At the beginning of March, a first threatening letter arrived in Jérôme Gaillard’s letterbox, in Montauban-de-Bretagne, west of Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine). Then a second. Before an appointment, given on March 14, for the delivery of a ransom organized in the Maurepas district, south of Rennes.
Georgians allegedly demanded a sum of € 15,000 from him in exchange for their silence. Because they would have a sound recording, compromising, in which he speaks of the project to kill his wife, Magali Blandin.
During a GIGN operation on March 14 in Maurepas, the gendarmes first arrested a man, who came to meet Jérôme Gaillard, to receive the money. And a “lookout”, responsible for monitoring and giving the alert. Then, in Servon-sur-Vilaine, a third man will be identified as the one who threatened Magali’s husband.
A “blackmailer”?
This 20-year-old “blackmailer” is “Concerned by the criminal conspiracy », indicated Philippe Astruc, public prosecutor of Rennes. He is indicted for attempted organized gang extortion and organized gang murder, and remanded in custody, while his wife, also arrested, is placed under judicial supervision.
Read also: The gray areas surrounding the Magali Blandin affair
Before demanding the € 15,000, he would have already received a sum of € 20,000, as part of a “contract” concluded, in the fall of 2020, to kill Magali. But this one was not executed.
Was it Jerome who hired this Georgian? Or would this have given rise to the idea of an assassination, because he knew Jérôme Gaillard separated and distraught? “It is necessary to find all the recordings to see in what context they were made, from scraps”, says Jean-Guillaume Le Mintier, Jérôme Gaillard’s lawyer.
He and the Georgian have known each other for a long time: the second was the regular tenant of a shed, on the property of Montauban-de-Bretagne, where Magali Blandin and her husband saw their four children grow up. He is a man in a regular situation, socially and professionally integrated.
Appeal from detention
On Tuesday March 16, another Georgian national, aged 39, was arrested in Cherbourg (Handle). Before his flight, this man, who had applied for French papers, had also rented, but only for a few months, a shed behind Jérôme Gaillard’s house. He would have boned a car there, which would have been used to transport Magali’s lifeless body. But did he know it? “He denies having done it knowingly”, assures his lawyer, Me Élodie Brault.
He is indicted for destruction of evidence of a crime and attempted organized gang extortion on Saturday, March 20. He went to jail. His lawyer appealed against this placement in pre-trial detention, before the Rennes investigation chamber.
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