DEATH OF ROSE. The 15-year-old teenager, the main suspect in the case of little Rose, found dead on April 25, confessed to being responsible for her death on Wednesday June 21, 2023, two months after the fact.
Light is finally shed on Rose’s death. The 15-year-old suspected of having killed the 5-year-old girl, in Rambervilliers, in the Vosges, on April 25, admitted the facts and indicated that he drowned his victim in his mother’s bathtub.
Two months after the events, a reconstruction of the crime was organized on Wednesday June 21, in the presence of the main suspect indicted for the murder of Rose. The young man left his prison cell to return to the scene of the tragedy, within a very restricted perimeter of 200 meters, as reported by BFMTV. The suspect’s cooperation was complete. The teenager explained to the investigating judge that he lured little Rose to his home by offering to go to his cats, then wanted to “scare the child” and drowned her in the bathtub after running a bath. The respondent went so far as to agree to reenact the scene on a mannequin.
The re-enactment lifted the veil on Rose’s death. Until now, the circumstances and causes of death were not precisely known, it was simply established that the girl had not been raped, although found naked by the gendarmes. This information is useful for further investigation. The suspect is returned to pre-trial detention.
On Tuesday April 25, 2023, the death of a 5-year-old girl shook the small town of Rambervillers and its 5,000 inhabitants, in the Vosges. That day, parents alerted the police to the disappearance of their child, a 5-year-old girl named Rose. The girl was found dead a few hours later. His lifeless body had been discovered naked and in a plastic bag by the police. The bag was in an apartment not far from the girl’s home. The origin of this discovery: a 15-year-old teenager quickly became the main suspect in this case.
The young man had indeed reported the discovery of Rose’s body outside his home to the police, but it was inside his mother’s apartment that the body was finally found. These elements coupled with the criminal record of the teenager, indicted in February 2022 for two sexual assaults on children aged 10 and 11, had raised fears of sexual violence perpetrated on the girl. The conclusions of the autopsy carried out on Friday April 28 finally indicated that Rose had not been subjected to rape.
The 15-year-old teenager had been indicted for the charge of murdering a minor under the age of 15 and placed in pre-trial detention at the Metz remand center on April 27. He faces up to 20 years in prison because of his age. Last year, the young man was sent to a closed educational center for a year. He was released last March after serving his sentence. Since his release, and his return to Rambervillers, he was subject to an obligation of care and training, under the supervision of the Judicial Protection of Youth (PJJ). “The law was respected. He was placed in a closed educational center for the maximum duration, that which is provided for by law because he was under 16 at the time of the facts with which he is charged. from a legal point of view, this child could not be in prison”, said Charlotte Caubel, Secretary of State for Children, on BFM TV.
“Reappeared a few weeks ago in the city center [de Rambervilliers, ndlr] where he was wandering by bike”, according to the mayor of the town Jean-Pierre Michel, the teenager was well known to the inhabitants. Since childhood, the suspect in the death of little Rose criss-crossed the streets of the locality on his bicycle used to being “all alone in the street since childhood” according to a relative of the family who testified to BFMTV. If the teenager has never had friends according to the memories of an educator interviewed by Le Parisien, he has not benefited from support within his family either: as a child he received blows from his biological father according to the aforementioned relative, and older he often remained alone despite the presence of his mother, mentally deficient and volatile, and his stepfather caught up in work seven days a week.
This family climate can partly explain the conclusions drawn by psychiatrists who detected a mild mental deficiency, self-centered functioning and psycho-emotional immaturity during a previous expertise.
The teenager suspected of having killed Rose has a “disorder since childhood” according to an anonymous relative and has been recognized as disabled due to a mild mental deficiency according to Le Parisien. At school, the suspect therefore benefited from appropriate education before being directed to a medico-educational institute. A companion who took care of him describes a child who expresses himself little and badly and who tries to be “interesting” to counter loneliness. It is also because of his behavior and possible psychiatric disorders that “the municipal police had [yet] a watchful eye on him”, said the mayor of Rambervillers. However, the public prosecutor of Epinal, in charge of the file, indicated that “a psychiatric expertise previously ordered concluded to the absence of mental disorders” but to “the existence of an alteration of discernment and its danger to others.”
This isn’t the first time the teenage suspect in Rose’s death has been embroiled in a court case. The 15-year-old had already been indicted and then placed under judicial supervision after the sexual assault of two children aged 10 and 11 in February 2022. The case had taken him to a closed educational center in the Vosges, structure from which he was released in February 2023, after serving his sentence.
The mother of one of the young boys who accuse the suspect returned, Friday, April 28, to the microphone of BFM TV, on the aggression of her son. “They were outside playing, like all children. [The suspect] called them, told them to come over and show them something,” she recalled, explaining that the suspect then allegedly brought them to the forest where he would then “tie them with tape”. And to add: “With his lighter, he wanted to light the leaves so that they burn.” Fortunately, “another child rescued [them]. They managed to escape,” she said. And to estimate: “[Without him], there might have been two more deaths.”
It should be noted that before his departure and since his return to Rambervillers, the teenager had also got into the habit of calling out to certain young girls according to the testimonies of members of the neighborhood. The teenager offered, according to the same statements, to go see his cat in his mother’s apartment, where Rose’s body was found.
