A House Divided (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00On a Monday morning in February of 2003, a man in suburban France got a phone call from a number that he recognized, so he answered it. But, instead of the familiar voice he expected, all he heard on the other end was static and muffled voices somewhere in the background. He put his phone on speaker mode so his wife could listen, and the two of them listened closely to figure out, like, who's calling me, what is this? And as they listened, they were able to barely make out a conversation happening between two women, who they didn't know. And these two women were clearly talking about a murder.

0:35And one of the women said they needed to come up with an alibi. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you, in the dead of winter, sneak into the Follow Buttons house and cut off all the sleeves to their coats and jackets. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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2:32On the afternoon of Friday, February 7, 2003, a 52-year-old woman named Monique Lejeune cleared the table after lunch at her house in Colouna, France. Her husband, Claude, and two of her adult sons, Franck and Pascal, were at the table. And while Monique cleaned up, the men talked over what they needed to pack for the overnight trip they were about to take. They were heading to a family gathering near Paris, about three and a half hours away, to celebrate Claude's sister-in-law's retirement. Monique was not going to go, and she had told her family it was because somebody had to stay home with their four dogs.

3:05And that was true, but there also was another real reason why Monique did not want to be there. And it was because she just didn't get along very well with Claude's family. So Monique and Claude had gotten married almost 20 years earlier, but at the time, they both already had multiple kids from previous marriages. Monique had three boys, and Claude had five girls. And for a while, the two halves of the blended family had gotten along quite well. But over time, there were some personality clashes between Monique and her five stepdaughters. When Monique and Claude got married, all five girls were at least teenagers, if not in their 20s.

3:43And so while they sort of accepted Monique as being part of their lives, they just couldn't view her as an actual motherly figure. You know, they were already close with their actual mother, Claude's ex-wife Beatrice. And so that was their mother, and Monique was like the add-on. Then in 1993, one of Claude's grandsons, so one of his daughter's children, had accused Monique's eldest son, Jean-Luc, of sexually abusing him. And that had completely ripped the family apart. Now, this was never reported to the police, so there was no actual investigation into whether this really happened or not. But Claude's five daughters and Claude's ex-wife Beatrice had fully believed the grandson.

4:28And Monique had defended her son, Jean-Luc. And Claude was kind of stuck in the middle of it. And it had gotten so ugly that the two sides of the family had just stopped talking to each other for a whole year. And so now the whole family was basically back on speaking terms as they were getting ready for this retirement party, but it was still extremely uncomfortable and tense. And so that is why Monique was not going to go and also why her son, Jean-Luc, was not going to go as well. Finally, around 3 p.m., as Claude and the two sons wheeled their suitcases out to the car, Monique went to the front door and she said goodbye to them and then watched as they hopped in the car and drove off.

5:08A few hours later, around 6.30 p.m., Monique heard a knock on the front door, and when she opened it, it was her son Jean-Luc, and he was standing there holding up his bicycle. He told his mom he was just stopping by on his way home from work, and she said, great, come on in. And so Jean-Luc left his bike outside, and he walked in, and as he was taking off his coat, he mentioned to his mother that her neighbor across the street, whose name was Henri, had clearly been watching Jean-Luc when he rolled up, like he was basically spying on him. And Monique actually kind of was spooked by that, because Henri was a bit of a loose cannon.

5:43For example, anytime anybody parked their car in front of Henri's house, he would shamelessly vandalize their vehicle by slashing their tires or pouring oil all over their car. I mean, the guy just didn't care. In fact, over the years, there had been several heated arguments between Monique and her sons and Henri about parking. And in fact, one of those arguments had even escalated into a physical fight. But since Jean-Luc had shown up tonight without a car, you know, he rode his bike here, Monique just hoped that, you know, whatever issues Henri had, that it wouldn't go anywhere because there's no car in front of his property.

6:19Like, we didn't do anything. Leave us alone. Monique let her son into the kitchen where she poured two glasses of sparkling wine, and then the two just sat there and chatted for about half an hour, and then Monique gave her son a haircut, and then around 7.05, Jean-Luc said goodbye to his mom. He went outside, hopped on his bike, which had not had its tires slashed by Henri, and he left to go to his apartment with his wife to have dinner. After Jean-Luc was gone, Monique just sort of went about her evening. She corralled the dogs behind a baby gate at the base of the stairs and then fed them, and then she went into the kitchen and began cooking dinner for herself.

6:55But then, a little while later, at around 7.30pm, Monique heard another knock on the door. And she knew it very likely was not her son, and so as she walked down the hallway to answer it, she just hoped it wasn't Henri. The following morning, the woman who lived next door to Monique woke up feeling pretty tired. She hadn't slept well because someone's dogs in the neighborhood had been barking all night. She got out of bed and walked over to the window and opened up the blinds. And as her eyes adjusted to the light that was flooding in, she looked down from her second floor window into the yard of the two-story white house that was next door, Monique's house.

7:34And the neighbor saw there was something dark in the middle of the walkway that led to the front door of Monique's house. And so the neighbor, she put her face right up to the window and she squinted to get a better look. And she realized what she was seeing was a body lying face down on the pavement. And so in a panic, this woman ran out of her room, grabbed the phone, and called the police. A couple hours later, Judiciary Police Captain Ann Preem pulled up in front of a white two-story house with crime scene tape and a medical examiner's van right out front. As Preem got out of her car, a police officer walked over to her and led her to where the body of a woman was lying out in the front yard.

8:14The officer told Prem that the victim, Monique Lejeune, had been discovered exactly like this by her neighbors earlier that morning. And based on the progression of rigor mortis, the medical examiner estimated that Monique had likely died between 8 p.m. and midnight the night before. Prem bent down to get a better look at the body, but even before getting up close, she knew this woman had sustained just gruesome injuries. There was blood all over Monique's face and her clothes, and her torso appeared completely ripped apart by what appeared to be stab wounds. Preem guessed just from looking at the scene that this woman must have been murdered and likely was stabbed, you know, just at first glance at least a dozen times.

8:59Preem also noticed pretty obvious defense wounds all over Monique's hands and forearms, which certainly suggested again that she was murdered and that Monique had put up a pretty good fight against her killer. And so after a few more moments of just kind of looking over the body, Preem stood back up and asked the officer if the neighbors had seen or heard anything unusual the night before. And the officer said no, aside from the fact that Monique's dog, she had four dogs, had been barking nonstop really the whole night, starting at around 8 p.m. Preem nodded and thanked the officer, and then she made her way over to the front door of the house to look to see if there was any signs of forced entry as the door was closed.

9:38When she got there, she didn't see any signs, but she did see a bloody handprint on the outside wall near the door. And then when Preem turned the handle of the door and opened it up, she saw this hallway inside that was absolutely covered in blood. And so Preem very carefully stepped inside, trying to avoid stepping in the blood or tracking any prints anywhere. And she began walking down the hallway very carefully and looking in other rooms. and she saw that for the most part, the blood spatter was pretty well contained in the entryway, which told her that the attack on Monique likely began and ended in the entryway.

10:17And so her running theory was, okay, Monique must have had someone come to the door, you know, they knocked or whatever, and then Monique opened the door and was attacked immediately. But then as Prem stepped back outside, she looked down at the front walkway and noticed something kind of unusual. Despite all the blood right inside the front door, there was no blood at all on the walkway between the door and the spot where Monique's body was found. And just from the amount of blood that the victim had clearly lost inside the house, Preem doubted that she would have been capable of running out into the yard after the attack.

10:54So she had to wonder if maybe the body had been moved post-mortem. And Monique was a large woman. So if her killer had been able to overpower her, one, and then also move her body such a far distance after she was dead, Prem assumed that whoever her killer was, was likely pretty strong. In fact, Prem just kind of assumed that the killer had to be a big, strong man. However, what Prem didn't understand was why would the killer want to drag a corpse out into the yard where the neighbors could see them? Unless, for some reason, they wanted Monique to be found as soon as possible. And since, at least at this point, it appeared like Monique likely had gone to the front door and opened the door for her killer, Preem thought that the killer must be someone that she knew.

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15:12Around noon on that same day, so February 8th, 2003, police captain Anne Preem was about to go next door and speak to one of Monique's neighbors herself when suddenly a car pulled up at the curb and three men climbed out looking completely shocked and very concerned. By this point, Preem had learned from the neighbors that Monique had a husband and also adult sons. And so, Preem assumed that these men must be them. So, right away, Preem hurried down the walkway to cut the men off, to keep them from entering the crime scene. And the three men, they just began crowding around her, asking her, like, what's going on?

15:47Where's Monique? What's happened? And she told them that, unfortunately, Monique had been stabbed to death. And at first, all three of them just went completely silent. And then one of them, one of the sons, just began to cry. Preem then told them that they couldn't go into the house because it was still an active crime scene. So instead, she led them over to the curb and they all sat down. Preem could tell the men were in shock because as much as one man was crying, it just seemed like they couldn't even process what they were told. But it was important to find out what Monique's family knew as soon as possible.

16:22So Preem pulled out a notepad and gently asked them about the last time they had seen Monique. The husband, Claude, said that they had all left the house around 3 p.m. the previous afternoon, leaving Monique at home alone. They said they had gone to a family gathering near Paris that evening and stayed overnight, and they'd only now just gotten back into town, and they'd seen this whole scene out front. The police tape and police, they had no idea what was going on. Eventually, pre-masked Claude to tell him all the names of all the people in their family, all their adult children, you know, Claude's ex-wife, Monique's ex-husband, everybody.

16:59But as Claude was giving this information, he told her that he just couldn't imagine anybody in the family being involved in this. Cream nodded, but she knew that it was entirely possible that family was involved. I mean, unfortunately, this stuff does happen. But she didn't give that off. Instead, she just said, well, can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Monique? And Claude thought about it and just said no. She lived a pretty normal and uneventful life. But then one of the sons piped up and mentioned that actually there might be someone. He said her neighbor, Henri, and he pointed across the street at the house.

17:36A minute later, Prem was knocking on the front door of Henri's house. And after a few seconds, a middle-aged man answered the door. And he was very curious about what was going on across the street. And eventually, Prem told him that, well, your neighbor Monique has been murdered. And when she said that, Henri smiled. So immediately, alarm bells are going off on Priem's head. She's thinking this guy is very suspicious. And she asked him, like, can I come in and look around then? And Henri didn't even seem surprised by this request. It was like he already knew he was going to be looked at as a suspect and said, sure, come on in.

18:11So he stepped aside and Priem came in and began searching every room in the house, the living room, the kitchen, the upstairs bedrooms. But despite looking everywhere, she didn't find any traces of blood or really anything else suspicious or unusual. So eventually, Preem made her way back into the living room where Henri was waiting, and she asked him, you know, where were you the previous evening? And he told her very casually that, well, he and his wife were home. They were here. Preem thought this was a pretty weak alibi, but she made a mental note to follow up with the wife and confirm it later.

18:43Next, Prem asked Henri if he had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary the night before, and Henri said no. Except that maybe around 7pm, he had seen one of Monique's sons leaving her house on his bicycle. And at this, Prem perked up, because the family had told her that Monique had a third adult son named Jean-Luc, who had not gone to that party in Paris. And if Henri was telling the truth, it meant that Jean-Luc was very likely the last person to see Monique alive. And maybe he was even the killer. The next morning, Priem led a forensics team up the stairs of a run-down apartment building in a sketchy part of town.

19:24She knocked on the door to Jean-Luc's apartment, and a moment later, a young man answered. After confirming that he was Jean-Luc, Luke. Two officers led him away to be questioned back at the station. Meanwhile, Preem went in with the forensics team to search his apartment. And pretty quickly, as Preem was walking around the living room, one of the other officers called her over to look at something. And so she walked over to him and she saw he had his flashlight out and he was pointing it at something on the wall. And when she got close enough, she could see that what he was highlighting were what appeared to be tiny drops of blood.

19:57And so Prem pulled out her flashlight and she too began scouring the walls and the floor near the stairs looking for any more blood and she found a few more red droplets near the doorknob to a closet. And so she opened the closet up and inside was a bike. And she shined her flashlight on the bike on the wheels and the frame and she saw all these reddish brown splatters all over the underside of it as if whoever had ridden this bike last had basically drove through a puddle of blood. An hour later, Priem walked into an interrogation room at the police station where Jean-Luc was sitting with his head in his hands.

20:35He looked up as she entered, and he had this very scared and confused expression on his face. Priem sat down across from him and right away asked him what he had been doing at his mother's house on the night of February 7th. Jean-Luc said he had just stopped by after work, as he often did, and he only stayed for maybe half an hour before riding his bike back home. When Priem asked him if he had gone straight home afterwards, Jean-Luc said no, he hadn't. He explained that his wife's brother, Christophe Gressier, lived in the same apartment building as they did on the floor right below them. So before going up to his own unit, he said he just stopped by to chat with Christophe for a few minutes, and then after that, he spent the rest of the night in his own apartment with his wife.

21:18However, to Priem, she felt like there had to be more to this story because they had found what appeared to be droplets of blood sort of scattered throughout Jean-Luc's apartment. And then, you know, there was blood or at least what appeared to be blood on the underside of his bike. And so she figured, you know, maybe if she pushed hard enough, she might be able to get him to change his story. So she told him point blank, they had found blood in his living room and they were now sending it to the lab for analysis. And when Jean-Luc heard this, his face went bright red and he began stammering that the blood was very likely from a neighbor who had injured himself while visiting a few days earlier.

21:52Priem nodded, but then told him, you know, they'd also found blood sort of all over his bike. And Jean-Luc, he sort of hesitated and stuttered and stammered, but really couldn't come up with any way to explain that. At this point, Priem felt like she had Jean-Luc right where she wanted him. So she just told him to be quiet for a second and just roll up your sleeves so she could look at his arms. Priem knew, you know, based on the defensive wounds on Monique's body that she likely had fought back really hard, and she must have left at least a few scrapes or bruises on her killer. However, when Jean-Luc finally rolled up his sleeves, Prem didn't see a single scratch or bruise on his hands or arms.

22:33A few minutes later, Prem left the interrogation room and walked to her office. Despite the lack of defensive wounds, Jean-Luc was definitely still acting suspicious, and she was not ready to let him go. But she also didn't want to get tunnel vision and completely ignore any other suspects, and case the blood inside of Jean-Luc's apartment did turn out to just be a big coincidence. So she sat down at her desk and she opened up a file and she began flipping through the notes of interviews that her team had already done with the rest of Monique's family and her neighbors. Monique's sons had mentioned in their interviews that there was definitely some tension between Monique and her five stepdaughters.

23:11But officers had spoken to all the stepdaughters as well as their husbands, and even though some of the women had admitted they still had an issue with Monique, they all had alibis, both the women and their husbands, for the night that Monique was killed. Also, several other family members had mentioned that Claude's ex-wife, Beatrice, definitely did not get along with Monique, but officers had tracked down Beatrice, and she just didn't seem like a very strong suspect. Beatrice had said, for the most part, she and Monique, even if they didn't get along, they just stayed out of each other's way and that they hadn't seen each other in over a month.

23:48And also, Beatrice was remarkably tiny and frail. She was barely 4 foot 9 inches tall and 58 years old and just seemed really weak. So it just seemed almost impossible that she could have overpowered the much larger Monique and inflicted the injuries that were inflicted on her and then dragged her out to the front yard. It just seemed sort of impossible. And so, even though she wasn't totally ruled out, for the most part she was. Just then, there was a knock on Prem's door, and when she looked up, she saw there was another officer standing there, and he told her there were two people here who wanted to speak to her.

24:23Prem nodded, and then a moment later, a very nervous-looking middle-aged man and woman came into the office. They sat down across the desk from Prem, and the man said they had information that could help with the Monique Lejeune investigation. Prem sat up and grabbed a notepad and said, okay, tell me what you got. And she began writing as the man explained that he was a co-worker of Christophe Cressier. And Priem immediately recognized that that was the name of Jean-Luc's brother-in-law, the one Jean-Luc said he had visited on the night Monique was killed. That was the person he saw apparently right after he left Monique's house.