Former soldier confesses to ‘accidental’ killing of nine-year old French schoolgirl who went missing at a wedding

A former soldier has admitted killing a nine-year old French girl who went missing from a wedding in the Alps in August and has led investigators to her remains, prosecutors have confirmed.

Nordahl Lelandais, 34, has been in custody since September as part of the investigation into the disappearance of nine-year-old Maëlys de Araujo in Pont-de-Beauvoisin in the Chambéry region of south-eastern France. 

She went missing at around 3am at a wedding on August 27 where Lelandais was a guest of the groom.

Lelandais has been charged with kidnapping the girl, which he had until now denied. After six months of silence, he asked to speak to judges on Wednesday when police confronted him with fresh evidence – blood identified as belonging to Maelys found in the boot of his car.

In a press conference, Jean-Yves Coquillat, Grenoble prosecutor, said: “Tonight, Maelys’ parents are no longer in the dark. They know that their daughter is dead, that she was killed. We informed them a few minutes ago that we had found the child’s remains.”

Lelandais told prosecutors he had killed Maelys “involuntarily” but refused to elaborate further. He had disposed of the body “in a forest in a mountainous area”, he said.

Promising to “cooperate”, Lelandais led investigators to a site near his parents’ home in Domessin in Savoie, where he lived, before indicating another location in nearby Saint-France. A mobile laboratory with around 20 forensic experts were with him, along with sniffer dogs and judges and prosecutors.

He first hid the body near his home and returned to the wedding. Later, said the prosecutor, he “put the body in his car boot then disposed of it in a small, extremely remote ravine”.

“It took us all day to find the place he said he had disposed of the body. We had to remove snow from the road to get to it.”

Lelandais is an unmarried dog lover with no long-term job who drove a black Audi which has emerged as a crucial piece of evidence.

He washed the car inside and out the day after the wedding. But Maelys’ DNA was found on the dashboard and CCTV footage picked up the car with a child-like figure in white in the passenger seat. More recently her blood was found in the boot after investigators took the vehicle apart.

Lelandais has also been charged with the murder of Arthur Noyer, a 24-year old soldier who went missing last April and whose skull was found by a hitchhiker in the Alps in September.

Police suspect he may be a serial killer and are looking into whether he could be behind the unsolved Alps murders in which a British man, his wife and mother-in-law were killed in a forest car park.

Saad al-Hilli, Iqbal al-Hilli and her mother Suhaila al-Allaf were shot dead on holiday in Chevaline, near Annecy, in September 2012, along with a passing French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier.

Despite a massive manhunt, the investigation has all-but petered out. 

In December, Annecy prosecutor Véronique Dénizot confirmed to The Telegraph that the case will be re-opened to probe Lelandais’ possible involvement.

"Verifications will be made in due course" to establish if Lelandais has any links with the al-Hilli murders.  His possible links will be examined "within a reasonable timeframe" when staff is available to do so, she said.

"There is no particular urgency but verifications will be made."

No motive has been found by police despite exhaustive investigations in Britain, France and Iraq. Investigators have previously suggested the murderer’s profile could be military.

Other potential cases that may be linked to Lelandais involve Adrien Mourial, a 24-year-old Belgian citizen who went missing near Lake Annecy in July, and Jean-Christophe Morin and Ahmed Hamad, who vanished in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Grenoble prosecutor said Wednesday’s investigation had focused solely on Maelys.

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