This is the story of a femicide with an unthinkable scenario. On February 11, 2021, winter fell on Ille-et-Vilaine and everyone was looking for Magali Blandin. This mother of four children, going through a divorce, has disappeared. For an entire month, her now ex-spouse, Jérôme Gaillard, played the grieving husband. Until the day he goes to the investigating judge’s office: he says he is being blackmailed and he feels in danger.
“This is where the story becomes completely incredible”exclaims in Voices of Crime Caryl Férey who investigated the case in Magalibook published by Robert Laffont (2024). It turns out that Jérôme Gaillard planned to have Magali killed by henchmen previously hired. “As he rented garages to Georgians who were near his home (…) he told them, bluntly, ‘I want to get rid of my wife, she’s going to leave me, she’s a slut, I I’m going to kill her, and I’ll give you 10,000 euros to do it,'” the writer continues.
Unfortunately for Jérôme, “the Georgians” as they will be commonly called in the file, have another plan in mind: during a second meeting, the scenario falls apart. “They release a recording and they say, ‘well there you go, in fact, we’re not going to take 10,000 euros to kill it, we’re going to ask you 15,000 euros to close it,” describes Caryl Férey. Jérôme Gaillard is trapped and decides to kill Magali Blandin himself.
He said to himself two things: ‘I’m going to kill my wife, alone, because the Georgians won’t do it anyway. And to get rid of the other problem (…) I will file a complaint for blackmail
Caryl Férey on Jérôme Gaillard
On February 11, 2021, the man went to Magali Blandin’s home with a baseball bat and hit her twice before strangling her. He then buried her body in the middle of the night in a local wood. “He said to himself, two things: ‘I’m going to kill my wife, alone, because the Georgians won’t do it anyway. And to get rid of the other problem, the first being Magali, the second being the Georgians, I will file a complaint for blackmail. But that’s completely stupid!” Caryl Férey is indignant.
Because from the start, Jérôme Gaillard has been in the investigators’ sights. His attitude is striking, all the more so on the day the GIGN arrests three of the people suspected of having tried to extort him. “When the GIGN said “Yeah, ok, we’re going to try to bust the people who are going to sing. We need you, you’re going to get in the trunk.’ So there, he was so happy because in fact, that’s what his lawyer said, he was a movie hero.”
A few days later, Jérôme Gaillard was taken into police custody and admitted to having killed his wife. At the same time, his parents were also questioned: they were suspected of having provided their son’s money and alibi. with knowledge of his criminal plan. They assure that they knew nothing about it. Faced with the scale of his crime, Jérôme Gaillard committed suicide in his cell in November 2021, followed by his parents three months later.
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