“We cut it up in the kitchen, as in Santa Claus is junk”

Five knives, three hacksaws. The images are displayed on the screen, in the courtroom of the Yvelines Assize Court. Then, it’s a pavilion with salmon plaster, in a quiet lane in Magny-les-Hameaux, on the edge of a wood. Philippe Pico, mechanic, was assassinated there in December 1996. He was 46 years old. While his two sons were sleeping upstairs, Philippe, drugged by drugs administered by his wife, was hit in the heart on his bed with a diving knife, stabbed in the carotid artery in the bathtub and then cut into pieces.

Allow the lover to marry his mistress?

Fabrice Motch, 50, appears before the jurors since Monday and until Wednesday evening. His brother, Lionel, 46, former chief warrant officer in the fire department, nicknamed “the pitbull” in the middle, and Yannick Lannou, the ex-wife of Philippe Pico, must answer for the same facts. At the time, Yannick and Fabrice were lovers. “This assassination was planned in order to facilitate their marriage. Philippe Pico was an obstacle. ” This is the conviction displayed at the bar this Tuesday by an investigator from the DRPJ of Versailles.

In 2008, during his hearing by this policeman, Lionel Motch explained without blinking that they had cut up Pico’s body “in the kitchen, as in Santa Claus is junk”… Plastic bags, food film , body parts thrown in the neighborhood trash cans … At the helm, the police retrace the macabre picture.

Violent and alcoholic

Since the start of the trial, Yannick and Fabrice have stuck to their position: if they eliminated Pico, “violent and alcoholic”, it was to protect Yannick and the children. “When she talks about her life with Pico, Yannick Lannou describes hell,” insists Fabrice Motch’s lawyer. Confirmed by some, denied by others, the alleged violence of Philippe Pico occupied a large part of the debates on Tuesday.

For twelve years, Yannick and the Motch brothers made those around them believe that Philippe had left the marital home to start a new life in Brittany. In 2008, while an investigation for rape and sexual assault on minors was being carried out against him (Editor’s note: he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for these facts in 2010), Fabrice Motch, former firefighter, confessed that ‘he had killed Pico with Yannick and Lionel. “I should have taken it alone”, he concedes from the box.

“I am responsible for this assassination”

This time he takes it all on himself. By explaining his actions coldly, almost clinically. “I hit right in the heart. A clear, clean shot. In the tub, his carotid artery was severed to drain his blood. I am responsible for this assassination. Yannick saw nothing and Lionel only assisted me ”. “I have been carrying this burden for twenty years, Lionel sobs. Fabrice made the cord of brotherly love vibrate. He told me he needed me and I fell for it ”. “Didn’t those gestures, that cut body impress you? »Tries the president. “The terrible scenes are the daily life of firefighters,” he eludes. The occult brain. The three accused face life imprisonment. The verdict is expected this Wednesday evening.