JEAN-MICHEL LAMBERT
Childhood and training
After a childhood spent in Charente, Jarnac, where his father ran an advertising business, he studied law at the University of Picardie, then entered the National School of Magistrates.
He did his military service in 1977 at the Coëtquidan Reserve Officer Cadet School, where he had fellow students François Hollande, Jean-Pierre Jouyet and Michel Sapin. At the age of 27, on February 1, 1980, he was appointed investigating judge in the jurisdiction of Épinal (Vosges), because of the rank of his graduation from the School of Magistrates.
Career and professional life
He was the first investigating judge in the 'Grégory case', which occupied it from October 1984 to September 1986. Responsible for investigating the murder of a child who will attract a crowd to a small Vosges valley of freelancers, special envoys, French and foreign photographers and cameramen, he found himself almost overnight propelled into the spotlight. After two unsuccessful charges and incarcerations, those of Bernard Laroche and then Christine Villemin, the criticisms aroused by his erratic instruction will multiply.
The magistrate, of an annoyingly narcissistic character and, therefore, easily manipulated, allows himself to be caught up in the media pressure, even if it means repeatedly violating the secrecy of the investigation by revealing for example to journalists the content of the statements of the young Murielle Bolle and the identity of the person concerned. Furthermore, his poor control of the procedure and a lack of rigor which could only harm the management of a criminal case much more complex than what he had probably imagined at the start will lead to the cancellation of many important documents folder. While admitting to having "sometimes failed", as he will write in the letter sent before his suicide to Christophe Golbin, he does not hesitate to invoke for his defense the 229 files he had to manage in parallel, since he was in 1984 the sole investigating judge of the Vosges prefecture.
In 1987, the file was taken up by Maurice Simon, president of the investigative chamber of the Dijon court of appeal. For Régis de Castelnau, whose opinion is shared by most of those who have expressed themselves on the subject with full knowledge of the facts, "the procedure was properly ransacked by an incompetent, casual and ultimately deeply unpleasant magistrate".
Jean-Michel Lambert took a sabbatical in 1987 and told his story in 'Le Petit judge', which appeared the same year with Albin Michel. This testimony on his career, where he mentions without dwelling too much on the Grégory case, was harshly criticized by a good part of the press. If the magistrate reveals nothing that has not been said previously by others, he is not afraid to evoke his "sexual asthenia" during the case or even to evoke "the strange, indescribable charm" of the future accused. Many people believe that the work, which seems to have sold well, does not respect the moral obligation of reserve of a judge.
Following this publication, he who, for his greatest pleasure, had already had the opportunity to be in contact with Marguerite Duras, whom the Grégory case fascinated, found himself invited to the famous television program Apostrophes, animated by a Bernard Pivot whom certain passages of the book visibly astonished him and who does not hide his perplexity in front of the answers which his guest provides him with a placid tone, and which provoke the ironic reflections of Philippe Labro, one of the other guests.
He then became a magistrate in Bourg-en-Bresse from 1988 to 2003, then vice-president of the High Court of Le Mans until September 8, 2014, the date of his retirement. He published in 2014 "How many injustices am I guilty of ?", a book in which he peremptorily claims to be persuaded of the innocence of Bernard Laroche. He is also the author of detective novels.
Death
On July 12, 2017, the body of Jean-Michel Lambert was discovered by a neighbor who had the keys to his home in Le Mans and had been alerted the day before by the magistrate's wife, who had no further news of him. Called at around 7 p.m., the rescue workers found their lifeless body on arrival, with a plastic bag on the head tied with a tie. According to the first observations, no trace of forced entry or struggle was found in the apartment. Only an almost empty bottle of alcohol is near the body of the former magistrate. The Angers judicial police were seized and the Le Mans prosecution, which opened an investigation to establish the causes of death, ordered an autopsy. This confirms that it is a suicide, which is only half surprising. Indeed, on September 1, 2014, an article appeared in Liberation entitled "Jean-Michel Lambert: last judgment", which reported suicidal thoughts "by flashes" of the magistrate: "I had spotted the place where it would happen.I knew which rail of the courtroom stairs I would hang the rope on."
Interviewed by France 2 in the program 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, June 17, 2017, the former examining magistrate had denounced what he considered as a form of relentlessness against him: “We tried to make me the scapegoat. I do assume some procedural errors, but I would have liked everyone to do the same, and that is not the case."
By a strange coincidence, he kills himself the same day that BFM TV reveals some passages from the personal notebooks of judge Maurice Simon, who wrote about him, in an unwelcome but not without reason:
"We remain confused in the face of deficiencies, irregularities, faults, concealment of evidence or intellectual and perhaps just material disorder of Judge Lambert, I am in the presence of the miscarriage of justice in all its horror, that which can lead an innocent to the most dreadful conviction. There is a miscarriage of justice. I know it now."
- Maurice Simon, September 14, 1988.
We first thought that Jean-Michel Lambert had not left a farewell letter. But Jean-Marc Le Nestour, his former lawyer and very close friend, explained later that on the day of his death, the former judge had placed in the mailbox of a neighbor an envelope addressed to his wife and containing two letters to the latter, one intimate and the other concerning his funeral, a letter to his daughter Pauline, one to his mother, one to his publisher and one to Christophe Gobin, a journalist from 'L'Est Républicain' with whom he had established a relationship of trust.
In this three-page letter published online on July 19, 2017 by L'Est Républicain, according to the wishes of the deceased and with the consent of his family, despite a police requisition ordering the daily newspaper not to publish it, he evokes the case of little Grégory and writes:
"[...] This umpteenth "twist" is infamous. It is based on an intellectual construction based in part on software [allusion to the Anacrim software]. The grinding machine started to destroy or spoil the lives of several innocent people, to respond to the desire for revenge of a few spirits injured in their pride or in the honor of their bodies. Some of my colleagues have followed suit with abominable bad faith.
[...] Because, from November 1984, I was able to demonstrate that if Murielle Bolle was not in the school bus, it was not Tuesday, October 16 but Tuesday, October 23, the week she is returned home because of the flu. The proofs are in the file (college register and especially testimony of the bus driver, Mr. Galmiche, whom I trapped after the delivery of a medical certificate, I believe by the mother of Murielle Bolle, and the hearings of other college girls who sometimes had precise benchmarks but who nevertheless got the wrong week). [...] The events since last June are doomed to failure. And for good reason ...
In order not to lose face, we will then look for a scapegoat. Suffice to say that it is all found ... I refuse to play this role. If I have sometimes failed, however, I have a perfectly clear conscience as to the decisions that I have been led to make."
- Jean-Michel Lambert.
After having affirmed one last time his certainty concerning the innocence of Bernard Laroche, he hints insidiously, without taking the slightest account of the dismissal for absence of charges from which Christine Villemin benefited in 1993, that in his opinion, the crime was indeed committed by Grégory's mother and concluded with these words:
"I prefer to ring the end of the game for me. The age being there, I no longer have the strength to fight. I have accomplished my Destiny."
He had just handed over to his publisher the manuscript of his eleventh novel, to be published in October. A character with whom he has clearly identified himself commits suicide in the same way: Professor Chabert, who looks like him line for line, "kills himself to save his honor and his body is discovered by a colleague, his head covered from a plastic bag, an empty whiskey bottle at the foot of the chair."
ÉTIENNE SESMAT Born in 1954, Étienne Sesmat is from Lorraine. After military studies at Saint-Cyr, he chose the gendarmerie and began his career at Versailles, then was appointed commander of Épinal gendarmerie company, in the Vosges.
In 1984 Etienne Sesmat was a young gendarmerie captain. He was one of the first investigators to work on the Grégory case before being divested for the benefit of the criminal investigation police. After various assignments in mainland France, the French overseas departments and territories, and abroad, he ended his career in Marseille with the rank of colonel, serving as chief of staff.
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