The Frenchwoman confessed to shooting her lover dead during a sado-masochistic tryst on February 28th, The only outstanding question was how the court would classify the killing: cold-blooded murder or a crime of passion? A Swiss jury yesterday handed down a verdict of homicide.
Had the defence convinced the jury that the murder was a crime of passion, Brossard might have got off with as little as one year. Edouard Stern, a scion of continental banking aristocracy, was 50 years old when Brossard, then 36, pumped four bullets into him. Wire agencies noted that Stern was a friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy and the former prime minister Laurent Fabius. The charge of premeditated murder was dropped in what was interpreted as an attempt to limit the scandal, for Brossard, a sort of modern-day courtesan, knows much about the sexual peccadillos of the rich and powerful in France.
Brossard had initiated Stern to sado-masochistic sex. He donned a flesh-coloured latex jumpsuit and sat astride a chair, with ropes on his hands and feet, while Brossard whipped him. I was dumbfounded, shaken. I pointed the gun at his face and opened fire for the first time.
The gun must have been 10 centimetres from his face. I think I hit him between the eyes. He rose up, turned halfway around and fell on his side. So I fired one or two shots into his body. Brossard fled the apartment, flew to Australia, then back to Geneva. For two weeks she denied the killing, telling friends the Mafia staged the murder to look like a sex crime. Svetlana L, a tall, slender blond Russian, told the court she agreed to a threesome out of friendship for Brossard.
The women dressed as schoolgirls, in pleated skirts and bobby socks. Stern took Brossard on his private jet to Africa and New York. But he often humiliated her. When she attempted to break off the relationship, he waited for hours outside her home, bombarded her with phone calls and text messages. During more than four years in prison, Brossard has repeatedly been interned in the psychiatric ward, and attempted suicide at least once. Defence lawyers and psychiatrists emphasised her dreadful childhood: parents who separated when she was three, a father who flaunted his wild sex life and fondled his daughter.
