After more than a year of inquiries, French investigators believe a lesbian crime of passion is at the center of the unsolved murder of the daughter of a famous actor and her female lover.
The double poisoning suggests undertones of love, greed and jealousy.
Geraldine Giraud, 36, and Katia Lherbier, 32, were both killed and dumped in a storm drain near the home of forester Jean-Pierre Treiber on Dec. 9, 2004.
Geraldine, who had acted in two mainstream films, lived in the shadow of her showbiz parents. Roland Giraud, 63, is a veteran of French film and mother, Maaike Jansen, is an actress.
Katia, openly lesbian, fronted a pop group.
Geraldine and Katia vanished on Nov. 1, 2004, after a weekend at the Giraud country cottage at La Postolle in Burgundy.
They had met on Oct. 14 at the Sens home of Katia's singing teacher, Marie-Christine Van Kempen. Katia lodged with Van Kempen, who is Maaike Jansen's sister, and police are working on the theory that they may have had a relationship.
On Nov. 23, 2004, while police were still looking for Giraud and Lherbier, they arrested Treiber. He had made purchases on the women's credit cards and withdrawn more than 2,000 euros (US$2,380).
He said he knew nothing about their whereabouts and claimed they gave him their cards and pin numbers, telling him to use them. Three weeks later their bodies were found in the drain in front of his house at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne.
A set of Geraldine's keys were found in his garden, as well as a partly melted portable phone.
Treiber had financial problems and had given a small-time crook his savings for a `business venture' that went wrong.
If not for DNA testing, Treiber might have been found guilty alone. Electrical tape used to tie up the victims carried his DNA and traces from two others.
At Van Kempen's flat in Sens police allegedly found the poison chloropicrin -- used to make chloroform, the gas that killed Lherbier and Giraud.
After being questioned and released in March last year, Van Kempen, 51, was taken into custody in November under investigation for complicity to murder.
This week Van Kempen, Treiber and his girlfriend will be confronted with three witnesses in the Sens office of investigating magistrate Mickael Ghir. The witnesses claim they saw the trio plotting the murder at a cafe in Fontainebleau in mid-October 2004.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
With a monthly pension barely sufficient to buy 15 eggs or a small bag of rice, Cuba’s elderly people struggle to make ends meet in one of Latin America’s poorest and fastest-aging countries. As the communist island battles its deepest economic crisis in three decades, the state is finding it increasingly hard to care for about 2.4 million inhabitants — more than one-quarter of the population — aged 60 and older. Sixty is the age at which women — for men it is 65 — qualify for the state pension, which starts at 1,528 pesos per month. That is less than US$13
RSS