7 days ago
Dominique Pelicot could avoid prosecution for 1991 murder due to lost evidence
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.
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.
Last year, 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 for more than 10 years.
Pelicot was accused of the 1991 rape and murder of Ms Narme and the attempted rape of another woman (19) eight years later.
Pelicot has consistently denied the allegations relating to Ms Narme.
Ms Narme's murder took place on December 4, 1991, after she made her way to an appointment with a potential buyer, 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. The victim fought back until the assailant eventually fled. Pelicot has since retracted his confession in part.
In 2004, a software system found a link between the rape and murder of Ms 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 heel of one of her shoes, matched that of Dominique Pelicot.
