Update 18:05 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch, agencies and other media) – Cécile Brossard, the murderer of Edouard Stern, has been found guilty by a jury in Geneva of homicide for killing her lover 28 February 2005. The jury will decide Thursday on her sentence, up to 20 years in prison.
The 12 deliberated whether the crime was homicide or a crime of passion as her lawyers argued, which carries a prison term of 1-10 years. The 40-year-old French woman has already spent four years in prison.
The jury, in its verdict, said while it was clear she was in a state of “emotional disarray” at the time of the murder, she could not be excused for this since she was at least partially responsible for her own emotional state, as well as the situation in which she found herself. The verdict also mentions the cruel and humiliating treatment by Stern of his mistress, noting that his swings between being loving and spiteful “destabilized” her. The realization by Brossard, the night of the murder, that the relationship was ending nevertheless filled her with hate, the emotion that sparked her deadly action.
The murder was committed in Stern’s apartment in Geneva. Brossard shot him twice in the head and then shot him two more times. He was found the next day, wearing a latex body suit that Brossard told the court she took to his apartment for a sado-machism sexual encounter. The two lovers had an on-again, off-again relationship. They had been at odds for weeks over one million dollars that Stern, one of France’s wealthiest people, had put in a bank account for her. He then had the money frozen by authorities under false pretenses.
Swiss and French media have followed the story closely, noting the broad public appeal of a story that has all the elements of fiction: a mix of sex, money, travel, violence and a relationship that stirred together passion, love and hatred in an explosive cocktail with parts that were difficult for the outside world to calculate.
Related: romandie/ATS, Le Temps, TSR (all in French)
Background: “Stern murder, Cecile Brossard trial will be the talk of Geneva”, GenevaLunch in partnership with l’Hebdo, 9 June 2009
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
News story, GenevaLunch, 17 June 2009.
Filed under: Society
Tags: banker, Cecile Brossard, crime, Edouard Stern, French, Geneva, hate, latex, love, murder, passion, s&m, sado-machism, sex, Switzerland
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June 17th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
S & M to the max. Life in the big city where people play the game of lust in a so called loving manner. She deserves to walk; his death is the result of game played and he lost.