What was on his mind that night? Four and a half years after the death of little Maëlys, aged eight, the question of the motive for the crime still arises. Will the trial to be held from January 31 to February 18, 2022 provide answers? Nothing is less sure. In May 2021, tried for the death of Corporal Arthur Noyer, Nordahl Lelandais had remained clinging to his version – blows, without intention to kill – but it was indeed for murder that the court had sentenced him to 20 years in prison. And he didn't appeal. This time, the 38-year-old former soldier and dog handler faces life imprisonment.

For lack of material elements, justice did not send him back to the assizes for rape of a minor. And some sensational journalists even build risky theories on these gray areas, involving a plot in which Lelandais is only a "link in the chain". In reality, the whole of the judicial file clearly draws another portrait: that of a man adrift, with pedophile inclinations.

“Have you seen my daughter? »

It is around 3 a.m. on August 27, 2017, when Maëlys' parents notice his disappearance, in the village hall where the wedding to which they are invited is being held, in Pont-de-Beauvoisin (Isère). The DJ just played at least two songs the kid loved - one by Kendji Girac, the other "Cotton Eye Joe" - and the kid didn't appear on the dance floor.

READ ALSO: From childhood to the Assize Court, the long drift of Nordahl Lelandais

Her mother remembers that a little earlier, at cheese time, she wanted to see her "boyfriend's" dogs. So she designated this thirty-year-old, unknown to the battalion, who joined the wedding and who showed her on his phone photos of his two Malinois. The little one then came back for dessert but as she didn't like the cake, she went back to play in the room. Since then, it has evaporated.

More and more worried, Jennifer looks for her daughter everywhere, soon imitated by the other guests, in the main room, in the corner reserved for children, outside, in the kitchen. She borrows the DJ's microphone to make a call, comes out and then meets the “dog man”, who is coming back from the parking lot. “Have you seen my daughter? she asks. “No,” he replies impassively.

“I was surprised that he didn't wave to me, that he didn't come and ask me where things were going with the little one's research. »

At 3:50 am, the gendarmerie is called and fifteen minutes later, the investigation begins. On board a helicopter, soldiers go to the home of Maëlys' parents, in the Jura, to take a pillowcase and present it to a Saint-Hubert dog. The animal is looking for the trace, people are asked to leave the place and gather at the town hall so as not to disturb its sense of smell. The dog does not go beyond the parking lot. To believe that the little one left the scene in a car.

In the early morning, some guests - among the few who knew him - already have a strange impression about this "dog man". A witness tells the gendarmes that Nordahl Lelandais disappeared during the search. His cell phone was no longer responding. Once at the town hall, where the investigators gathered the guests to question them, this witness saw the dog handler at the bar next door, "Le bon coin", who stared him straight in the eye. “I was surprised that he didn't wave to me, that he didn't come and ask me where things were going with the little one's research. »

"We know you're there, we're going to cut you up!" »

The noose is quickly tightening around the former soldier: 182 people went to this wedding, and 110 more as an aperitif, but he had no alibi at the time of the disappearance. During his first hearing, he lies, claiming not to know the child when several witnesses saw them discussing. His Audi A3 is seized on August 29, sniffer dogs inspect the vehicle and are then seized with vomiting, because of the detergents abundantly used to wash the interior.

READ ALSO: Nordahl Lelandais trial: "There may have been shortcomings in the investigation"

His contradictions – and the certainty that his phone was cut off when the girl disappeared – lead the investigators to place Lelandais in custody on August 31. Released after a few hours, the 30-year-old returned to his home, but he knew he was in the eye of the storm. On the morning of September 3, with a friend present, he was even forced to call “17” himself, feeling “threatened, in danger”, probably by followers of expeditious justice. So much so that they search the surroundings of his family home, armed with sticks, and shout: "We know you're there, we're going to cut you up!" A few hours later, he finally returns to police custody. Then he is put on trial.

The soldiers have less and less hope of finding Maëlys alive. They check several vehicles, find out about garbage collection, track CCTV images, search ruins, car wrecks, caravans, probe the ground, water, make contact with hunters... Bad weather conditions hamper their work. And also the omnipresence of journalists.

“I imagine that he could have had a history of debts with people and that he sold the little one to pay. »

Because the affair spreads in all the media and the shock wave amazes this small territory straddling Isère and Savoie. Lelandais, child killer? Until then, we took him for a banal mytho, a party squatter, a somewhat heavy tuning fanatic, a dealer who went from hash to coke. But not for a criminal.

It is on this ground of perplexity that the rumors are soon born: “For me, Nordahl is not intelligent enough to make Maëlys disappear without being able to find her. I think he must have an accomplice, ”says one of his acquaintances. What accomplice? “He went to a boxing gym whose trainer had problems with the kids”, scaffolds another. "I see it more as part of a traffic for money," says a new witness. "I imagine that he may have had a history of debts with people and that he sold the little one to pay his debts", dares a young woman. Debts to whom? “A friend told me that a guy coming out of prison said that Nordahl had debts with Albanians. Variant that sounds like an Arabic telephone: “With a Lebanese. »

READ ALSO: At the Lelandais trial, the accused facing his ex-friends: "Stop all this cinema, Nordahl"

These rumors appear well in the file of the Maëlys affair. We find them, stretched and deformed, almost four years later, uttered by two journalists, Karl Zero and Oli Porri Santoro, at the microphone of Cyril Hanouna in the program "Touche pas à mon poste" in particular, in May 2021: "" It is likely that Nordahl Lelandais benefited from complicity (…) There are people who are still free as the air and who, for the moment, are not worried by justice (…) We are talking about organized crime (…) Maëlys does not correspond exactly to the type of people that Lelandais wanted to rape, is that not an order? » pretend to wonder the two, in full promotion for a new magazine focused on scandalous cases, and suggesting that they have tangible elements in this direction (which we are still waiting for…).

Keywords pedophiles

In reality, nothing, absolutely nothing, came to support the trail of complicity or child trafficking. The promoters of the sensationalist theory even argue that the fire which ravaged a building of the Grenoble gendarmerie in the fall of 2017 caused compromising evidence to disappear. In reality, the claim was claimed by the ultra-left, with no connection to the case. And according to the Grenoble public prosecutor's office, the only seals from the Maëlys procedure destroyed by the flames are a pair of socks found by a clairvoyant and samples of wheel-washing liquid...

On the other hand, a major element appeared during the investigations: the pedophile inclinations of Lelandais. In 2017, by exploiting the computer media of their number 1 suspect, the gendarmes discovered that he had been a subscriber, since February of the same year, to accounts of the Instagram social network publishing photos of teenage girls, even children. prepubescent, scantily clad.

On July 6, 2017, SMS exchanges with his last girlfriend show that she had detected these tendencies in him since she then asked him, angry: why does he “watch porn films about children? ".

On August 26, 2017, in the morning, a few hours before Maëlys disappeared, he searched the Internet for keywords usually used by pedophiles. The next day, he formulated new, more ambiguous research.

“During the reconstitution of the facts organized by justice, he will strike repeated blows of extreme intensity with the back of his hand on the dummy symbolizing the body of the child. »

Worse, the sleuths of the gendarmerie exhume content that Lelandais had deleted from his digital devices: two videos of sexual assault committed on two children in their sleep, one in July 2017, the other in August 2017, six days before the disappearance of Maëlys. In this case, two little cousins ​​of Lelandais aged six and four. Indicted for these facts, the suspect will eventually confess and admit that the videos he himself had shot were intended to be re-watched. He will also be tried for these two cases at the trial of the case.

But he never recognized touching Maëlys. During the reconstruction of the facts organized by the courts, he strikes repeated blows of extreme intensity with the back of his hand on the dummy symbolizing the body of the child. Without really being able to explain this sudden outburst of violence.

Found in February 2018 on the heights of Attignat-sur-Oncin (Savoie) in a cavity surrounded by rocks, Maëlys' body was reduced to the state of a skeleton and there was no evidence to attest to sexual violence. If semen was found on absorbent paper in Lelandais' car, no trace was detected on the fabrics, panties or sandals found next to the bones frozen in the snow.

The gendarmes also did not find a phone that Lelandais allegedly threw into the waters of Lac du Bourget on September 2, 2017, and which they believe could contain compromising videos.

"Almighty"

Psychiatric experts have distinguished in Lelandais an "excessive excitement, both in terms of the consumption of alcohol and drugs, and his sexual behavior, which testifies to his need to maintain a high level of tension allowing him to situate himself in a dynamic of radical omnipotence, giving him the feeling of being beyond the human condition, good and evil”. This insatiable sexual appetite was also at the heart of the investigations, Lelandais having chained sexual adventures with women and men. A regular on dating sites will even explain to the gendarmes that the soldier had offered him a paid relationship.

In the light of these conclusions, the Court which will judge him will perhaps also question him on another point. An hour and a half before Maëlys disappeared, he had texted his last girlfriend to find out if she was sleeping. She hadn't acknowledged until after six o'clock in the morning. Regretting his silence, Lelandais had confided to him, during his incarceration but before his confession: “If you had answered, that would have changed everything, damn it. »