Frenchman Dominique Pelicot, convicted in December for organizing the rape of his then-wife Gisele Pelicot by dozens of strangers, was questioned yesterday by an investigating magistrate over an attempted rape, as well as rape and murder, in the 1990s, his lawyer said.
Pelicot, 72, received a 20-year sentence for aggravated rape in December. He was previously investigated for a rape and murder case in Paris in 1991 and an attempted rape in Seine-et-Marne, near the capital, in 1999, according to his lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro.
“Mr. Pelicot answered all the questions he was asked, cooperating like always,” Zavarro said afterward.
She mentioned that the investigation, managed by a unit in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris dedicated to solving “cold cases,” has been ongoing since October 2022. Dominique Pelicot was interrogated in October 2023.
He denied any involvement in the 1991 rape and murder case but admitted to the 1999 attempted rape after DNA evidence identified him.
These dates are well before the near decade from 2011 to 2020, 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 two-decade gap between these crimes has raised concerns that Pelicot may have engaged in other undisclosed acts during this period.
His ex-wife, Gisele Pelicot, has been celebrated as a hero for her remarkable courage and dignity throughout the three-month trial. The proceedings concluded in December, resulting in the conviction of all 51 defendants, including her former husband and the men he recruited to assault her.
During his trial, Dominique Pelicot confessed to the 1999 attempted rape.
“It was indeed me,” he said. “I removed her T-shirt, shoes, and trousers, but I didn’t do anything.”
However, he denied any involvement in the 1991 murder and rape of Sophie Narme, a real estate agent killed in Paris.
“I have nothing to do with that case,” he said, despite the similarities in the two cases. Both the victims were young real estate agents aged 23, whom a man visited under a false name to view an apartment.
The two women were undressed from below in the same way.
A powerful scent of ether, an anesthetic once commonly used in surgeries, was detected at the crime scene surrounding Sophie Narme. This substance had been used to assault a young woman back in 1999.
“I had a little bottle of ether in the car and a piece of string,” he said of the attempted rape case during his trial.
Asked why he fled, he said: “I had a mental block, thinking it could have been my daughter,” he said. Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, would have been in her early twenties.
Darian, now 46, believes she was also drugged and raped by Pelicot after seeing pictures of her unconscious body, wearing underwear she did not recognize, were found among the detailed records her father kept of his crimes.
This month, she told the BBC that he “deserves to die in prison” because he is “a dangerous man.”
Of the 50 individuals sentenced on December 14, 14 have filed appeals.
