A life sentence was pronounced on Wednesday against Nathalie Stéphan, 42, by the Assize Court of Maine-et-Loire for the murder of her one-year-old daughter, Vanille, in February 2020 in Angers.
Considering her “action driven by a cold and premeditated will”, the court condemned Nathalie Stéphan to the maximum sentence accompanied by “a security period of 22 years”, in accordance with the requisitions. Nathalie Stéphan remained stoic when the verdict was announced.
“You have become a calculator,” the Advocate General had launched to the accused during her indictment. “Normally, people who commit infanticide have post-traumatic syndromes, which is not the case for Mrs. Stéphan. It’s very surprising, ”added Carol Dugast.
On February 7, 2020, Nathalie Stéphan did not show up at the maternal center in Angers, a home for single mothers where she had been staying for a year, when she was expected there with her daughter. His laptop, turned off, cannot be geolocated. A kidnapping alert was triggered on February 8 after 24 hours of research to try to find Vanille.
The baby died of “suffocation”
On the morning of Sunday February 9, the accused was found in a hotel in Nantes, without her daughter. The body of the baby will be discovered a few hours later, on the indications of the mother, in a garbage bag hidden in a dumpster for clothes in Angers. The autopsy determined that the little girl, whose first birthday was on February 7, 2020, died of “suffocation”. “Since she was struggling, I pressed with my hand very, very, very hard,” admitted Nathalie Stéphan to the investigators.
“She claims the facts. She even goes so far as to explain all the solutions she thought of for 6 weeks to kill her daughter, ”noted the Advocate General. Nathalie Stéphan had specified during the investigation that she had developed her macabre project when she learned in December 2019 of the continuation of her daughter’s placement and that she had to leave the maternal center on February 10.
Nathalie Stéphan, head down and face impassive in her box, does not “show any affect, any emotion, not even a tear for her daughter Vanille”, underlined for her part Me Mathilde Livenais, lawyer for Vanille’s maternal assistant who is is a civil party.
Photos, taken by the person who took care of the child from the age of one month, show a little girl “a bit naughty” and “full of life”. Coming from a family of three children and deaf and mute parents, Nathalie Stéphan lives a “chaotic childhood” between “sexual abuse of the father”, “spankings” and “deprivation of food with a padlocked fridge”. “But the worst of childhoods does not give the right to take action,” said Carol Dugast.
A “full awareness of his act” according to psychiatric expertise
If the accused suffers from a “borderline” personality disorder, she “was fully aware of her act” according to the psychiatric expert reports which underline “her coldness” and “a high level of dangerousness”. “How can you become a good mother when you yourself grew up without the love of your parents? “, retorted the defense lawyer Me Olivia Brulay.
The accused “always tried to be a normal person” but “felt abandoned by justice” after a complaint dismissed “when her despot father raped her while her mother was in a room next door”, argued Me Brulay. From 16 to 18 years old, Nathalie Stéphan is taken care of by child welfare. She then passed her college diploma at 18, then a CAP in early childhood and moved into a house with her first companion. From this relationship was born his first daughter, now 14 years old, whose sole custody has been entrusted to the father since 2015.