Jonathann Daval, who is serving a twenty-five-year prison sentence for the murder of his wife Alexia, filed a defamation complaint against the latter’s mother and sister due to comments made in a television series on the case, his lawyer, Randall Schwerdorffer, informed Agence France-Presse on Monday, February 19.
The incriminated comments were made in the fourth episode of the series Alexia notre fille, broadcast on Canal. Isabelle Fouillot, Alexia’s mother, and Stéphanie Gay, her sister, present “an unprecedented version of the affair by unequivocally accusing Jonathann Daval of having deliberately poisoned his wife to cause the miscarriage that Alexia suffered Daval as well as having poisoned her to “drive her crazy” and cause the discomfort for which the couple had consulted doctors including a neurologist,” specifies the text of the complaint filed by Mr. Schwerdorffer with the public prosecutor of Vesoul , Arnaud Grécourt.
However, these elements on a possible poisoning of Alexia Daval had been dismissed during the trial before the Haute-Saône Assize Court in November 2020. For her lawyer, “there is clearly a desire to present to the public the Daval case from an inaccurate angle with a goal which can only be that of harming the complainant”, as if, according to him, “his conviction for murder was not enough”.
Multiple turnovers
Jonathann Daval, 40, is incarcerated for strangling his 29-year-old wife on the night of October 27 to 28, 2017 at their home in Gray-la-Ville (Haute-Saône). The next day, he carried her body into a wood before setting it on fire and raising the alarm, maintaining that his wife had not returned from her jogging. Alexia’s body was found two days later. Mr. Daval was arrested in January 2018 after behaving like a grieving widower for three months, showing himself to be close to Alexia’s family. After multiple reversals, he admitted to the murder of his wife during a violent domestic dispute as well as the cremation of her body.
Mr. Daval himself must appear on April 10 before the Besançon criminal court for slanderous denunciation against his in-laws. The main complainant is Alexia Daval’s brother-in-law, Grégory Gay, who during the investigation, in 2018, was accused by Jonathann Daval of having murdered Alexia, as part of a family plot. Jonathann Daval finally admitted having lied, six months later.