Frenchwoman on trial for killing and dismembering her workplace rival

A French woman went on trial on Monday charged with killing a work rival, chopping up the corpse and dumping the body parts in a canal.

Published: 21 October 2019 17:06 CEST

Frenchwoman on trial for killing and dismembering her workplace rival

The body parts were dumped in the Canal du Midi, a popular tourist destination. Photo: AFP

Sophie Masala, a 55-year-old mother of two, appeared in the dock in Toulouse in a black suit and light-coloured blouse, occasionally shaking her head in disagreement as the indictment was read.

She admits to having killed Maryline Planche, 52, but insists it was not intentional.

Planche was killed at her apartment in central Toulouse in the south of France in May 2016, her head smashed with a bottle.

A few days later, a metal hacksaw was used to cut up her body.

From the apartment to the Canal du Midi, some 500 metres away, the body parts were transported in a supermarket trolley, and her head in a backpack.

The parts were found later, washed up along the banks of the canal.

A few days after the murder, Masala was arrested in her hometown of Montpellier about 250 kilometres away.

“This is an unusual trial… We hope that we will be able to understand by the end of it,” said a lawyer for Planche's family, Georges Catala.

The two women had worked at an association for handicapped people, where their dislike for each other was well known.

Judgment is expected on Friday, and Masala risks life imprisonment if convicted.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.