Cécile Brossard

Case record: Cécile Brossard

Background

Cécile Brossard was a long-time lover of French banker Édouard Stern (October 18, 1954 - February 28, 2005). Stern was a French banker and was found shot dead in his apartment in Geneva, Switzerland, after a sadomasochistic bondage session wearing a head-to-toe latex catsuit.

Stern was the son of the banker Antoine Jean Elie Stern and Christiane Laroche, and he was a personal friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He was relatively unknown outside finance circles until his death.

Stern was 38th in a list of France’s richest citizens. He was born in 1954 to one of France’s wealthiest families, the owners of a private investment house called Banque Stern. Stern studied at the Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales in Paris.

He married Béatrice David-Weil, who lived in New York with their three children. Béatrice David-Weil was a daughter of Michel David-Weill and a granddaughter of Pierre David-Weill, both of whom were partners in Lazard Frères.

The offence

Stern was found shot dead in his apartment in Geneva, Switzerland, after a sadomasochistic bondage session wearing a head-to-toe latex catsuit. His body was found in his bedroom.

Police found Stern clothed in a flesh-coloured head-to-toe latex catsuit with a dildo inserted in him, and shot four times. Police initially thought the latex body suit might have been a ruse by the murderers to confuse the police. It later became clear that Stern had been involved in a sadomasochistic bondage session.

Brossard was arrested over the killing. She was convicted and sentenced on June 18, 2009.

Investigation

Swiss authorities arrested Stern’s long-time lover, Cécile Brossard, over the killing.

Investigators later identified Brossard as a prime suspect and linked Stern’s latex-clad body to her. Investigators learned Brossard was one of a few people (including the maid and Stern’s inner circle of business associates) who had keys to his apartment, where there had been no sign of forced entry.

Investigators summoned Brossard and her husband, Xavier Gillet, for questioning. Gillet was described as a licensed herbologist, massage therapist and alternative medicine practitioner. During questioning, both were fingerprinted and photographed, and investigators interrogated them about their marital status, their lawyers, and their bank accounts.

Brossard was held for questioning for nine hours longer than her husband. She was then released since there was not enough direct evidence tying her to the crime.

Swiss detectives tapped Brossard’s and her husband’s phones. Brossard remained a person of interest and was not allowed to leave Switzerland.

Investigators traced the license plate of a BMW Mini caught on security videotape speeding from the murder scene to Gillet’s apartment in nearby Clarens, where Brossard slept in a separate bedroom from Gillet.

After Brossard’s fingerprints were matched to those found on the latex suit on Stern’s body, Brossard was arrested.

Brossard confessed after her arrest. Investigators were taken by Brossard to the spot on Lake Léman where she said she had disposed of the pistol used to shoot Stern. Divers later recovered the murder weapon from the lake.

Brossard was arrested two weeks after the crime, after fleeing to Italy and Australia. The murder weapon, which she had thrown into Lake Léman, and the dominatrix clothing she had worn were recovered.

Arrest and flight

After the shooting, Brossard attempted to remove traces from the crime scene. She gathered her fetish gear (tights, a dog-collar, a latex suit and other accessories), the murder weapon, two other high-caliber pistols Stern kept in a drawer, and four spent pistol shell casings. She left the apartment, locking the door behind her with her set of keys.

Brossard sped off in the BMW Mini Gillet let her use in Switzerland on the way to Gillet’s apartment in Clarens. Along the way, she dumped the pistols in Lake Léman.

In Clarens, Brossard told Gillet that she had a horrible fight with Stern and that she was leaving town for a few days.

She boarded a train for Rome but got off when she realized she had mistakenly gotten on a local commuter train. She took a cab to the airport in Milan. The airport was closed when she arrived at about 4:30 a.m. She offered to pay more for the cab driver to take her to Rome, but he refused. She then waited outside in the cold until the airport opened a couple of hours later, when she bought a one-way ticket to Sydney, Australia.

While en route, Brossard called her lawyer and gave instructions to attempt to block Stern’s attempts to recover the million dollars from her account. She took a heavy dose of the anti-anxiety medication bromazepam and slept for most of the 24-hour flight to Sydney.

In Sydney, she checked herself into an airport hotel and called several people, including her lawyer and her bank about the money. She called Stern’s half-sister Fabienne and expressed shock over the phone when Fabienne told her about the discovery of Stern’s body.

Brossard mailed a package containing clothes items to her uncle and aunt who lived in Nancy, France. Marc Bonnant claimed that the package contained the fetish garb she had been wearing when she shot Stern, although he also described that some reports said she sent normal clothes.

Brossard remained in Sydney for about 24 hours before flying back to Switzerland. When the plane touched down in Singapore for a layover, Brossard had a panic attack and began screaming hysterically when she read about Stern’s murder on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro. A doctor was called who gave her a prescription for more sedatives while she continued the flight. In Singapore, Brossard also managed to call her lawyer and her bank. She contacted her aunt in Nancy, who agreed to pick her up at the airport and take her to Clarens.

When Brossard walked through customs in Zurich, the police were already waiting, and she was brought to the police station for the first round of questioning.

Trial

Brossard pleaded guilty.

During the proceedings, Brossard told the Geneva courtroom that she had committed an “abominable act” against her lover Edouard Stern and that she wanted the full truth to be known.

Brossard said: “My heart is full of remorse and pain. I have come to explain myself, not to defend myself, and say how it happened,” and “I know it was my fault.”

She expressed regret that Stern’s three adult children would never again be able to celebrate Christmas with their father and said: “I want to tell them the truth, not destroy Edouard or dirty his name,”

Marc Bonnant, the Stern family lawyer, intervened and said: “If he was such a marvellous man, you shouldn't have shot him”.

Brossard’s defence lawyer Alec Reymond told the courtroom: “The defence will plead it was a crime of passion.”

Court papers showed Brossard confessed to having killed Stern with his own revolver after an argument over $1 million Stern put into her Swiss account after she demanded it as “proof of his love for her”. Court papers described that Stern blocked it after she refused to return it.

Investigating officers testified that Brossard said she shot Stern after he told her: “One million dollars is a lot of money to pay for a whore.”

Brossard’s account included the following statements:

• “On the night it happened, I felt an explosion in my head and took a gun he kept in his bedside drawer.”
• “I pointed the weapon at his face and fired the first shot. The gun must have been six inches from my face. I think I hit him between the eyes. He got up, turned half way round and fell. I fired another round at his head.”
• “Brossard begged forgiveness and said: 'It was a moment of passion and madness. I did not intend for him to die.'”

Brossard pleaded guilty to killing Stern after kinky sex and an argument over $1 million. She told the courtroom that the crime was “not a question of money but of the heart”.

A court ruled that Brossard acted out of hatred and greed and convicted her of murder rather than the lesser “crime of passion”.

Chief prosecutor Daniel Zappelli said he would seek a conviction for murder, for which the maximum penalty was 20 years’ imprisonment, rather than a crime of passion, which had a 10-year maximum sentence.

A verdict was expected on June 19.

Sentencing

Brossard was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison on June 18, 2009.

In addition, the Swiss court ordered Brossard to pay Stern’s children one Swiss franc for “moral damage”.

Appeals

No appeal information was provided.

Outcome

Brossard was freed on parole in November 2010.

Aftermath

The Wall Street Journal reported that “[Stern's] family hopes people will stop talking about the case”.

Jacques Gasser, a psychiatrist appointed by the prosecutors, stated after interviewing and observing Brossard that there was little evidence Brossard killed Stern in a “state of passion”. Gasser wrote that “C é cile Brossard never lost her capacity to know that her actions were wrong,” and “Her ability to determine that was, at the most, slightly diminished.”

Gasser acknowledged that Brossard showed signs of having a borderline personality with narcissistic tendencies. Gasser wrote that, central to the prosecution’s case, Brossard was “not delirious nor were her perceptions of reality altered” when she murdered Stern.

Brossard apparently attempted to commit suicide shortly before the psychiatrist’s report was released. She slit her wrists while being transported from the prison in Champ-Dollon to the Belle Idee hospital, and her life was never in danger.

The psychiatric report included that Brossard once declared: “his death has fused them together.”

Marc Bonnant told Crime Library: “I believe she was actually very much in love with [Edouard], and the solitude of jail has made something almost mystical out of the affair for her,” and “It is a normal system of psychological defense, and is a way to put herself out of reach of her own conscience.”

Marc Bonnant also said: “Their relationship was passionate, difficult, and complicated, but there was a lot of love as well.”

Bonnant told Crime Library that Brossard’s eccentricities may largely stem from being alone in a cell for several years. Bonnant also said that, compared to women’s maximum security prisons in other parts of the world, Brossard was treated “humanely” and was allowed one personal visit per week.

Brossard’s father made statements about her capacity, including: “Was she capable of murder?” and his response that he thought C é cile would never “pull the trigger.” He said: “She was far too clever to commit a murder, her father said, that could be so easily linked to her.” He said: “If she were to kill someone, then it would be in a way that would make it difficult to link her to the crime.”

A psychiatrist’s report and the prosecution’s framing described the distinction under Swiss law between assassinat (premeditated killing) and meurtre (unpremeditated killing), and the sentence ranges associated with each category.

Other details

Stern had fortification of his luxury apartment with extra security alarms and video cameras both around and inside the building he owned at 17 Rue Adrien-Lachenal. Stern lived on the fifth floor, surrounded above and below by other wealthy tenants, and there was a Geneva police station on the ground floor.

Stern had a concealed firearms permit and owned several handguns prior to his death. A handgun permit in Europe was described as difficult to obtain.

Stern had received several death threats in the months and weeks preceding his murder.

Stern’s body was discovered on March 1, 2005 in Geneva.

Stern had been married to Béatrice Stern from 1983 to 1999. Béatrice Stern testified that Stern’s children still spoke every day of their father and said: “He was their hero.” She also said: “Nothing could have justified killing him. It made no sense.”

According to a psychiatrist-prosecutor context, the trial issue was Brossard’s mental state at the time of the murder and whether mitigating circumstances led to the crime of passion.

The French film “Une Histoire d'Amour” (titled in English “Tied”) was described as telling the story, and its ending was discussed as implying death by dehydration during the Mistress’ long plane flight rather than by “(a blank) gunshot”. The story of Édouard Stern was cited as inspiration for Olivier Assayas’ 2008 film Boarding Gate.

The death of Édouard Stern was parodied on the FX animated series Archer in the third season episode “Lo Scandalo”.

Brossard was described in connection with the case as having sadomasochistic bondage session involvement, and she introduced Stern to sado-masochism. The couple had taken part in threesomes, and Brossard had acted as a go-between, supplying Stern with women and men. She also watched Stern’s interactions.

Brossard was described as cleaning up the crime scene and throwing the weapon into a lake before fleeing to Italy and then Australia.

Brossard asked Stern’s children to return the $1 million.

Stern’s final taunting words were described as: “A million dollars is a lot to pay for a whore.”

Stern had an “explosive” character at times but quickly regained his composure, and he was described as not being a manipulator in Béatrice Stern’s testimony.