A teddy bear “. This is how David Lautour is described. A 36-year-old father, loving husband, courageous man, passionate about mechanics. A quiet guy, in short, who spends his days repairing cars “black”, in the large courtyard of his house, in Lourches. In fragile health – a heart attack suffered at the age of 23 made him unfit for work – David Lautour leads a simple existence, between car parts and family celebrations. His horizon has four faces: his wife Stéphanie *, his mother Corinne *, his son, and Alex his brother. With his wife, the “pillar” of his life, it was love at first sight at 14 years old. They love each other, get married, start a family. A stable pattern, a thousand leagues from the situation that David experienced in his youth, and that he especially does not want to reproduce. He is the brother and half-brother of some forty children that his father, Roger Dubrunfaut, had with dozens of different women, and whom he did not all recognize. This is why David Lautour took his mother’s name. One of his brothers, Alexandre, the one he is closest to, is named after his father, Dubrunfaut. This filial maze, to say the least mind-blowing, did not fail to surprise the court of the Douai Court of Appeal, which met for four days, from February 2 to 5, 2021, to rule on the “Dubrunfaut affair”. In the courtroom, some of the non-standard siblings are present. On the one hand, those who demand justice for their brother Alexander. On the other, those who support their brother David. Between the two brothers, however, the understanding was perfect. They hadn’t grown up together – Alexander being entrusted to his father at birth – but had grown closer. They spent hours working the cars at David’s; called and saw each other every day. And it is perhaps from this ultra proximity that an extra-marital relationship was born between Stéphanie * and Alexandre. ” I met Alex two and a half months before his death in early October, tells the young woman, rather silent, at the bar of the court. We got closer at a party. We didn’t tell anyone, we hid everything from my husband. And then what happened … I have my share of responsibility. If I had confessed the relationship to my husband, things wouldn’t have turned out like this. He began to have doubts a week before. I was denying, I was in my bubble at the time. I really saw him unhappy and I didn’t even realize it. The lovers called and texted each other regularly. The rumor of their relationship began to make its way in the family circle. ” I liked two people“, Confides the wife of the accused. On December 5, 2016, unable to stand it any longer, the young woman threw the pavement into the pond. ” I told my husband that I wanted to take a break, to separate myself, to take my independence, but I didn’t tell him anything about Alexander“. David does not react badly, despite the jealousy that gnaws at him. ” My husband is not angry, he never raised a hand on me“, Says Stéphanie, whose entourage says she is the one in charge at home. “It has happened to him to fight, but very rarely. »Stephanie’s mother said of her stepson that“He is one of the only members of the family to live normally. When he’s angry, he sulks, that’s all. However, the next day, December 6, a fight broke out between the two brothers, now enemies. According to their relatives, the tension had been mounting for several days and the altercation was brewing. Two of their brothers had even informed their common employer, in the building, to ask him to watch them. So that day, as often, Alexandre was at David’s to tinker with a car. David had been away to pick up his son from school. During this time, Stéphanie had made a phone call to Alexandre. ” I told David that we were friends, that I gave him the month and that after the holidays, I broke up. It’s hard not to see you, I can’t stay like this. Julie was very much in love, while Alexander was shy. ” Alexandre made no secret of loving women, he was a womanizer and his partner – Ophélie – knew it. He was not in love with Julie, he was sleeping with her, that’s all“, Underlines Corinne, the mother of David and Alexandre. If the intention of the two lovers was not necessarily the same, the fact remains that they exchanged their last words there. This is indeed the last conversation that Alexander will have had with someone on the phone. His phone was cut around 6 p.m. on December 6, 2016, and no one could reach him. His cell phone will be found the next day, in a grove, a few meters from a burned-out vehicle, Chemin de Chasse du Bois, in Quarouble. No more SIM card, no more battery. On the other hand, a small bloodstain: the mixed blood of Alexander and David …
A fatal blow to the carotid artery
On December 13, seven days after the death of Alexandre Dubrunfaut, a judicial investigation was opened for intentional homicide. David, his wife Stéphanie and his mother Corinne are taken into custody. It was only at the end of the 7e hearing, after 48 hours in police custody, that the investigators manage to extract the truth from the mouth of David Lautour, encouraged by Stéphanie to spit the piece. He explains that on returning from the school where he had gone to look for his son, on Wednesday, December 6, he would have surprised his brother Alexandre hastily putting his phone away after a conversation. David would have asked him if he was on the phone with Stephanie and his brother would have nodded by taunting him. The tone would be raised. Who is Alexander or David the first to grab hold of an iron bar? Still, Alexander would have tried to escape, chased by David. He would have walked towards the gate which he failed to open because it was closed. He would then have entered the house through the open French window and then tried to open the front door, which was also locked. Stuck, Alexandre would then have seized a knife posed on the sink, in the kitchen, and would have pointed it in the direction of his brother. David would have liked to grab the knife. While they both had their hands on the knife, David would have stumbled against the coffee table in the living room and fell backwards. Alexander, carried away in his fall, fell on David and received the knife in his throat. The circumstances of the altercation that led to this fatal stabbing remain unclear. Was the blow Alexander received was it deliberately or accidentally, as the respondent claims? The forensic pathologist’s conclusions tip the scales … Indeed, the latter indicates that the blow responsible for the section of the carotid – which killed Alexander – was carried from top to bottom, in the posture of the “stab”. At this point, the blade would have even penetrated the neck in depth to the point of also severing the vertebra. The section of the carotid artery, responsible for draining the blood flow, instantly results in impressive and abundant jets of blood. However, between the moment when Alexandre is mortally wounded and the moment when Julie comes home from work, around 6:15 pm, very little time passes. However, David has time to load his brother’s body in the trunk, to move the car near the boules pitch in Lourches, to return home where he will, a priori, be unwell, and to telephone his mother so that ‘she helps him. ” I saw no trace of blood in the house, nothing at all that supposed there was a fight “, assures the sexagenarian, suspected for a moment of having helped her son to clean up the scene of the crime. ” It’s serious to think that. David respects me too much, he would never have asked me such a thing. If David had confessed to me killing Alex, I would have called the police. I have a son in prison who I reported for theft, even though I love my children more than anything. Investigators are skeptical. ” If it was an accident, why didn’t you call for help right away? Why have you put so much energy into disguising your crime? David’s relatives, his wife and some of his sisters point out this same “mistake”. ” I told him he should have called the police. It’s all he did after Alexander died that is worse“, Recognizes Stéphanie. Did David Lautour panic? Or was the murder premeditated? Civil party lawyers and defense lawyers will certainly not have the same point of view on the subject. The tribunal will have the heavy task of forming an opinion on this complex case. ” It’s difficult to form a clear opinion on Monsieur Lautour“, Summarizes the investigator. P.B.
* first names changed
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