Sophie Le Tan case: “In addition to mourning, her disappearance created a break with the rest of the world”

In 2018, on the occasion of her 20th birthday, student Sophie Le Tan went to visit an apartment in the north of Strasbourg, which she found on Leboncoin. The ad was posted by a certain Jean-Marc Reiser. The man, described as incredibly violent by his ex-girlfriends, has already been sentenced to 15 years in prison in the early 2000s for rape and sexual assault. At the end of the visit the young student will no longer give any sign of life. His dismembered body will finally be found a year later in a nearby forest.

On June 27, 2022, the trial of Jean-Marc Reiser opens before the Assizes of the Bas-Rhin. He received the maximum sentence, life imprisonment with 22 years of security, but immediately appealed. Because if he admits to having killed the student in his apartment of hers, he denies having premeditated his act of hers, instead citing a sudden crisis “of frustration, anger and rage”.

However, the thesis of the incident is very little credible, according to Élise Costa, a journalist specializing in legal affairs, who covered this first trial in a series of reports for online media. Slate. In February 2023, the author released There is%20y%20has%20has%20a%20%20critical%20error%20on%20this%20site.

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” rel=”nofollow sponsored noopener” data-push-event=”edito_lien_marchand_Fnac,edito_lien_offre_undefined”>Evenings we choose (Marchialy editions, 2023), where he brilliantly dissects the mechanisms of justice and recounts the cases that have marked it. The murder of Sophie Le Tan is one of them. While Jean-Marc Reiser’s appeal process was opening on Tuesday 20 June 2023, Madmoizelle went to probe the expert, who this time will not return to the Court of Assizes. Lighting.

Three questions for Élise Costa, legal columnist and author of the book ” The nights we choose »

To miss. What can we expect from this new appeals process, when Jean-Marc Reiser has confessed and all the evidence is against him?

Eliza Costa. Jean-Marc Reiser is probably waiting for premeditation to fall. In his version of the story, it’s a fit of rage, something he missed. He’s already received the maximum sentence, so he has nothing to lose on appeal. Sophie Le Tan’s family, on the other hand, is certainly waiting for this sentence to be confirmed on appeal, and for Jean-Marc Reiser to go further in his confession, to acknowledge his active participation in Sophie’s murder. These appeals are always very painful for families, because they mean going back to the bar, talking again about the tragedy, the mourning, the suffering … he moves many things.

What have you learned from the Sophie Le Tan case and the first trial of her killer?

In the Sophie Le Tan case, what particularly interested me was not so much the defendant’s personality, because he did not let his guard down and spoke little about his childhood. It was difficult to catch her moments of weakness, to get to the bottom, to delve into her psyche … What interested me most was the close-knit family of the victim. Sophie Le Tan helped them, supported them enormously. They explained this a lot on the witness stand. It was the bond between them, their community, their language [les parents ne parlaient pas français, NDLR], And the others. His disappearance represented a huge void because in addition to the mourning and horror of the loss of a child, there was no longer this bridge with the outside world. The loss of him meant that they found themselves even more isolated from the world.

How do you prepare yourself when reporting the trials at the assizes?

Before covering the trial of Jean-Marc Reiser, I knew very little about the case other than what I had seen in the headlines. When I tell a case, I prefer to know as little as possible e arrive with the eyes of a juror. During the hearings the rebus begins to come together again… I am very attentive to the attitude of the family when the defendant speaks, to his attitude when he has to testify. Many things happen in silence. Some talk very fast due to stress and anxiety. Others, on the contrary, are so crippled with grief that they often fall silent or speak slowly. I find it in these moments, sometimes even in the absence of an answer to a question, that silence is interesting.

Jean-Marc Reiser’s appeal trial will take place from 20 to 29 June 2023 in Colmar.

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