how Jonathann Daval locked himself in a lie

“Happy is fine […] If you want to be forgiven, we have to understand. You shut yourself up in denial. “These words are those of Isabelle Fouillot, Alexia Daval’s mother found dead in the woods of Esmoulins (Haute-Saône), on October 30, 2017. She pronounces them in the office of ‘a judge, during a face-to-face meeting with his son-in-law, Jonathann Daval, almost a year later, on December 7, 2018. These few words, accompanied by a photo in which Alexia poses alongside Happy , the couple’s cat, come to split the shell of the lie in which the 36-year-old computer scientist has been locked up for many months.

Three versions in six months

The day after his wife’s disappearance, the thirty-something gets stuck in a fictitious story. For three months he is this grieving widower. It was only on January 30, 2018 that he admitted, in police custody, to having killed his wife. At the time, he said he accidentally choked her. Six months later, Daval delivers a third, unexpected version. He accuses his in-laws of conspiracy and his brother-in-law Grégory Gay of having strangled the victim. Alexia’s family is stunned. Then this December 7, facing the one he calls “mom”, he finally cracked. In penalist memory, the following scene is unprecedented: the victim’s mother and the accused hug each other, in tears.

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Public opinion feels betrayed

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During the trial, which opens Monday before the Assize Court of Haute-Saône in Vesoul, the personality of Jonathann Daval will be at the heart of the hearing. Lawyers, both defense and civil parties, already know that lies will haunt the debates. Because if Daval had confessed from the day of the tragedy – which he claims to have tried to do at his mother’s then at the Fouillot bar – the affair would not have had the same media impact. “Public opinion feels betrayed”, summarizes Me Gilles-Jean Portejoie, the council of fifteen relatives of the victim including the parents. The question of morality could well come to mingle with that of justice. Me Ornella Spatafora spoke at length about it Thursday with her client during a visit to the Dijon remand center where Daval is being held.

The lie, a “self-defense mechanism”

“During the investigation, no one explained the chain of lies, regrets his colleague Me Randall Schwerdorffer. The procedure crystallized on the murder, then on the cremation of the body. Jonathann Daval really wants to s ‘explain, he’s ready to do it. ” Hence the importance for his client to speak without a protective mask against the Covid, he whose tears during the white march which had followed the discovery of the body marked the spirits. The question will be decided Monday at the opening of the debates.

His personality was still analyzed by a psychologist and two psychiatrists. But only the last expertise was carried out after the full confession. Jonathann Daval inscribes himself “in a space between the said and the unspoken, where it is possible for him to note the death of his wife without saying it, to move the body and to return to a form of normality”, writes l one of the two psychiatrists in his report.

For Me Schwerdorffer, who has read and reread the work of psychiatrist Daniel Zagury, the scenario built by Daval just after his crime is a “self-defense mechanism”. The computer scientist without a criminal record would have clung to his story to avoid “the collapse”. If Jonathann Daval takes action, it is in a fit of “narcissistic rage” triggered “by the sentence that kills”, he says, based on the writings of Zagury. The couple, married for two years and linked for more than ten, are in crisis. The desire for a child, infertility and erection difficulty are intertwined. During the reenactment of June 17, 2019, the indicted tells that the evening of the drama the young woman accuses him of “not being a man” and threatens to lock himself “in the room with his sex toys”.

Still several gray areas

During the robbery of their pink plaster house in Gray, only sex toys, Alexia Daval’s wedding ring and a wedding photo album will be stolen. The perpetrator (s) of the theft do not touch valuable jewelry or fine wines, nor on television. Did anyone try to preserve the memory of the victim? The enigma remains, the Vesoul prosecutor’s office having closed the case without follow-up.

At the hearing, relatives of Alexia Daval hear the 29-year-old bank employee, smiling and luminous, when the defense describes her in less complimentary terms. “But the stake of the trial is also to shed light on all the gray areas”, indicates Me Portejoie. Her colleague Me Caty Richard specifies: “We intend to address the question of the poisoning of Alexia by Jonathann Daval.” Traces of drugs, including a molecule withdrawn from sale, had indeed been discovered in Alexia’s blood without anyone being able to explain the source. During the investigation, the request for further expertise on this point was rejected. The civil parties see it as yet another lie from Jonathann Daval.