The lifestyle of Willy Van Coppernolle, a disturbing pedophile who has alternated between homelessness and stays in prison, risks seriously complicating the task of investigators.
“When you get out of prison, you change location every time and your obsession is to have forced and forced relationships, it is certain that we are a number 1 suspect for other unsolved cases”.
Lawyer in Narbonne, Me Paola Belotti would hardly be surprised to learn that Willy Van Coppernolle has committed other crimes. Between 1993 and 1995, she defended the two teenagers raped by the Belgian pedophile near Gruissan, and kept a very clear memory of it. “An obnoxious, sly, very cunning individual” who “to approach his victims managed to present himself in a different light. When we see the personality of this individual, we can think that he had committed other crimes before. He is a predator to the power of 10.”
An opinion shared by Me Elizabeth Alric, civil party for Abdel’s family: “He was horrible in police custody, saying that this little boy was a prostitute and had asked him for 300 F (45 € Editor’s note) to buy sneakers. He was a cold, icy man, who didn’t care about anything , including his trial. We couldn’t even approach his gaze, have an exchange with him. Rape was his life.”
A finding that matches that made by the psychiatrists who examined this hardened criminal: “The nature of his anomalies, his submission to his impulses, his antecedents, the absence of guilt, suffering, seeking help and the choice of his victims constitute factors of major danger.“says one of the psychiatrists who assessed him in 1994. “To the extent that he justifies his conduct and derives a certain satisfaction from his actions, one can only be pessimistic” wrote one of his colleagues five years earlier.
“He always recognized his impulses”
Another potentially dependent element: the homelessness that marked the whole life of Willy Van Coppernolle, who for example worked for several years as a driver in a Belgian bus company, serving several countries in Europe. And clues which show that he was also able to stay permanently in Greece, Morocco or Tunisia, with even, perhaps, a passage in the United States.
This considerably complicates the task of the investigators who will trace his career.
“Of everything he said about his life, nothing could be verified”, remembers Me Philippe Chardon, who defended him at the assizes, in Valence and then in Nîmes. “He was someone who lived in another world, who was very storytelling. He said he had joined the Legion twice and had deserted. The Legion never said anything, and we never said anything. knew.”
Would he be surprised to learn that he has committed other crimes? “Yes. I never thought of him as a killer. He always recognized his impulses, and said that Abdel’s murder was an accident, that he was afraid that the kid would recognize him. I don’t I never thought he enjoyed killing. But maybe I was completely wrong.”
