A former dog trainer is going on trial in the French city of Grenoble, accused of kidnapping and murdering an eight-year-old girl at a wedding in the Alps.
The investigation led authorities to suspect Nordahl Lelandais’s involvement in other crimes around France.
The search for Maelys de Araujo, and the discovery of her body six months later, gripped France and tore the girl’s family apart.
Lelandais was a guest at the wedding.
He eventually confessed to killing the girl, and has since been convicted over another murder. He is also accused of sexual violence against three other under-age girls.
Lelandais had not originally been invited to the wedding on August 26 2017, in the town of Pont-de-Beauvoisin.
But he had phoned the groom the day before, who said Lelandais could come to the reception.
Lelandais showed up around midnight for dessert – and to provide cocaine to two guests who had asked him for it, according to witness accounts seen by The Associated Press.
He invited Maelys to see his dogs, so she got in his car to look at them, according to investigators.
Around 3am, the girl’s mother alerted wedding guests that she was missing, and they started searching for her.
Investigation of the suspect’s phone found that he put it on “airplane mode” twice that night.
His car, an Audi A3, was spotted by a video surveillance camera at 2.47am with a small passenger, according to the investigation documents.
Lelandais then returned to the wedding, seemingly unconcerned about Maelys while everyone else was looking for her, according to witness accounts. He left the wedding before the police arrived at 4.15am.
He was identified as a suspect within days. For the next six months, he denied any involvement in the disappearance of Maelys despite evidence accumulating against him.
Then in February 2018, after a trace of blood was discovered in the boot of his car thanks to extensive scientific analysis, Lelandais allegedly confessed to investigators: “This poor little girl, I killed her involuntarily.” He also apologised to the parents, according to investigators.
He is said to have told police where to find her body, and they dug up the child’s remains in a forest.
Lelandais is alleged to have told investigators that Maelys started crying and that he punched her several times in the face, without intending to kill her.
“I don’t know what happened in my head,” he said.
In recalling the killing, he made a reference to another man, Arthur Noyer, a soldier who had disappeared earlier in 2017 from a gay nightclub in another region of the Alps.
That prompted investigators to take a new look at Noyer’s disappearance. His skull was later found nearby.
Lelandais acknowledged accidentally killing Noyer after getting in a fight with him. Last year, Lelandais was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for Noyer’s murder.
The suspect told investigators of his sexual attraction for little girls. He described being ashamed of this, and acknowledged heavy use of alcohol and drugs.
In the Grenoble trial, Lelandais will also be tried for sexual violence against two girls, aged five and six, committed the same summer of 2017 in southern France.
Lelandais was also indicted in the Ardennes in northern France for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.
Police have studied whether Lelandais could have played a role in other unsolved crimes around France.
In Maelys, a book written by the girl’s mother, Jennifer De Araujo, with a journalist, she calls the accused “the other” and recounts her family’s life since the disappearance.
She looks back on the six months of waiting, “hoping,” “going crazy”, receiving scattered leads — and then a feeling of “dying” when the examining magistrate announced “a drop of blood found in the boot”.
The parents have since separated.
The verdict in the trial over the girl’s murder is expected on February 18.
