2021, before the Marne Assize Court, his broad neck, his massive shoulders and his icy gaze worthy of Wilson Fisk impressed, but the accused showed his first signs of weakness and burst into tears at the sight of his girl, head shaved due to cancer. However, Philippe Gillet maintains his version until his last words: “As I have always said, I am innocent Madam President, I did nothing. “Insufficient for the court, which condemns him to thirty years of criminal imprisonment, accompanied by a two-thirds security period. Unlike the first trial, premeditation is retained.
There remains the missive received in prison. Why is the crow not wanted? The Advocate General responded during the hearing: “The handwriting was compared to that of another letter from Philippe Gillet… They are identical. Murderer then crow, seeking to exonerate himself, he only managed to help the investigators find the body. And to aggravate his sentence.