Perpignan 1998: Station killer survivor Meryl testifies
Meryl Foulonneau narrowly escaped Jacques Rançon in 1998. Her testimony at the trial reveals how the predator pursued her over 30 kilometres before hitting her vehicle.
The account of the nighttime chase
According to lenouveaudetective.com, Meryl Foulonneau testified on Monday before the court judges. She is one of three survivors of serial killer Jacques Rançon. Her account exposes the criminal's hunting methods — far from the image of a "poor wretch with a devastated childhood" that he presented during the first week of the trial.
In 1998, Meryl, 23, was leaving her shift at McDonald's in Perpignan around 2.30 a.m. She was driving two colleagues when she noticed a vehicle following her. She accelerated. The driver stayed on her trajectory.
"At Pollestres, he flashed his lights at me. When I reached a roundabout, I slowed down to see his face: I didn't know him," she told the court. Over thirty kilometres, the mysterious driver pursued her. On the road to Montesquieu, he caused the accident by hitting her vehicle.
The intervention that saved her
Rançon got out of his vehicle, knife in hand. He attempted to open each door of her car while claiming he saw problems under his bumper. Meryl refused to get out and called her father on her mobile phone — an action that would save her life.
"I was trembling all over. I was concentrating on one thing only: memorising his number plate," she recounts. Her father arrived armed with a baseball bat and put Rançon to flight. The assailant was quickly apprehended and received a one-year prison sentence at his immediate appearance hearing.
Guilt revealed sixteen years later
At the time, the justice system did not know it had the Perpignan station killer in custody. Nine months before that night in 1998, Rançon had raped, murdered and mutilated Mokhtaria Chaïb. Three months before attacking Meryl, he had raped and killed Marie-Hélène Gonzales.
It was not until 2014 that his DNA exposed him. "I recognised him immediately, it was a punch to the stomach," Meryl told the court. With hindsight, I cannot even imagine how lucky I was." Even today, the terror of that night persists. "At night I'm afraid to drive. Whenever there's a flash of lights, I panic," she told the court on the fifth day of the trial.
Source: TF1 Info