Dominique Pelicot, the French man jailed last year for drugging and raping his wife, could avoid prosecution for a separate murder due to lost evidence, it has emerged.
Police officers are not able to find clothes found at the scene of the murder of 23-year-old estate agent Sophie Narme, who was raped and strangled in 1991, according to Paris Match. Pelicot has been accused of being behind the attack, but has consistently denied responsibility.
Florence Rault, the lawyer representing the victim’s family, told the magazine that a search was carried out for the clothes at the beginning of this year, but “no one has been able to get their hands on” them. The clothes could provide crucial DNA evidence for the case, by linking it to another attempted rape case from 1999 which Pelicot has admitted involvement in.
In December, the 72-year-old was imprisoned for 20 years after inviting dozens of strangers he met online to rape his unconscious wife, Gisele Pelicot, who he had drugged in their home in Mazan for more than ten years. The trial gripped the world’s attention after Ms Pelicot waived her anonymity, in an attempt to make the "shame swap sides".
Two years after his initial arrest for taking upskirting photos of women in October 2020, Pelicot was accused of the 1991 rape and murder of Ms Narme and the attempted rape of another woman, 19, eight years later.
Pelicot, who admitted to the crimes against his wife, has consistently denied the allegations relating to Ms Narme.
Her murder took place on 4 December 1991, after she made her way to an appointment with a potential buyer who wanted a top floor flat, Paris Match reported.
After she failed to return home, Ms Narme’s mother alerted her employer, who sent someone to the apartment where she had been giving a viewing. She was found face down with her belt tied around her neck, after having been strangled to death and raped by her murderer.
Three years ago, Pelicot admitted assaulting the other woman, also an estate agent, in a Parisian suburb in 1999.
He was accused of pinning the woman to the floor of an apartment where she was due to be giving a viewing. Prosecutors said Pelicot threatened the unnamed woman with a box cutter, before forcing a cloth soaked in ether in an attempt to knock her out.
The victim fought back until the assailant eventually fled.
Pelicot has since retracted his confession in part and claimed there was no intention to rape the women, but instead to force her to show him her underwear.
In 2004, a special software system found a link between the rape and murder of Sophie Narme and the attempted rape of the other woman, in terms of the attacker being alone, the victims being estate agents, and a product used by the attacker - ether - in both attacks, Paris Match reported.
But attempts to link the cases using DNA had no result.
Nearly two decades later, in 2022, after an investigating judge asked her team to re-explore the attempted rape case from 1999, a bombshell discovery was made. DNA extracted from a drop of blood from the woman’s attacker, which was taken from the heels of one of her shoes, matched that of Dominique Pelicot.
The cases are “85-90 per cent identical”, Ms Rault said. “Judge Turquey therefore ordered a joinder between the two cases."
The loss of the clothes from the Sophie Narme case may hinder the prosecution's ability to irrefutably link the two cases. With new analysis techniques, new DNA evidence could have been found.
Ms Rault said, in a letter to French justice minister Gerald Darmanin: "These seals have not been destroyed. They exist and must be effectively searched for and recovered by all means. Otherwise, this new loss would constitute a new cause of State liability."
Interpol removes ‘Whale Wars’ campaigner Paul Watson from its most-wanted list
Interpol takes anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson off its most-wanted list
Scots to ‘foot the bill’ for Sizewell C, SNP claims
Minister insists fuel supplies not under threat despite oil refinery closure
Inside Putin’s attempt to construct a ‘digital gulag’ spy app to snoop on Russians
