In 2021, Aurélie Vaquier, 38, was found under a concrete slab at her marital home in Bédarieux. According to her companion, it was an unknown person who killed her, before making this improvised sarcophagus. A version marred by inconsistencies which will be dissected before the Hérault assizes.
A hasty departure
Tried from Tuesday until January 17, Samire Lymani, 41, has been in preventive detention since the discovery of the body on April 7, 2021. And he faces life imprisonment. The accused had reported the disappearance of his partner on February 23, 2021, almost a month after, according to him, she had given sign of life for the last time. She allegedly left the marital home with only her cell phone and some clothes. Then she sent a strange message, talking about her desire to retire to write.
His body was finally discovered at the couple’s home, under a concrete slab poured under a wooden platform covered with a pile of objects. According to the hypothesis “favored” by forensic doctors, Aurélie Vaquier was strangled.
Aged 39 at the time, in the process of divorce and father of two children, Samire Lymani came from Ain to Hérault, in the summer of 2020. He then met his new partner, then quickly moved in with her, in Bédarieux, a town of some 6,000 inhabitants in Haut-Languedoc. Their plan was to create a point of sale for organic cosmetic products manufactured by the young woman, but the couple had been arguing for several weeks.
“Throughout the investigation, the accused affirmed that he was not involved in any way in the death, (…) despite numerous elements against him”, underlined last year the Béziers prosecutor, Raphaël Balland. The investigation thus highlighted behavior deemed “inappropriate and inconsistent” by the accused. And in particular this “rushed” departure from Bédarieux on January 28, 2021, to go to the Lyon region and pick up his son and a nephew.
“Chameleon Personality”
Returning to the marital home a week later, on February 6, he did not report the disappearance of his partner, instead carrying out work in the house. He continued to use his partner’s bank card, while making derogatory remarks about her and regularly visiting dating sites.
Investigators also believe that the message, surprisingly riddled with spelling errors, by which Aurélie Vaquier would have announced her intention to temporarily leave Bédarieux on January 28, was written neither on the couple’s computer nor on the young woman’s cell phone. The phone in question was also found several months later, hidden behind a sheet of plasterboard, in July 2022, by the new owner of the house.
They are also convinced that the concrete coffin where the victim was found was indeed made by his companion. Such work would have required at least “six hours of work by a qualified mason not subject to a state of panic or particular stress”, they assure.
Likewise, the investigators note that it was “easier” for the accused to hide the corpse of his victim at his home, France being then subject to a curfew, in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, which made difficult to evacuate a body “in broad daylight or at prohibited hours”. Refuting this version, Samire Lymani explains that his partner was killed during his absence from Bédarieux, between January 28 and February 6. And he only discovered this slab, under the platform, on April 7, when the body was discovered.
Evaluated by psychiatrists and psychologists as an “impulsive” man, with a “chameleon” and “borderline” personality, the accused presented “an infantile omnipotence” coupled with “a psycho-affective immaturity”. But this would not have abolished or impaired his discernment during the murder.
On average, a feminicide occurs every three days in France. The Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti recently put forward the figure of 94 femicides in 2023, compared to 118 in 2022, a drop welcomed with caution by feminist associations.