After more than a year of inquiries, French investigators believe a lesbian crime of passion is at the center of the unsolved murder of the daughter of a famous actor and her female lover.
The double poisoning suggests undertones of love, greed and jealousy.
Geraldine Giraud, 36, and Katia Lherbier, 32, were both killed and dumped in a storm drain near the home of forester Jean-Pierre Treiber on Dec. 9, 2004.
Geraldine, who had acted in two mainstream films, lived in the shadow of her showbiz parents. Roland Giraud, 63, is a veteran of French film and mother, Maaike Jansen, is an actress.
Katia, openly lesbian, fronted a pop group.
Geraldine and Katia vanished on Nov. 1, 2004, after a weekend at the Giraud country cottage at La Postolle in Burgundy.
They had met on Oct. 14 at the Sens home of Katia's singing teacher, Marie-Christine Van Kempen. Katia lodged with Van Kempen, who is Maaike Jansen's sister, and police are working on the theory that they may have had a relationship.
On Nov. 23, 2004, while police were still looking for Giraud and Lherbier, they arrested Treiber. He had made purchases on the women's credit cards and withdrawn more than 2,000 euros (US$2,380).
He said he knew nothing about their whereabouts and claimed they gave him their cards and pin numbers, telling him to use them. Three weeks later their bodies were found in the drain in front of his house at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne.
A set of Geraldine's keys were found in his garden, as well as a partly melted portable phone.
Treiber had financial problems and had given a small-time crook his savings for a `business venture' that went wrong.
If not for DNA testing, Treiber might have been found guilty alone. Electrical tape used to tie up the victims carried his DNA and traces from two others.
At Van Kempen's flat in Sens police allegedly found the poison chloropicrin -- used to make chloroform, the gas that killed Lherbier and Giraud.
After being questioned and released in March last year, Van Kempen, 51, was taken into custody in November under investigation for complicity to murder.
This week Van Kempen, Treiber and his girlfriend will be confronted with three witnesses in the Sens office of investigating magistrate Mickael Ghir. The witnesses claim they saw the trio plotting the murder at a cafe in Fontainebleau in mid-October 2004.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
RSS