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pattern in which the initial blows were intended to immobilise the victim by stunning her, after which fatal blows with a bladed weapon follow very quickly. "Taking into account the force of the blows, her aggressor was a man ...he was left-handed". He said that the lowest cut was the first to be made: "The blade hit higher and higher the more the victim collapsed". The V-shaped injury on the neck "is often found in this type of murder" because of the lateral movement of the head, looking to escape the blows to the neck. According to
Pagliuzza, the attacker must certainly have received blood on him. From the flow of blood, he was confident that the victim never got up; she died "rapidly from bleeding". If she had stood up, the haemorrhage of the liver would have filled the abdominal cavity, which the forensic scientists had not found.
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and silent, showed no trace of a break in. The blinds had only been drawn in the bedroom; glasses and a newspaper were on the unmade bed; a breakfast tray was in the kitchen. The door was not bolted and the keys were in the lock; the alarm was not activated. It seemed as though
Ghislaine Marchal had just woken up, but she was not in the house. The security company employee returned with Francine P. and her attendant. They were quickly joined by Mrs Marchal's doctor. Searching the house, they found jewellery and an open handbag that contained no money.
246:; it was later changed to the 23rd as a correction of what was said to be an error. The family's lawyer argued that Raddad locked the cellar door on leaving, but that Marchal herself blocked it on the inside in case he returned. After a request from the King of Morocco and a partial pardon in 1996 by then French President Jacques Chirac, he was released in September 1998 after serving four years. His name was not cleared.
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visible under the inscription. In front of the metal door, at the back of the main room, part of the same sentence was written on the door of the boiler room: "Omar m'a t". This second inscription was lower than the first and barely legible. It is situated on the boiler room side of the door, but because that door was blocked open, it faced the entrance of the room and not the boiler room, where the body was.
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insert his arm and identify a folding bed placed against the door on the inside. He managed to push it away, but the door remained blocked by a metal pipe wedged against the cement floor. Eventually, by bending the door and kicking the pipe, the officers were able to open the door. In
January 1992, investigators noted that a semi-circular imprint was left on the cement.
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present, and her niece Sabine du
Granrut has said that her aunt did not have a post-secondary education, and the mistake is not significant. Experts at the original trial said that the blood in which the messages were written was Marchal's, and were "two thirds" sure the handwriting was hers; subsequent experts have judged it impossible to identify the handwriting.
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Much of the disagreement surrounding the legal verdict stemmed from the grammatical error in "Omar m'a tuer". Many argue that a fluent French speaker like
Ghislaine Marchal would not make such a grammatical error. However, investigators found examples of writing by Marchal in which the same error is
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Born
Ghislaine de Renty, Ghislaine Marchal was the daughter of an industrialist who participated in the Resistance during the Second World War and died after being deported. Divorced from her first husband, with whom she had a son, in 1991 she was the wealthy widow of Jean-Pierre Marchal, owner of a
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The metal door of the cellar opened onto a hallway. On the left "Omar m'a tuer" ("Omar killed me" in misspelled French; "Omar m'a tuée" would be correct) was written in blood, in well formed letters, one meter above ground level, on a locked white door leading to the wine cellar. A bloody trace was
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Erika S. arrived at La
Chamade on Monday 24 June at 11:30 for lunch as planned. She rang the doorbell twice and called, but there was no answer. Alerted by her and Colette K., a third friend, Francine P., sent an employee of the security company to the house in the early afternoon. The house, dark
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The doctor's first observations on the evening of the 24th, and the autopsy of 28 June revealed severe injuries: "her skull broken, her throat cut, one finger sliced off and her body pierced 10 times by a sharp blade". Scrapes on the arms and legs, in particular on the soles of her feet and the
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The police were alerted in the evening. After searching the main house, they became interested in an annexe with stairs down to a cellar. The metal door to the cellar was found locked, and would not open more than 2cm after it was unlocked. While one officer pushed against it, another was able to
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The misspelled sentence "Omar m'a tuer" ("Omar killed me"), found written in blood at the crime scene, became a widely used phrase in French society during the 1990s. The last word of the sentence is not properly conjugated; it should read: "Omar m'a tuée". Skeptics contended that this is an odd
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Raddad was refused a reexamination of the evidence in 2002. In 2015, new DNA technology revealed traces of four unknown males. According to an expert for Raddad, 35 traces of DNA from at least one unknown source were found in the second written message. In 2021, Raddad requested a retrial on the
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Marchal's family argued that Raddad killed her because she had refused an advance on his wages. Raddad has always denied these claims, saying Ms
Marchal had always treated him well and he had no reason to hurt her. No DNA evidence belonging to Raddad was found at the scene. The family have been
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Dr. Jean
Pagliuzza, a forensic physician who had been consulted by the defense lawyers, spoke to journalist Eve Livet after Raddad was sentenced. According to him, Marchal could have been killed in a rapid sequence of blows over as little as 3 to 4 minutes. In his opinion, the attack followed a
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Forensic experts noted that it was impossible to determine the order in which the blows were delivered. None were immediately fatal; she was judged to have lived for approximately 15 to 30 minutes. Police captain
Georges Cenci noted that the assassin seemed "determined, but also clumsy in his
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In 1994 Omar Raddad, Marchal's Moroccan-born gardener, who at that time spoke little French and was illiterate, was convicted of Marchal's murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In the original pathology report, the date of death was given as the 24th, when Raddad had an
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On Sunday 23 June 1991 at 11:50am, Ghislaine Marchal finished a brief phone conversation with her friend Erika S. She said she had just showered and was in a hurry because she was having lunch with her friends Collette K. and her husband at 1pm.
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At the back of the cellar, Ghislaine Marchal was found lying face down, her legs pointing to the back wall, her arms stretched out in front of her on the ground, dressed in only a blood-stained bath robe pulled up to above her waist.
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in 1991, her gardener Omar Raddad, an illiterate Moroccan immigrant, was arrested. Raddad was convicted in 1994 and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He has maintained his innocence, and received a partial pardon from French President
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basis of this new evidence; the appeals court granted the request in December 2021. In October 2022, the investigative commission rejected Omar Raddad's request for a review of the trial.
270:, has argued for him. Racism has been alleged; during the trial, the presiding judge told Raddad in Arabic, "Anyone who cannot read or write should hide themselves away in a hole."
141:, which reduced his sentence to four years and eight months. He was released from prison in 1998, and in 2021 received permission to reopen the case after the discovery of new
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company that supplied equipment for automobiles. She divided her time between a primary residence in Switzerland and her villa
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back of the knees, as well as traces of dust and cement on the robe, suggested that the victim had been dragged.
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Expertise en Ă©critures: quel poids dans la balance? les affaires, Dreyfus, Villemin, Omar Raddad
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277:"Omar m'a tuer" became a catchphrase in France in the 1990s. Two books about the case,
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mistake for a native French speaker to make. The case was the subject of the 2011 film
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499:"A Socialite, a Gardener, a Message in Blood: The Murder That Still Grips France"
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469:"Gardener Omar Raddad wins fight to re-open notorious murder case"
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Omar Raddad: contre-enquĂȘte pour la rĂ©vision d'un procĂšs manipulĂ©
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727:. Politique, idée, société (in French). Paris: L'Archipel.
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L'Affaire Omar Raddad. Le dossier pour servir la vérité
266:; since Raddad's conviction, another celebrity lawyer,
689:(with Sylvie Lotiron) (in French). Paris: du Seuil.
177:, which she had built in the hills of Mougins, near
48:. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
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363:(in French). Paris: L'Harmattan. pp. 26â27.
668:Omar l'a tuée: Vérité et manipulations d'opinion
613:(in French). Paris: François-Xavier de Guibert.
590:Deloire, Christophe; Moreau, Roger-Marc (1998).
361:Omar l'a tuée: Vérité et manipulations d'opinion
534:(in French) (rev ed.). Paris: de Fallois.
632:. EnquĂȘtes (in French). Paris: La DĂ©couverte.
573:Omar n'a pas tué: l'assassin a signé son crime
383:(in French). Paris: Michel Lafon. p. 15.
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757:Recipients of French presidential pardons
108:Learn how and when to remove this message
137:in 1996 at the request of Moroccan King
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334:"Omar Raddad réclame sa réhabilitation"
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594:(in French). Paris: Raymond Castells.
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424:"Who really killed Ghislaine Marchal?"
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554:"Omar m'a tuer": histoire d'un crime
381:"Omar m'a tuer": histoire d'un crime
46:adding citations to reliable sources
651:(in French). Villeurbanne: Golias.
575:(in French). Paris: Naturellement.
532:Omar: la construction d'un coupable
279:Omar. La construction d'un coupable
237:Trial and conviction of Omar Raddad
556:(in French). Paris: Michel Lafon.
185:Disappearance of Ghislaine Marchal
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725:"Omar m'a tuer": Le vrai coupable
670:(in French). Paris: L'Harmattan.
421:Lichfield, John (2 August 2010).
571:Bouzon-Thiam, Françoise (1997).
435:from the original on 24 May 2022
255:represented by celebrity lawyer
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299:New evidence and re-examination
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708:(in French). City Editions.
647:Gauthier, Jean-Paul (2000).
471:. BBC News. 17 December 2021
181:, and where she was killed.
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609:Foucart, François (1998).
340:(in French). 1 August 2010
704:Haddad, SolĂšne (2011).
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685:Raddad, Omar (2003).
338:Le Nouvel Observateur
207:Discovery of the body
723:Hugnet, Guy (2011).
295:, released in 2011.
163:Murder and discovery
57:"Omar Raddad Affair"
42:improve this article
628:Livet, Ăve (1999).
228:"Omar" inscriptions
528:Rouart, Jean-Marie
503:The New York Times
122:Omar Raddad Affair
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35:verification
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