For nearly twenty years, nothing has explained why this 22-year-old Vierzonne was removed and beaten in July 1999. Three men, sentenced in 2021 after the confessions of a fourth, continue to deny. Their appeal trial opens on Monday, March 21st.
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The garden of the abbey is perhaps the only thing that has not really moved to Vierzon since the death of Mathieu Hocquet, almost twenty-three years ago. It is here, at the entrance of this square downtown, that the 22-year-old woman was kidnapped, on the night of July 12th to 13th, 1999. As often after work, he was walking his dog. His phone, lighter and packet of cigarettes were found there. His body, he was discovered in a ditch in the early morning of July 13, ten minutes away by car, on the northern edge of the city, by a breeder came to heal his horses.
The autopsy revealed a cranial box and a body covered with hematomas, as well as superficial wounds by white weapon on a buttock. The experts evoke a mortal blow behind the head, followed by an agony of ten minutes. For twenty years, nothing will explain why Mathieu Hocquet was beaten to death behind the ZAC where the ring road now passes. His juvenile face, long displayed in “a” republican Berry, always haunts the city.
He arrived in Vierzon a year and a half before his murder, and worked in a fast food, the Packman, in the city center. He was homosexual and “did not hide it,” as a colleague was told in 1999. The investigations are first oriented towards a homophobic crime. Then to a revenge related to his debts, local drug trafficking … or to quarrels with the corner Caies.
A testimony eighteen years after the facts
Three of the four men – Bouchaib Mohib, Samir Berkani and Driss Belkhouribchia – convicted, in April 2021, of the abduction, the sequestration and the arbitrary detention followed by the death of Mathieu Hocquet continue to deny and appealed. Sentenced to bourges, at first instance, to sentences ranging from eighteen to twenty years in prison, against twelve for the fourth, they will appear on appeal before the meeting court of Nevers of March 21 at 1 / sup> April.
Before this new hearing, defense lawyers point to “major deficiencies” in this extension process. For them, this file remains a “Cold Case”, an “unresolved” case despite the condemnations at first instance. In fact, the investigators responsible for the case have long patinated: evidence is missing, as much as the suspects. In April 2005, the chopper falls: the investigating judge orders a non-place. A failure that Serge Hocquet, the father of Mathieu, does not digest. He has been conducting his side in his side since a moment, has opened a website dedicated to the murder of his son, sent mail to the prosecutor, drove relentlessly the garden of the abbey to see who came there.
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