“Unsurprisingly, I will ask you to answer yes to the question of whether he voluntarily killed him. And to the question of premeditation, I will also ask you to answer yes”, launched to the jurors of the court of Assizes of the Bas-Rhin Advocate General, Laurent Guy.

He requested “an extremely heavy sentence”, life imprisonment, with 22 years of security, the heaviest incurred by Mr. Reiser.

Mr. Reiser has been on trial for a week for the murder of Sophie Le Tan, whose incomplete skeleton was found in a forest in October 2019, more than a year after her disappearance.

The Strasbourg student disappeared on September 7, 2018, the day of her 20th birthday, after going to visit Mr. Reiser’s apartment in Schiltigheim, north of Strasbourg.

The evidence, in particular genetic and telephone, quickly converged on the one who, after two and a half years of denials, ended up admitting in early 2021 having killed and dismembered Sophie Le Tan, a confession maintained at the start of his trial on Monday.

On the other hand, he still denies having premeditated his act and having set a trap for the student, in particular by having broadcast a false rental ad to which she had responded.

“The arrival of Sophie Le Tan in this apartment owes nothing to chance (…) It is indeed into a trap that she fell”, insisted the Advocate General, evoking “a ray of sunshine broken clean ” by a “black, dark, chilling shadow”.

Already convicted of two rapes, Jean-Marc Reiser is on trial for murder. The defense must plead at the end of the afternoon.

The verdict is expected on Tuesday.