A 20-year-old woman went on trial in northeastern France on Tuesday for murdering a date she called a “sucker” and hiding his body in a closet.
Speaking in court, Camille Anguenot calmly admitted to murdering Theo Decouchan, who she met at a night club in November 2021.
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“I take responsibility,” she told the Haute-Saone criminal court.
Soon after they met, Anguenot, then 18, invited 23-year-old Decouchan to spend the evening at her home in Oiselay-et-Grachaux, a small town in northeastern France.
According to the woman’s account, Anguenot and Decouchant fell asleep together.
She woke up during the night when her date tried to caress her. When he grew insistent, she pushed him away.
She then punched him three times in the face before grabbing a kitchen knife and stabbing him in the stomach. Afterwards she went to her room and grabbed a fabric dress belt.
“When I returned, he was lying on his side. I approached him and, in a moment of madness, I placed the belt around his neck and I pulled. So there you have it,” she said.
“I put my foot on his back and pulled. Everything happened very quickly,” said the woman, adding the victim tried to loosen the belt unsuccessfully.
– ‘Thanks for last night’ –
Then the teenager moved to cover her tracks.
She got rid of Decouchant’s belongings and sent him a text message.
“Thanks for last night, it was really good. Drive safe and see you soon.”
After that, Anguenot saw two other men — a new lover in Bordeaux, an old lover in Dijon.
She used Decouchan’s bank card and drove around in his Peugeot, even though she did not even have a driver’s license. She had the number plates changed.
When she eventually returned home, Anguenot took care of the body, which she had left in the bathroom.
Wrapping the corpse in garbage bags and sealing them with thick brown tape, she locked the body in her living-room closet.
The man’s mother, worried she had heard nothing from her son, reported him missing, while his sister spoke to Anguenot.
Anguenot insisted that Decouchant had left after their evening together and tried to look helpful, sharing a post appealing for information about the missing man on Facebook.
Decouchan’s decomposing corpse was discovered by police a week after he was murdered.
– ‘Infatuated with her’ –
In police custody, Anguenot looked and sounded detached. She called Decouchant a “sucker” and said she liked to use boys for their money.
Christophe Bernard, a lawyer representing the victim’s family, denied the young man wanted to sexually assault his date.
“She knows that Theo was infatuated with her,” Bernard said, insisting the man had become the victim of her “perversity.”
“She wanted his car so she can go and meet a new boyfriend, so she lured him to her home,” the lawyer said.
The court will have to determine if Anguenot acted with discernment when she committed the crime.
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One psychiatric assessment revealed a “temperamental personality” but said she was in control of her actions, while another pointed to “psychopathic traits” which may have led to an impairment of judgement.
Anguenot faces 30 years imprisonment for voluntary manslaughter, theft and fraud if convicted. The verdict was expected to be delivered on Friday.