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 s, 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 and an attempted rape in the Seine-et-Marne region outside the capital in , 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 and Dominique Pelicot had already been interrogated in October He has denied involvement in the rape and murder case but has admitted to the attempted rape after he was identified by his DNA. These dates are well before the near decade from to 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 year gap between these crimes has sparked fears that Pelicot could have committed other acts in the interim that have not yet come to light.
His ex-wife Gisele Pelicot has been hailed as a hero 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. But he denied having played a role in the murder and rape of Sophie Narme, a real estate agent killed in Paris in A strong smell of ether -- an anaesthetic historically used in surgery -- was also noted at the crime scene around Sophie Narme, and the substance had been used to attack the young woman in Asked why he fled, he said: "I had a mental block, thinking it could have been my daughter," he said.
Darian, now 46, believes she was also drugged and raped by Pelicot after seeing pictures of her unconscious body, wearing underwear she did not recognise, were found among the detailed records her father kept of his crimes. Dominique Pelicot could thus again appear in court, but as a witness, during an appeals trial later this year in front of a jury, according to a prosecutor in the southern city of Nimes. French rapist Dominique Pelicot questioned over s cases.
