Hi everyone ! I hope 2025 is giving you everything you wanted, and things you didn’t know you wanted.
I’m still here, and this week I bring you a sad and horrifying story about a bad encounter that could have been avoided. Without further ado, here is the case of Tony Meilhon.
Tony
Tony Meilhon was born in August 1979 in Nantes, a city in Northwestern France, and his life starts off horribly.
His mother is a victim of sexual assault from her own father at only 15, and has already given birth to a boy because of these assaults. She also has two other children with her husband Jacques.
Three years after Tony’s birth, his mother flees her violent husband and takes her kids with her. Five years later, she’s back in a relationship, but Tony doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like him, to be more precise, and the feeling seems to be mutual. His stepfather is another violent man, and Tony can’t turn to his mother for help, because she pretty much wants nothing to do with him. Isolated, the young boy starts idealizing his biological father, Jacques.
On the school and social life side of things, the sun doesn’t shine brighter. Tony is struggling (more or less violently), and ends up in foster car at 13. He then starts running away, drinking, smoking pot and sniffing cocaine, further stunting an already subpar development.
The criminal behavior comes not long after the drugs, and Tony is arrested several times for robbery, burglary and drug dealing. He also terrorizes his family, from which several members have pressed charges against him. The conclusion of this descent isn’t a surprise : Tony is incarcerated for the first time at 15. It won’t be the last.
In April 1996, Tony is arrested for violent robbery and driving under the influence. For that, he is sentenced to a 3-month suspended sentence and 3 years of probation. He walks out of the juvenile court free as a bird, after a month of temporary detention.
As you probably guessed, he doesn’t calm down after this conviction. In October of the same year, he is arrested again for car theft, and rapes one of his cellmates while in temporary custody. In April 1997, he is sentenced to a 4-month suspended sentence. He will be judged later for the rape, don’t worry.
In October 1997, Tony is arrested for aggravated theft (yes, he gets caught a lot, because enthusiasm and skill are actually two different things). In March 1998, he is sentenced to 6 months in prison, but he has already served that time in temporary detention, so he walks out again. He doesn’t stay out of prison for long, because in August 1999, he is arrested for the 1997 rape (took long enough). It’s his first felony, and it seems to make him panic a little. He totally denies committing this crime, but ends up escaping from jail in December. He spends a month on the run before being caught and brought back. He is sentenced to 6 months in prison for this.
Regarding the rape, he is tried in March 2001, and finally admits his crime, saying he wanted to punish his cellmate because he disgusted him (someone please tell me how that makes sense, because I can’t see it). He benefits from the fact that he was a minor at the time (he was 17), and is sentenced to 5 years in prison.
In April, he is convicted for aggravated robbery, aggravated assault and deliberate property damage, all wrongdoings done during his shorts periods of freedom. 6 months (yes, total) are added to his sentence.
Tony gets out of prison in May 2003 after completing most of his sentence. If my calculations are right, the full sentence would have meant a liberation in September 2006. But hey, prisons are full, gotta make room for new inmates somehow, am I right ?
After getting freed, Tony meets a woman and has a child. He also robs a post office, a gas station and a tobacco shop with a shotgun. He just can’t help himself. He gets arrested in August 2003, and you know the rest. In June 2005, he is sentenced to 6 years in prison.
During his incarceration, Tony gets 7 additional days in his sentence for disrespect for authority.
After 4 years, in January 2007, Tony gets the permission to go out of the prison during the day. You guessed it, he doesn’t come back at sunset. He is caught in April after a car chase with police. When he is returned to the prison, he threatens a magistrate, which adds another charge. In total, he gets 16 more months in prison.
In 2009, he is supposed to be set free, but he threatens a magistrate again, adding a one-year sentence with 6 months suspended and 2 years of probation to his sentence. At this point, just give him life, we are tired…
He finally gets out of prison in February 2010.
By now, you surely understand that Tony isn’t a jolly fella you want to share a beer (or a gram of coke) with. Sadly, his evil isn’t detailed on his forehead (it wouldn’t be big enough anyway), and a personality is something that can be hidden, making him one of the worst traps you can fall into.
Laëtitia
Laëtitia Perrais’ life hasn’t been easy. Born in a poor and violent family, the state put her in the care of the Patron family with her twin Jessica in 2005. Described as calm, introverted, immature and fragile, she is still determined to be autonomous. In 2011, she is 18, working in a restaurant of La Bernerie-en-Retz, near Pornic. She dreams of moving to Tahiti with her sister.
On January 18th, 2011, she ends her shift and leaves to meet Tony (they had met earlier that day). Witnesses see them going from bar to bar, regularly hugging. Others see them arguing around 1am, not long after the tragic events that the investigators will discover later. A few hours later, her twin Jessica finds Laëtitia’s scooter near the family house. The vehicle has slidden down a couple of meters, and shoes as well as keys are next to it.
Jessica immediately alerts authorities, and the gendarmes quickly find themselves on Tony’s trail. He is found at his cousin’s house. He is armed, but becomes vulnerable when he is pistol-whipped as soon as the GIGN (French equivalent of SWAT) breaks down the door. He is arrested and placed in detention. His car, which is stolen by the way, is searched, and the investigators find blood in it. They also find pictures of Laëtitia in his phone.
The investigation
The search for Laëtitia continues and focus on Tony’s place of residence, which is apparently a caravan parked in a field. The gendarmes find in the surrounding area a burned shopping cart containing a knife, an axe, a hacksaw and an earring belonging to Laëtitia. The happy ending is no longer a possibility.
In the interrogation room, Tony keeps his usual audacity and denies any involvement in Laëtitia’s disappearance. However, in his holding cell, he sings “Oh Laëtitia, you were so hot, I didn’t get bored oh la la, your tiny body, it’s worth 30 years of prison.[…] Oh Laëtitia, the gendarmes couldn’t do anything for you…”. He is secretly taped singing by a miraculously calm agent’s smartphone.
Back to the investigation. A scrap dealer Tony owed money to explains to the investigators that Tony told him how he ran over someone and cut them into pieces. He allegedly showed him two garbage bags and asked him how to get rid of them. Unhindered by any sense of ethics, the scrap dealer allegedly told him to throw them into the Loire river.
Later, an ex-girlfriend of Tony reveals that Tony likes to fish at the Trou Bleu, a pond located in Lavau-sur-Loire. Investigators search it on February 1st, and find the head and limbs of Laëtitia. All hope is gone.
2 months later, on April 9th, a passerby finds Laëtitia’s torso in the Briord pond. The spring had sped up the decomposition, making the body part float up despite it being weighed down by a cinder block.
Now Tony’s back is against the wall. He finally admits that he is involved in Laëtitia’s murder, but declares that he hit her with car by accident and decided to “make it look like a crime” to cover himself. He falsely indicates that he threw the body over the Saint-Nazaire bridge, but it’s nearly impossible to stop a car on this bridge. He eventually admits that this story doesn’t make sense.
The gendarmes end up determining thanks to witnesses and messages that Laëtitia sent to her boyfriend that on the night of January 18th, Tony took Laëtitia to several bars before taking her back to his caravan and giving her marijuana and cocaine, which was a first for the young woman.
Probably convinced that she would submit to him, Tony then tried to initiate intercourse, but she resisted, and he became enraged. He raped her, and as soon as it was over, she sent a message to a friend to tell him what had just happened.
Appeased, he took her back to her scooter, but realized that she might press charges, so he caught up to her and ran her off the road. He then put her in his trunk and took her to the woods where he strangled her and stabbed her 44 times. After that, he cut up her body and threw the parts where they were later found.
Sadly, the state of the body at the time it was found prevented the rape from being proven during the autopsy.
Tony is still indicted for kidnapping and sequestration followed by death.
The tragedies keep coming
This extremely brutal crime shocks the local community, but it’s not the only surprise.
In August 2011, as Tony Meilhon’s trial is being prepared, the father of Laëtitia’s foster family, Gilles Patron, is indicted on charges of rape and sexual assault by a person abusing the authority conferred by their function. Indeed, while he was calling for severe punishment against sexual offenders, he was assaulting several women and girls, including Laëtitia’s twin Jessica. The sisters were placed in his house at 13, so he is also suspected of abusing Laëtitia as well.
This assumption gains credibility when investigators find letters in Laëtitia’s room. They were written by her, and in them she tells her struggles, her suicidal thoughts, saying among other things : “Look around you, I’m not the only one who is lying”.
The alleged abuse endured by Laëtitia is confirmed by her best friend, who is also a victim of Gilles Patron. Despite her honorable efforts to make her friend’s voice heard, she was banned from attending Laëtitia’s funeral by Gilles Patron’s wife for the “harm” she inflicted upon her husband. Yes, by “harm” she means telling on him.
Detained during his indictment period, Gilles is released on May 12th with an ankle monitor.
During his trial, he tries to upset Jessica by telling her that Laëtitia didn’t like how she was open with her homosexuality and that she couldn’t stand her anymore. However, according to everyone else, the two sisters were very close, with Jessica being the more protective and extroverted one.
Gilles is eventually sentenced in 2012 to 8 years in prison with a 5-year socio-judicial follow-up. If he doesn’t comply with the latter, he risks 3 additional years in prison, a 5-year withdrawal of civic rights and a registration in the sex offender national file (shouldn’t we do that last one anyway ?).
Regarding Tony, he attempts suicide twice during all of this, but most people (including me) aren’t convinced that he really wants to die. It looks more like an attempt to draw attention and pity.
The trial
Tony Meilhon’s trial begins in June 2013. During this procedure, his mother attempts to join the civil suit against him, deeming that her son had “dishonored and tarnished” her. I’m still asking myself if she is saying that about the murder or about the fact that it attracted so much attention.
Gilles Patron also attempted to join the civil suit, but he was unsuccessful (obviously).
Once he is in front of the judge, Tony admits to some of the events, saying that the devil had taken hold of him, but he also implicated an imaginary accomplice for the most gruesome parts of the crime.
While examining his personality, experts determined that he is smart (debatable), manipulative psychopath that is completely responsible for his actions. Tony himself describes himself as a monster.
His mother testifies : “I knew this was going to happen, but I thought that [the victim] would be someone in the family, I thought it would be me”.
In the end, Tony is sentenced to life with a 22-year mandatory incarceration period and a supervised confinement, which consists of holding a convict in a medico-judicial center after their sentence.
Tony, still audacious, files an appeal and loses it in July 2015, even though the supervised confinement is withdrawn from his sentence.
The media circus
Like usual with big cases during the Sarkozy presidency, the Head of State had to say something. Knowing that the post-release supervision wasn’t properly conducted in this case, he declared: “When you release an individual like the alleged offender without making sure that he will be supervised by a probation officer, it is a serious error. Those who have covered or let this error happen are going to be punished.”
This criticism of the justice system’s loopholes is ironic coming from a man who is now one of its biggest beneficiaries, but anyway…
Following this comment, magistrates started a 10-day strike, and a report from the High Counsel of Judges and Prosecutors highlighted that the sentence enforcement service for the Loire-Atlantique region was severely understaffed at the time (it still is, by the way). Finally, no magistrate was punished, but the Minister of Justice Michel Mercier dismissed the interregional director of the correction services of Rennes, Claude-Yvan Laurens. Stay calm, he was quickly appointed as a territorial inspector of correction services, our unemployment stats were saved.
The President wasn’t totally wrong though, the justice system did fail at some points. Indeed, at the time of Laëtitia’s death, Tony had a warrant out for his arrest because he hadn’t communicated his address to the sex offender registry, and his ex-girlfriend had pressed charges against him for rape and death threats.
Even in prison, the criminal record lengthens
Criminals rarely change, even when they are behind bars.
In October 2016, Tony’s sentence is increased by a year (€4,420 of damages are also added) after he set his cell on fire because the administration wouldn’t supply him with tobacco.
Placed in solitary confinement, he then filed a claim for compensation in June 2017, claiming the state owed him €8,000. He also asks to be taken out of the list of particularly publicized prisoners, which is a registry of inmates presenting a great danger to society or who have committed grave and/or repeated acts of violence in prison.
It doesn’t end there for him. Remember, his ex-girlfriend Céline had pressed charges against him for rape and death threats, all committed in 2010, a few weeks before Laëtitia’s murder. Tony goes to trial for these charges and only admits some of his wrongdoings, and in September 2013 he is sentenced to 16 years in prison, €180,000 in damages, and a 10-year entry ban from the Loire-Atlantique and Brittany regions.
Unsatisfied with this verdict, Tony declares to the jurors that “God will take care of [them]” and that he’ll file an appeal. We are still waiting for a comment from the Almighty regarding that promise.
Tony is still in prison today, and should stay there for a while.
Regarding Laëtitia’s family, Jessica is deeply traumatized by her sister’s death. When she started working in a restaurant, it took her a while to be able to manipulate red meat. Sometimes she can’t speak and communicates with papers. She was placed under a curatorship, and is considered disabled. Let’s hope she finds peace after so much suffering.
That’s it for the updates ! I’m going to try publishing the next case next week, but in the meantime let me know if you want me to cover something in particular in the comments or on r/Murder_Wine_Cheese. I hope you’ll find some money on the ground today, and I’ll see you next time!
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