2023-08-23 18:15:00
In the fall of 2014, the city of Arlon was shaken by a terrible incident. A 14-year-old girl disappeared without a trace on her way to the Athénée on foot, leaving her parents worried. Ophélie Fontana returns to this tragic case this Wednesday August 23 in “Crimes and clues”.
On the morning of November 21, 2014 in Arlon, Beatrice Berlaimont, a 14-year-old girl, is kidnapped on her way to school by a dangerous psychopath. Her disappearance is reported later in the day, when her mother does not find her at home on her way home from work.
Right away, the hypothesis of one fugue is then considered, but Béatrice did not take pocket money with her and does not have the habit of disappearing without warning. Worried, the police therefore immediately deploy significant means to find her. Thus, agents from Brussels established a crisis center in Arlon, carried out interrogations of his relatives and classmates, organize beaten through the surrounding woods. In total, more than 175 people search the forests of the grid area, without result.
In the days that followed, sexual predators in the region were put under surveillance and posters were distributed across the country, but again, no testimony or clue emerged from the investigation, which continued to tread water.
Finally, it is the operator of a fir forest located at the exit of Arlon who finds the body of Béatrice on December 1, 2014, ten days after the start of the search. Hidden under a blanket in the middle of the woods, she has the tied wrists and wears a cord around the neck. Subsequently, the autopsy will reveal that she underwent sexual abuse while she was sequestered.
For now, however, the police do not have sufficient evidence to apprehend a suspect.
Revealing DNA analyzes
Three days after this macabre discovery, Sauvane Watelet, a young woman also living in the Arlon region, comes home from work when her mother calls her on her cell phone. To avoid being distracted at the wheel, she parks along the road, stays on the phone for about twenty minutes, then hangs up. She is about to drive off when a man enters the right rear door of her vehicle and brandishes a knife to her throat.
In the hours that followed, he raped her, tied her in the back seat using the seat belts, then left to withdraw money from the bank. During this time, the young woman fortunately manages to free herself from her shackles. Freed, she then fled at full speed, running through the fields until she reached a busier road, where a young couple stopped to pick her up and take her to the hospital.
His testimony is then taken by the police, who raise traces d’ADN on his clothes. From there, the sample is identified as belonging to Jeremy Piersonan offender known to the police for several acts of theft as well as an indecent assault.
Confessions that are long overdue
Charged with the rape of Sauvane Watelet, Jérémy Pierson is also suspected of the murder of Béatrice, but denies outright having abducted the teenager, despite the numerous interrogations to which he is subjected by the police and the evidence at their disposal.
It was only four months later that he confess kidnapping and raping the teenager, even if he refuses to say it in these terms.
On the morning of the abduction, he thus recounts that he was sitting on a bench when Béatrice passed in front of him. She allegedly asked him what he was watching on his phone, then agreed to follow him and get into a car he had stolen the day before to watch videos with him.
A chilling tale
After having abused her for the first time, Jeremy Pierson explains that he returned home, leaving his victim locked in the trunk of the car. The next day he drives to a deserted military site, where he keeps Beatrice locked in a container during many days.
It was on the fifth day that, seeing the extent of the searches carried out by the police, he finally took fright. In order to evade the investigators, he took the road again in the direction of Virtue, but finds himself stranded when his car gets stuck in a muddy path. So as not to be spotted, he spots not far from there a mirador hunting grounds, where Béatrice will spend her last two nights.
His ordeal ends on November 28th. That day, his captor put a rope around his neck to prevent him from running away, before returning home to find his wife. She strangled herself a few hours later, after collapsing from fatigue in the watchtower where she was being held.
Jérémy Pierson says he found his body the next day and buried it in the Arlon region so that his family could find it.
What condemnation for Jérémy Pierson?
Jérémy Pierson appears in court three years after the events. During his trial, his lawyer tries to demonstrate that there was no premeditation, and that his client had no intention of killing young Beatrice. Faced with psychiatric expert reports which unanimously recognize that Jérémy Pierson is a psychopathhis pleading does not however convince the jurors, who will finally condemn Jérémy Pierson to the rlife imprisonment, with availability to the court responsible for the execution of sentences for 15 years. He is now incarcerated in the prison of Arlon.
An investigation to discover this Wednesday, August 23 at 8:15 p.m. on La Une, and on audio for the next 7 days.
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