The Murder of Agnès Marin

Browsing through the numerous articles on the brutal murder of Agnès Marin, I found much useless talk from government officials on how "we must understand what went wrong" and on how "thorny the problem of recidivism is", etc… etc… The pretense of bewilderment is their default reaction, when in fact they should be perplexed that such horrors don't happen more often.

Rapes are very common in Europe, as you all know. I have received numerous comments in recent months from Norwegians about Oslo being the rape capital of Europe.

Many girls are raped, often gang-raped, in France, and the crime is not reported. If it is reported and the case goes to trial you are apt to find a corrupt justice system, as was the case last summer in Avignon when psychiatrists testified that a gang of Muslim rapists had been merely performing a rite of passage. (Review my post)

Regarding the latest rape and murder to shatter the complacency of the authorities, the big question is not "Why?" We know why it happened. He was known to the police and he had raped previously. Le Figaro has an article in which a person the paper designates as "Alain Diaz" claims that his niece had been raped in 2010 by the same person who killed Agnès. The girl pleaded for her life and he decided, for whatever reason, not to kill her. More verification of this first rape is needed, but Agnès' killer did spend some time in jail for a 2010 rape, and was released with the assurance from psychiatrists that he was not dangerous. He has still NOT stood trial for this first rape.

The big question is "Who is he?" Is he ethnic French or non-European? We don't know yet. He has been given various names by the media: Mathieu, Matthieu and Martin. He is from a well-to-do family, his father is a professor, his mother an accountant. He has a history of drug abuse and according to "Alain Diaz" in the Figaro article cited above, his father allowed him to watch porn movies. The school (grades 7 through 12) he attended - Cévenol Internat - is an international boarding school of Protestant denomination, in a rural area, and is racially mixed (or as they say, "cosmopolitan"). Many of the students are from wealthy or prominent families.

This was certainly an easily predictable crime. All the elements of a lax justice system, preposterously liberal parents, and psychiatrists in need of psychiatrists converged to permit this horrible deed, where a very young girl was raped and murdered, and her charred body left in the woods near the school. Another glaring injustice was that the school administrators, though aware of the killer's past encounters with the law, did not know precisely what he had done! If this is true, my opinion is that they should have forced the issue in order to find out what the previous crimes were, even if the "system" did not allow such sharing of vital information. The school principal said that it was Mathieu's father who informed them that he had been in trouble before.

However, it is possible that the school DID KNOW that his previous crimes were of a sexual nature. A blogger named Robert Pioche writes:

Jean-Yves Coquillat, the State prosecutor from Clermont-Ferrand has a different version:

"The school admitted the minor in full cognizance after several other establishments had refused him. There are letters in the file that attest to this. It was the boy's father who, during his temporary incarceration in August and September 2010, searched for a boarding school willing to take him."

The obscure point being, at bottom, that in this type of case it is the family - and not the State - that has to find a boarding school…

Agnès' family declared that the administration of the school was "au courant" that Martin "had had problems involving sexual assaults" and that it had considered "kicking him out."

Note that here the killer is called "Martin".

Le Figaro published this interview with "Paul", a school friend of Agnès. Paul begins by explaining that "Mathieu" had inquired about the price of a canister of gas. His friends thought he wanted to fill his cigarette lighter.

- No one suspected Mathieu?

- No, he was quite cultivated and rather nice-looking. Enrolled in 12th grade he was a computer fanatic, good at hacking. To cover up his trail he invented a life and lied to us constantly. He said he was 19 and he never spoke about his past. He only said that he had had problems with drugs.

Paul says they first knew something was wrong last Wednesday when Agnès did not return to class, nor did she go to dinner. They began to be afraid and searched the surrounding area, then entered the woods.

- Then what?

- About forty students, volunteers of all ages searched the woods that extends for 18 hectares. Some areas are hard to get into. At nightfall we clearly heard two loud cries, like screams. We tried to go in their direction but we couldn't get into that area. No one could go any further. Then we smelled an odor of something burning. We thought it was a fire, but some of us began to panic. Around 8:00 p.m. we stopped.

- So you returned to the school?

- Yes. That's when the students caught sight of Mathieu emerging from the woods. He was alone and his face was covered by a scarf. Only later did we see the scratches on his cheek. Without a word, he took a shower for one hour. He was sweating and did not look us in the eye. He explained the scratches by saying he had fallen first into a pond, then in the school, then in the bushes. That's when we were 100% sure he was linked to Agnès' disappearance. We told the education counselor of our doubts and he told us to call the gendarmes. Mathieu was immediately implicated, but we didn't know what the charge was…

- You still don't know anything about Agnès' tragic end?

- We learned about her death Friday evening. Everyone was seated around the television when a school official interrupted the program because he "had something to tell us", then said that a "body had been found". Even if her name was not uttered everyone knew it was our Agnès. For several hours, teachers, administrators, guards and pupils all wept. Now, we all want to know why, and especially how, a potential assassin was allowed among us.

At the end of this interview is a BFMTV video that lasts a little over sixty seconds. We see the prosecutor and the police, then a young black male student speaks about how Mathieu had participated in the search for Agnès, knowing he had killed her. He comments on the cold-bloodedness of Mathieu who went with the others to look for her. The narrator says that the other students thought of him as rather solitary, fond of video games and the guitar. Then the black student returns and says that the killer did not seem to be the type to look for trouble. He lived in his own "bubble". Next, a youth who appears to be North African, with Western-style facial piercings repeats what the other student had said. Then there's a shot of a young white man at the window of the school. At first I thought it was "Mathieu", but that would not be possible since he had been taken into custody. The narrator talks about his previous convictions, and the court's ruling that he be monitored, a ruling that he complied with. The experts found him to be "re-insertable" (i.e. capable of rejoining society), and not dangerous.


Agnès : portrait du meurtrier présumé by BFMTV

Here are Marine Le Pen's comments:

"We are rotted by this ideology of constantly excusing crime. The constant intervention by psychiatrists is the proof: they regard criminals as being sick. It's the psychiatrists who should be locked up (along with the ideologists of the culture of excuse). For five years we have watched recidivists repeat their crimes. Before 2007 and the arrival of Nicolas Sarkozy to power, we had never seen a recidivist repeat his crime."

Elsewhere Marine Le Pen has voiced her intention to restore the death penalty if elected, and if the people agree:

"I think that those who kill our children must risk their lives. It is an essential topic that the French people must decide on." She said that she would "organize a referendum so the people can choose between the death penalty and life in prison."

Her remarks have triggered a lot of commentary at the message boards where many readers cite the case of the governor of Oregon who, having condoned capital punishment, has now gone back on his decision. My impression is that many French people are afraid of the death penalty because of the risk of judicial error, others think it's an abomination even if there is no error, and others want it restored.

Below, a view of the Cévenol boarding school.