Verdict in France: Masked man also found guilty of Jonathan’s murder | News

Nantes (France) – It is a verdict that Jonathan’s family had to wait more than two decades for: The German serial killer Martin Ney (55), known as the “Mask Man”, has been found guilty in France of the murder of Jonathan Coulom. The jury court in Nantes sentenced him to life imprisonment on Thursday.

For the French prosecutor, the case was clear. The murder bears the “criminal hallmark” of the defendantexplained the prosecution. There is no doubt about his responsibility.

The verdict initially has no practical consequences for Martin Ney: he has been behind bars for years. In Germany, the man from Bremen was sentenced to life imprisonment followed by preventive detention in 2012 for three child murders and numerous acts of abuse. Now the French justice system also sees him as the perpetrator in the Jonathan Coulom case.

The disappearance of a ten year old

April 2004, Saint-Brevin-les-Pins on the French Atlantic coast: Ten-year-old Jonathan spends the night with other children in a school camp. When the carers checked on him the next morning, he had disappeared.

Then the gruesome discovery: The Corpse The boy is found in a pond around 25 kilometers away. Jonathan is naked, tied up and weighed down with a block of cement. Investigators later followed up on evidence that the boy may have been held for a month before he was suffocated.

The pattern is reminiscent of the actions of the “Masked Man”

Early on, the case brought back memories of a series of crimes in Germany. Martin Ney had kidnapped boys from holiday camps and school camps there for years. Ney led a double life. During the day he worked as a teacher with children and as a supervisor at holiday camps, at night he became a “masked man” – one sex offenderswho approached his victims in a mask.

Between 1992 and 2001 he abused Serial killers numerous children. Three boys were later found dead: Stefan Jahr (13) disappeared from a boarding school in Scheeßel (Lower Saxony) in 1992, Dennis Rostel (8) from a tent camp in Schleswig-Holstein in 1995 and Dennis Klein (9) was kidnapped from a school camp in Wulsbüttel near Bremerhaven during a school trip. Ney was convicted of these murders in 2012.

Incriminated by a fellow prisoner

There was no direct DNA evidence against Ney in the Jonathan case. Nevertheless, the French collected police clues over the years. A witness reported seeing a car with a German license plate near where the body was later found. This was particularly stressful Statement from a former fellow prisoner. He explained in court via video link that Ney had confessed to him about the murder of a child in France.

The defendant denied the allegations until the end. “I didn’t do that,” he said before the assize court in Nantes. Martin Ney was brought to France from the Celle prison specifically for the trial. Investigators, experts and witnesses from Germany and France testified there.

Now the judges have handed down their verdict: more than 22 years after Jonathan’s disappearance, the court sees Martin Ney as Murderer of the boy.