PARIS: Frenchman Dominique Pelicot, convicted in December for organising the rape of his then wife Gisele Pelicot by dozens of strangers, was being questioned Thursday by an investigating magistrate over an attempted rape, as well as a rape and murder, in the 1990s, his lawyer said.
Pelicot, 72, who was sentenced in December to 20 years for aggravated rape, is being questioned over a rape and murder in Paris in 1991 and an attempted rape in the Seine-et-Marne region outside the capital in 1999, his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro said.
She said the investigation, being handled by a unit in the Paris suburb of Nanterre dedicated to “cold cases”, had been going on since October 2022 and Dominique Pelicot had already been interrogated in October 2023.
He has denied involvement in the 1991 rape and murder case, but has admitted to the 1999 attempted rape after he was identified by his DNA.
These dates are well before the near decade during which Pelicot invited dozens of strangers, whom he had recruited online, to the family home in the town of Mazan in southern France to rape his heavily sedated wife Gisele.
The 20-year gap between these crimes has sparked fears that Dominique Pelicot could have committed other acts in the interim that have not yet come to light.
During his trial alongside 50 other men, Dominique Pelicot had confessed to the 1999 attempted rape.
“It was indeed me,” he said. “I took off her T-shirt, her shoes and her trousers but I didn’t do anything.”
But he denied outright having played a role in the murder and rape of Sophie Narme, a real estate agent killed in Paris in 1991.
“I have nothing to do with that case,” he said, despite the similarities in the two cases, with the victims both young real estate agents aged 23, who were visited by a man under a false name to view an apartment.
The two women were undressed from below in the same way.
A strong smell of ether was also noted at the crime scene around Sophie Narme, and the substance had been used to attack Marion in 1999.
Gisele Pelicot was hailed as a hero and feminist icon for her courage and dignity in the over-three-month trial that ended in December with all 51 defendants, including her ex-husband and the men he enlisted to rape her, being convicted.
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