LIVE – Daval trial: Alexia’s parents to speak to Jonathann

It is a case which has upset the whole of France. On October 30, 2017, the partially charred body of Alexia Daval was discovered in a wood and after multiple twists and turns, her husband Jonathann admitted the murder. His trial opened on Monday in Vesoul, Haute-Saône for “murder on spouse“, he faces life imprisonment.

It all started on October 28, 2017. Jonathann Daval reports the disappearance of his wife to the gendarmerie in the town of Gray, in Haute-Saône, he says that Alexia has never returned from her jogging. Intense searches are then organized by the gendarmerie and the inhabitants, to find the young woman. And it was two days later that Alexia Daval’s body was found, hidden under branches and partially charred.

The hypothesis of an assault on the jogger by a sexual maniac then worries the population. The emotion is general and very quickly a movement of solidarity will emerge in France and abroad. Jogging will be organized as far as Japan and Australia in tribute to Alexia Daval.

Her husband, devastated by grief, will then appear on all screens. Alongside his in-laws, during the white march in memory of the young woman, between two sobs, he describes his late wife as his “first supporter, my oxygen“Then, three months later, everything changed.

Jonathann Daval was taken into custody on January 29, 2018. The amazement was general and the 36-year-old man will deny and then confess to having killed his wife during an argument at their home on the night of October 27 to 28, 2017. During the two years of investigation, he will change version several times. He will retract, accuse his brother-in-law, and again acknowledge the murder of his wife during a hearing before the examining magistrate. During a reenactment, in June 2019, he will also admit to having burned Alexia’s body.

It remains to be seen for investigators, why Jonathann Daval beaten and strangled his wife. The couple were struggling to conceive and according to Jonathan, on the night of the murder, he refused to have sex with Alexia. The young woman would then have been violent towards him, accusing him of “not to be a man“. “I strangled her, hit her to shut up“, he argued in front of an expert psychiatrist, evoking a companion”violent in word and deed” who “humiliated him“regularly. But he says he”didn’t want to kill her“. His lawyers do not rule out pleading the”willful violence resulting in death without intention of giving it“.

For the parents of the victim, who considered Jonathann Daval “like a son”, this line of defense is unacceptable. “Alexia was a good person. Our fear is that the defense and Jonathann hit her“, fear Jean-Pierre and Isabelle Fouillot. This is not the first time that Jonathann Daval’s lawyers evoke the”overwhelming personality“by Alexia Daval. This file is”poles apart from feminicide, we will explain it at trial“Annonce Me Randall Schwerdorffer.”The lies are over“, assures the lawyer who promises”a moment of truth“. “Jonathann wants to speak out so that the jurors are able to judge what he did“, he insists. A truth that Alexia’s parents have been asking for three years now.

“The succession of lies was each time felt like a tragedy by the civil parties“, confides Me Gilles-Jean Portejoie, lawyer for the parents, sister and brother-in-law of Alexia. He wishes to address the issues of”premeditation” and some “complicity“, “even if they were ultimately not selected“.