NANTERRE, France — Dominique Pélicot, who has been convicted for raping his former wife, is currently under investigation for potential connections to other heinous crimes, including cases of rape and murder from the 1990s. On Thursday, he was interrogated by an investigating magistrate focusing on these historical cases that had previously remained unsolved.
Pélicot has already been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the traumatic abuse inflicted on his ex-wife, Gisèle Pélicot. As part of the ongoing investigation, he is facing renewed questioning regarding these prior cases, including the murder of property agent Sophie Narme, who was killed in Paris on December 4, 1991. According to his attorney, Béatrice Zavarro, Pélicot vehemently denies any involvement in Narme’s death.
Additionally, there is another case linked to an attempted armed sexual assault on a different property agent in Villeparisis, a suburb of Paris, occurring on May 11, 1999. In this instance, while Pélicot admits to having met the woman and attempting to undress her, he denies the charges of attempted rape, as stated by his lawyer.
Since October 2022, Pélicot has been formally investigated for both these incidents, which suggests that law enforcement believes there is significant evidence implicating him in the crimes. Florence Rault, an attorney representing the victims, noted various similarities between the two cases that raise suspicions that they may involve the same assailant. “One must be cautious,” she remarked, but the parallels in the methods employed and the similarities between the victims warrant intense scrutiny, she added during an interview on RTL radio.
The two cases were consolidated into a single investigation in September 2022, now helmed by a specialized unit dedicated to cold cases and serial offenses in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre. Zavarro, while entering the hearing, indicated that her client intends to assist the authorities. She emphasized Pélicot’s previous interactions with the victim from the 1999 case while asserting that he had no acquaintance with Sophie Narme.
“His position has always been that he never met Sophie Narme,” Zavarro pointed out, clarifying that there was DNA evidence connecting him to the scene of the attempted assault on the other agent. Pélicot admitted to having a confrontation with her but insists his motivations differed from attempted rape, according to his lawyer.
In light of the serious allegations, Zavarro reminded the media of her client’s presumption of innocence. She also highlighted the isolating conditions of his imprisonment, mentioning that he has been confined to solitary confinement since 2020 without visitor privileges. “This isolation measure was imposed due to the nature of his crimes, and he has accepted it without complaint,” she stated.
Pélicot, now 72 years old, faces the possibility of spending the remainder of his life in prison. He is not eligible for early release until at least two-thirds of his 20-year sentence has been served. The cases currently under investigation occurred well before the drugging and rapes of Gisèle Pélicot, which took place over nearly a decade starting in 2011. During that period, he incapacitated her with drugs in her food and drink to facilitate the sexual assaults by men he met through the internet.
Gisèle Pélicot has emerged as a courageous figure in France and internationally, notably for her demand for a public trial against her abusers. The evidence against Dominique Pélicot was shocking, featuring disturbing homemade videos of the assaults that he recorded in their retirement residence, alongside a staggering collection of over 20,000 images and videos, meticulously organized with titles such as “abuse” and “her rapists.”
