Frenchwoman jailed for 30 years after murdering date for his car

Vesoul: A court in eastern France sentenced a 20-year-old woman to 30 years' jail Friday for killing her date, hiding his body and stealing his bank card and car.

Camille Anguenot "needed money and a car and thought that Theo Decouchant would make a good 'sucker'," prosecutor Arnaud Grecourt had told the court in Vesoul ahead of the sentencing, which topped the 25 years he requested.

Anguenot met 23-year-old Decouchant, described as shy and introverted, at a disco in November 2021.

She invited him to her home on November 29 in the small village of Oiselay-et-Grachaux.

Anguenot claimed that after the two fell asleep in the same bed, she awoke to find him groping her, with Decouchant persisting even after she pushed him away.

She admitted punching him several times in the face before grabbing a kitchen knife and stabbing him in the stomach, then strangling him to death with a cord.

In the following days, Anguenot used Decouchant's Peugeot car and bank card as she went about her life as if nothing had happened, travelling - without a driving licence - to meet lovers in Bordeaux and Dijon.

She even sent a text message to his phone reading "thanks for last night, it was really good. Drive safe and see you soon" - later even sharing a post about the fact he was missing on Facebook.

It was only a week after the murder that police, alerted by Decouchant's mother, searched the then-18-year-old girl's home and found his body in a broom closet, stuffed into rubbish bags sealed with brown tape.

"Even an animal deserves a better tomb than a broom cupboard," said Christophe Bernard, the lawyer for Decouchant's family.

In police custody, Anguenot looked and sounded detached. She called Decouchant a "sucker" and said she liked to use boys for their money.

"She knows that Theo was infatuated with her," Bernard said, insisting the man had become the victim of her "perversity."

Obliging and kind

"Although she denied she killed Theo Decouchant to get his money and car, we are forced to note that she used them from the very next day," Grecourt said.

The idea Decouchant had been sexually aggressive "did not fit his personality," the prosecutor added.

"No-one who knew him could imagine him" forcing himself on a woman, he added, calling Anguenot's version of events "unverifiable".

But Anguenot's lawyer Catherine Bresson said her client "cannot be reduced to a seductive woman, manipulative and perverse," calling on the court to "go beyond appearances".

She referred to a psychiatric report that found Anguenot "reacted in a radical way to her wounded self-esteem".

As a child, the accused had been marked by her father's violence against her mother, including blows and attempted strangulation, Bresson added.