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[tense music playing]
[reporter 1] This is a damning report for Cantat.
The final conclusions from Marie Trintignant's autopsy
speak of multiple blows to the face and a fractured nose.
The theory that a slap caused a fatal fall has crumbled.
[reporter 2] Bertrand Cantat seems to have been lying.
This is what we are now led to believe
based on the autopsy of Marie Trintignant.
The singer's account that she fell onto a radiator
has been disproven by the results.
The actress appears to have been the victim of a fatal beating.
MARIE TRINTIGNANT'S EX-PARTNER
You know, when they tell you that…
that she was beaten to death,
well, you start to imagine it.
And plus, he's this guy who has these enormous hands,
like paddles, with huge rings.
And that's when I went…
I don't wanna think about that.
[uneasy music playing]
But I'll tell you,
I could've killed him.
I can't get over it.
You know, this is the kind of thing that you never get over.
It all repeats in your mind.
I mean, really it's been terrible.
ACTRESS AND MARIE TRINTIGNANT'S FRIEND
AUTOPSY POINTS TO BERTRAND CANTAT
[Jahn] The autopsy was released by the press in mid-August.
And for the first time, Bertrand Cantat's image actually suffered.
JOURNALIST LE POINT MAGAZINE
CONDEMNS
[Fines] Marie Trintignant's nose was crushed.
It was literally shattered.
She had lesions on her brain and lesions on both optic nerves.
JOURNALIST
According to medical examiners, she had shaken baby syndrome.
And it was just Cantat's bare hands that did this to her.
He butchered her.
This girl was slaughtered.
Horrifying.
Lithuania is already requesting the autopsy of Marie Trintignant
for investigative purposes.
[reporter 1] A French investigation was also requested by the Trintignant family.
[reporter 2] The investigation has been given to examining magistrate
Nathalie Turquey and Police Commissioner Jérôme Bonet.
FORMER HEAD OF THE CRIME SQUAD
Thanks to the autopsy, we were able to rule out the theory of,
"I hit her and then she had a bad fall,"
but we didn't have the crime scene, which would've been key for us.
What could've happened? What triggered the beating?
We got authorization to go to Vilnius to interrogate him.
Bertrand Cantat… he must give us some answers.
FROM ROCK STAR TO KILLER
EPISODE 2 A DEADLY PASSION?
[tense music playing]
[reporter 1] The examining magistrate of this case
arrived this evening in Vilnius.
[reporter 2] She arrived in Vilnius with two officers from the crime squad,
and in her luggage, she has the autopsy report of Marie Trintignant.
The magistrate has already asked to meet with Bertrand Cantat
and interrogate him about the course of events.
[tense music playing]
[Bonet] When we arrived in Vilnius,
we got our luggage and received a warning, "You'll see. It's crazy."
And sure enough, we were harassed.
We were caught in an overwhelming swarm of cameras,
and they followed us all the way to the ambassador's car.
We all jumped into the car,
and got out of there as quickly as we could.
The stakes of this new hearing were incredibly high.
[suspenseful music playing]
Because during the first hearing, Bertrand had lied.
It was so much more serious than we could've ever imagined.
And since Marie Trintignant's death,
he'd been prosecuted for first-degree murder,
risking up to 15 years in prison.
So, I wondered what he was going to say to get out of it.
AUGUST 21, 2003 SECOND HEARING
Now that you are here in the presence of these representatives
of the French justice system,
are you ready to make your official statement?
Yes, of course. I'm ready. Sure.
[man] The second hearing had very high stakes for us.
We asked new questions,
and we really tried to encourage him to tell us the truth.
FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE CRIME SQUAD
Since I was the head of the Crime Squad at the time, I was in Paris,
but it was Commissioner Bonet who kept me informed about the hearing,
which he followed closely.
We interviewed Bertrand Cantat on August 21st, in 2003…
and we knew that, at this second hearing,
we absolutely had to present him with the autopsy results.
[unsettling music playing]
Then his version of events changed.
-[man speaking in Lithuanian] -Mm-hm.
He would like to know if you could please show us exactly how you hit her.
Well…
I did very, very, very large big slaps back and forth like this.
Four or five or six of them.
Like this and that, and this and that, you know?
-[woman] Mm-hm. -And then, then maybe even more,
because, like I was saying, at the time, you know, I… I won't try it on you.
No.
[woman] No, don't.
[distant chuckle]
But it's true that they weren't gentle.
They were big slaps, and I was beside myself.
Totally out of control.
I wasn't myself in that moment. It was like an out-of-body experience.
And so, I… I slapped her really hard.
They were like big slaps like this with my rings on,
so, the fact of the matter is
the whole thing was really… It was quite violent.
Did you do it like this or more like that?
-I don't really know. -[woman] Uh-huh.
Because the slaps just sort of came out of me in that moment.
Like that, without any sort of planning.
I didn't think about how hard it would be, but I know that it wasn't…
They weren't like this.
I know that the hits definitely weren't as hard as that.
Thanks to the autopsy, we got a bit of a confession.
It wasn't enough, it was incomplete, but it was a confession.
[tense music playing]
-[interpreter translates] -I… I can't.
I… I just think…
I still think that it was my fault.
Sure, you can say that we were both fighting,
but still, I hit her.
So, I take responsibility for the fact that… that she died because of me.
-[interpreter translates] -[sobbing]
-What have I done? It was because of me! -[Fines] Bertrand Cantat
admitted that it was his fault.
And more than anything, he cried a lot.
It's… It's absolutely awful. Terrible.
[Fines] And in fact, at that point in time,
the headlines said, "Bertrand Cantat's poignant confession."
[Jahn] The first words of the article talked about Bertrand Cantat's tears.
He was described as emaciated. This is a man who killed a woman,
but the tone of the article is empathetic towards him.
And that's exactly when he started to turn the situation around.
[ominous music playing]
At a certain point, it was just a matter of the fact that I was stronger.
It was a problem that… It completely overwhelmed me.
It did. It completely took me over. Yeah, it took over.
During this second hearing, he was
already on his way to prison, if I dare say.
And at that point, Bertrand Cantat realizes,
"I might go to trial and get convicted," so he starts to worry,
and he tries to get out of it by using several defense tactics.
Narcissistic abusers are dangerously clever.
He will do whatever it takes to make all suspicion fall elsewhere.
[Cantat] Let's just say things on her end escalated quickly,
and I didn't recognize her.
And so, already it was…
Well, I couldn't recognize Marie. She became someone else.
There was something else wrong before it escalated.
[Bonet] At first, Bertrand Cantat's defense
played on the fact that Marie's behavior could perhaps have been,
I won't go so far as to say "provocative,"
but he was making people question if her behavior could have provoked anger.
Of course, she was screaming too, and then, she…
she punched me right in the face. She hit me.
[woman] Mm-hm.
[Cantat] Until then, I controlled myself, but then I lost it.
-[woman] Mm-hm. -I had a split lip on top and other marks,
but no one seemed to care.
And I remember that the French lawyer Bertrand Cantat had, Olivier Metzner,
he came outside…
[camera shutters clicking]
…and he spoke to the press.
Marie had never acted like that.
It was foreign to him.
And his strategy would change everything.
Unfortunately…
she hit him first.
[echoing] She punched me before I hit back. She grabbed me.
She grabbed him, and he fell.
By that point, she had completely lost it.
She lost control, and then he lost it too.
The press started to speak about that a lot.
[reporter 1] According to the lawyer of Bertrand Cantat,
Marie Trintignant provoked the singer by taking a swing at him first.
MARIE ALLEGEDLY HIT HIM
And of course, this made an impact on French citizens.
IT'S NOT THE "EVIL MAN" AGAINST THE "NICE WOMAN"
TRINTINGNANT ASSAULTED CANTAT FIRST!
The autopsy report was basically forgotten
because the media just kept on repeating the arguments made by Cantat's defense,
which turned the 20 or so hits that were received into self-defense.
He said, "I jostled her slightly…"
[reporter] After the grief, comes anger and outrage.
The media became a battlefield between two prominent lawyers.
The one who defended the Trintignants was Georges Kiejman.
TRINTIGNANT FAMILY'S LAWYER
[Jahn] He's a beast in the media.
He's worked on the most high-profile cases in France.
[reporter] The Trintignant family, speaking through their lawyer Mr. Kiejman,
gave their version of events today.
"No, she was not the one to hit him first."
It is unbelievably unlikely
to think that this small, young woman,
1.65 meters tall, weighing less than 60 kilos,
could have pushed and knocked him to the ground,
this big guy, who's a real athlete.
About 1.9 meters tall and weighing 85 kilos,
not to mention that he's trained in several different sports.
Marie was a tiny little thing.
It's impossible that she could have physically taken on Cantat
in any sort of significant way.
And yet, his intention was to use the argument of self-defense,
in which he was practically the victim.
Poor Bertrand Cantat,
who was pushed to the brink to kill Marie without wanting to.
And then, Bertrand Cantat found a new way to defend himself.
And of course, it's not the most elegant way, to say the least,
it's to smear the victim.
So I just couldn't-- Well, I kept on trying to reason with her
through counter-arguments, by saying,
"Wait, you can't tell me that there isn't some sort of an imbalance here,
that there isn't a problem."
And she kept saying, "Go see your wife, go see your wife,"
until she was completely, well, hysterical.
She was enraged, hysterical.
He didn't think she could be like that.
And she kept on being so hysterical,
She kept fixating on, "Go see that amazing woman. Go see her."
This idea that Marie Trintignant drove Bertrand Cantat crazy
because she was hysterical and pushed him to the edge,
this story persisted and was reported by the press.
HYSTERICAL HYSTERIA
In an editorial, we saw them write, "Words kill."
WORDS THAT KILL
"Words do more harm than hitting." Or, "words that emasculate."
EMASCULATE
So Marie Trintignant's words hurt more than the beating by Bertrand Cantat.
SILENCE WORDS THAT KILL
Frankly, it's shameful.
Cantat had several more lines of defense after that.
Obviously, he was trying to discredit the victim.
I am not going to give any more attention to Marie's alleged hysteria.
It's the classic excuse from abusive men.
Marie Trintignant's loved ones were mourning at that time.
They didn't want to speak publicly.
So now, Georges Kiejman was on his own,
which left more space for people close to Bertrand Cantat.
There is a spotlight on this case because of their personalities…
WRITER
…and the dynamic between the two of them.
I mean, we have to be careful not to judge too quickly.
Investigate conclusions, and psychological profiles must be made.
AN ALCOHOLIC WITH A HYSTERICAL WOMAN IT HAD TO END BADLY
SHE WAS A HYSTERICAL, ALCOHOLIC DRUG-USER
IT DOESN'T JUSTIFY ANYTHING, BUT IT PUTS IT INTO CONTEXT.
MARIE HAD FOUR CHILDREN FROM THREE DIFFERENT FATHERS?
I'm not saying that I know her. I don't know Marie Trintignant.
JOURNALIST AND WRITER
I can't say what she was like, but what's key for Cantat is loyalty.
He hasn't been married three times.
-Wow. Come on, listen! -I'm just saying…
-You have to say these things. -Ridiculous!
-Why not? They're the facts! -Listen!
Personally, if I had to plead in favor of Bertrand Cantat in Vilnius,
I'd say it's more a tragedy than a crime.
-[Ardisson] Xavier Cantat, welcome. -Good evening.
[Ardisson] You are the older brother of Bertrand Cantat.
You say that Marie's personality is being rewritten,
but she was capable of being excessive, everyone knows that.
Marie had many different lovers,
and she had four children with four fathers, not just three.
So it doesn't do her image justice
to portray her as some sort of perfect little girl, which she never was.
They're trying to make us believe
that nobody ever saw her get angry with anyone before.
But I don't know. They never met her then.
Thank you.
[applause]
[Jahn] Here's an example of complacency from Thierry Ardisson.
He hosts one of the most-watched shows in France,
and he decides to let on the brother of Bertrand Cantat
to destroy Marie Trintignant's image
when she was just killed by Bertrand's bare hands.
Uh… so I knew that…
NOIR DÉSIR'S FORMER TOUR MANAGER
…that Marie Trintignant was a person who was quite complex.
I mean, after all, she was an actress,
so she was very highly strung, and she was a bit… not quite hysterical,
but she had a temper.
That's all.
[dark music plays]
[Jahn] Defenders of Bertrand Cantat
would have done anything to minimize his responsibility.
And this was even more evident during Bertrand Cantat's last line of defense
to connect his crime to his undying love.
[crying] I loved her so much, and she loved me so much.
She attacked me too.
Why did something like this have to happen?
It's something I can't wrap my head around.
I completely lost control, and she lost control too.
Both of us did in that moment.
It's just such an insane turn of events.
Everyone, if you speak to them, if you ask anybody,
everybody knows how much we loved each other.
Everybody knows how strong it was.
I hope that when he is finally tried,
it will be for something that is closer to the truth,
which is a crime of passion.
Cantat's lawyers tried to justify the incident
by calling it a crime of passion.
Without this excessive love, this tragedy wouldn't have happened.
Because under Lithuanian law,
if the events were categorized in that way,
Bertrand Cantat's sentence could be cut in half.
LOVE - COUPLE - PASSION
[Fines] From there, the French headlines,
they suddenly discussed it as a crime of passion.
A story of a love that went wrong.
LOVE
MARIE TRINTIGNANT VICTIM OF PASSION
PASSION
TRINTIGNANT A DEVASTATING LOVE
PASSION A TRAGIC COUPLE
Everyone is calling it an exceptional love story
that became excessive.
It's a beautiful love story that took a bad turn.
The crime itself seems passionate.
This tragic act occurred in the middle of a passionate, heated argument.
BERTRAND WAS A VICTIM OF HIS PASSION.
IT'S AWFUL FOR HIM TOO!
[man] What was the cause that pushed both of them there?
What was it that exacerbated their passion?
No. That doesn't exist.
You don't kill out of love. That's totally made up.
People need to get that out of their heads.
You kill out of hatred.
The only story that was being told by the media
was that it was a crime of passion, and that she deserved it. Boom.
Back in 2003,
well, the newspaper headlines called it a "crime of passion,"
so I thought it was a crime of passion.
I didn't understand at the time.
Crime and passion.
Those are two words that just shouldn't go together. Period.
The notion of a crime of passion reflects a worldview, at that time,
which is that a great love must always end tragically.
You get the impression that the perpetrator
is also a victim of his own passion.
At the time, I was so outraged by this type of treatment.
And so, I spoke out in Marie's defense.
[Ardisson] Welcome to Tout le monde en parle.
-Introducing Muriel Cerf. -Hello, Thierry.
-Do you know everyone? -No, I don't.
-All right. -[Lio] Hello.
[Cerf] I don't know anyone here.
-You must've heard of Lio. -I've heard of Lio.
You've published a book with Écriture called,
Bertrand Cantat or The Song of the Automatons.
So, in your opinion,
the explanation that you give for the crime of Bertrand Cantat
is that the nature of passion is violent, at its core.
[Cerf] Exactly.
The nature of passion depends on what type of passion and how we perceive it.
His love wasn't stolen from him. He killed her.
-Of course he killed her. -Carry on because I'm interested.
Look, we agree.
-Really, I'm very, very interested. -Cantat, he was madly in love with Marie.
So my book is about passionate love and what we do with it.
[tense music playing]
I could only handle that conversation by trusting what came out of my mouth.
All I know is that to say
that Marie was also somehow responsible for her own death,
-that passion and love killed her-- -What?
[Lio] No. Love does not kill people.
I know that when Marie died, the condition of her face was similar
to a victim of a motorcycle accident going 120 kilometers per hour.
And those are the words of the doctors.
-As long as women… -But that's not it.
…accept their fate as victims in the name of love,
we're fucked.
Oh, you've been robbed of your love?
But who's the one who stole his fucking love?
Marie died because he hit her.
-[Ardisson] Okay. -Fine, you wanted to go there, but…
[applause]
[inaudible]
[Lio] During that show,
the only discussion was about the crime of passion.
For me, that was the catalyst.
I had to speak.
It was insanely unjust.
And after that, they humiliated me.
I got dragged through the mud.
At the time, Lio was all the more courageous,
'cause she did it alone.
So, she ran the risk of them saying that she was also hysterical.
I didn't get what was at stake, but no one understood at the time.
I thought it was the right thing to do. To defend Marie.
[tense music playing]
[slam]
[Fines] During the second hearing,
another accusation was made against Bertrand Cantat.
Something that really shocked me.
[tense music continues]
After he completely butchered her by beating her senseless,
he then put Marie Trintignant to bed and did nothing.
The beating he gave her and the fact that she was unconscious
meant he should have called for help right away.
But that's not what happened.
[Cantat] When I put her to bed…
I wiped up her blood and she…
She was asleep. I patted her face, like this.
But it's important to tell you that she was a very deep sleeper.
Especially when she first went to sleep.
You could never wake her up when she first went to sleep.
I wasn't surprised I couldn't wake her up, as you can imagine.
She was sleeping deeply.
[woman] What time was it?
I can't tell you exactly, but maybe 1:00 a.m.?
[suspenseful music playing]
It's absolutely impossible for someone to go to sleep…
MEDICAL EXAMINER
…after being the victim of such an act of violence,
and then, somehow, find a way to sleep peacefully.
Think about a boxing match.
Think about how the boxer falls down in the ring after being hit.
He's not lying there getting a nice and restful sleep.
He's knocked out.
I saw all of her blood there and everything,
so I decided to clean it up. I did. I cleaned all of it up.
[Bonet] What a strange reaction.
[clock ticking]
I can't say that I've really seen this any other time in my career.
I was distraught. I paced around in circles.
I didn't know what to do.
Either you flee, or you call for help.
But just staying put and not doing anything?
That's a bit strange.
I was distraught, and I thought to myself, "Okay, I'll call Samuel."
I mean, Benchetrit, her ex-husband.
"I'll call Samuel." I'm not sure where that came from.
There was some part of me that I can't even fully explain.
I don't know why I called Samuel, but, well…
So what did we talk about?
We talked about the children and other things.
He said, "Don't worry, Marie loves you."
[tense music speeding up]
When you're with someone who doesn't wake up or is unresponsive,
someone who's bleeding from their face,
it should be obvious that you have to do something.
[Cantat] After the call, I went back into the bedroom.
I thought, "Fuck, she has marks on her face and everything. Holy shit."
It was… I thought to myself, "She can't shoot like this."
You know, if there's a problem with her face.
And I had this instinct to make a call to Vincent Trintignant,
because he was the first AD on the film, but most importantly, her brother.
So, I called Vincent.
But the person who picked up was his Lithuanian girlfriend,
who speaks French.
VINCENT'S EX-PARTNER
[Latinyte] It's 4:00 a.m. Vincent's phone rings.
[phone ringing]
I pick up the phone, ask, "What's going on?"
And then Bertrand says to me, "Pass the phone to Vincent."
He told me that, "Something's happened, and it's awful."
That's the word he used. I remember it clearly.
So, I woke up Vincent, and then he left.
He left.
[tense music playing]
[Cantat] Then Vincent arrived, and he came up to the apartment.
He immediately said to me,
"Ah, but what… What the hell did you both do?"
"What the…?" He insulted me, etcetera. It was normal.
And how long did that go on for?
[Cantat] I can't tell you that either, but it lasted a while.
It went on for a while.
It might have been about an hour and a half
[interpreter translates]
Maybe two hours.
And I went back to see Marie from time to time.
At that point, Vincent was convinced that, well, that she was just sleeping.
What time was it when Vincent Trintignant made a call to a doctor?
There was a point a little later on,
where at first we thought she had a small cut on her mouth,
but it just kept bleeding, and finally, we looked at each other
and knew we had to call a doctor to see what was wrong.
-What time was this roughly? -It must've been…
-What time do you think? -It was sunrise, I think.
[Lio] Bertrand Cantat? He knows how hard he hit Marie.
He knows he hurt her because she became unconscious.
But he didn't call for help.
Staying with the woman that you're supposed to love
for seven hours after putting her to bed, and doing nothing to help her,
any way you look at it,
this constitutes a failure to help a person at risk.
No, I didn't intentionally withhold help from her.
If I realized she needed it, I would've gotten her help immediately.
In France, he probably would have received a heavier sentence.
But in Lithuania, no one charged him for that.
[Sergejevas] It's true that he was delayed
in calling emergency services to get help for her.
PROSECUTOR
Perhaps, in that moment, he wasn't able to fully grasp the danger.
So, we didn't charge Cantat with that.
But judging by the autopsy,
this act had to be classified as murder.
[ominous music playing]
[Fines] The prosecutor determined that Bertrand Cantat committed murder.
From that point on,
it was decided that he'd be prosecuted for first-degree murder.
The consequences for that are immense.
[reporter 1] Bertrand Cantat, still imprisoned in Vilnius,
will soon learn the extent of the charges against him
and the date of his trial.
We learned this morning that the trial of Bertrand Cantat
should start at the end of March in Lithuania.
According to his lawyer,
the Noir Désir singer will be tried for first-degree murder.
The indictment states that Marie Trintignant
was physically struck 19 times.
At this stage now, for committing homicide,
in Lithuania, Bertrand Cantat could get up to 15 years in prison.
So, it's a lot.
The stakes are enormous.
MARCH 2004
8 MONTHS AFTER MARIE TRINTIGNANT'S DEATH, THE TRIAL BEGINS IN VILNIUS.
[suspenseful music playing]
[reporter 1] After eight months,
Nadine Trintignant has returned to see Bertrand Cantat face the judge.
[reporter 2] Nadine Trintignant and her son Vincent are here
to see Bertrand Cantat receive a harsh sentence.
For them, there should be no extenuating circumstances.
[reporter 1] The trial will receive a lot of media attention.
It doesn't start for two days,
but according to the crowd at the airport, the battle is already underway.
It's obvious that Bertrand Cantat
never wanted or hoped for Marie Trintignant to die.
He still mourns her to this day,
and he will provide an explanation this week.
Bertrand Cantat's lawyer will focus on the passion that united the couple.
The main goal of this trial, above all,
was to get more information on the case file about Cantat.
Who was he really?
What I wanted to know was if Cantat was a violent man or not.
With his former partners, had he shown signs of violence?
Was Marie Trintignant's murder a moment of madness,
or could it have been the result of many violent episodes?
And once again, the French media were back on the case.
All the media, all the TV stations.
[camera shutters clicking]
One hundred and fifty journalists, who were all drooling like this,
"Aah! We're gonna sell papers. We're gonna sell papers."
It was horrible. Horrible.
I could see two groups forming.
On one side of the room, we had the Trintignant group
with Nadine Trintignant behind her dark glasses,
Vincent, the brother,
Roman, the son, her father,
Richard Kolinka, and Samuel Benchetrit.
I just came here to say, no, my son's mother was not hysterical.
It's not true because I lived with this woman. She wasn't like that.
This was murder. It was murder, not a crime of passion.
You'd never do this to someone you love.
On the other side was the Cantat group.
With Cantat's parents.
I don't feel very well, no.
But I'm holding on for my son.
[Fines] Kristina Rady, Cantat's ex-wife,
and the band Noir Désir.
[tense music playing]
[Fines] The atmosphere was extremely tense.
With good reason because Bertrand Cantat was facing 15 years in prison.
[indistinct chatter]
[camera shutters clicking]
[reporter] Bertrand Cantat was given a chance to speak at length today,
and he expressed his regrets.
He spoke again about his relationship with Marie Trintignant,
and about their love, which he described as all-consuming.
He also revisited the events of that sad evening on July 26th,
a tragic night that ended with him beating Marie Trintignant.
And then, he tried to explain at the trial,
how, for six long hours, he did not call for help for Marie Trintignant.
At the end of his hearing,
he turned to the family of Marie Trintignant.
He spoke directly to them while crying, and he said,
"I know they won't listen to me,
but I'd like to share my despair with them over this situation."
"It's unbearable for me to know how much they're suffering."
Some people won't admit the truth.
With no basis, they would like to think
that Bertrand Cantat wanted Marie Trintignant to die.
And I believe that this morning, the statements made at this hearing
have demonstrated that he never wanted this death.
In fact, quite the contrary.
[Kolinka] It's easy to ask for forgiveness.
That's the least he could do.
I don't care about him being forgiven. Seriously, I don't give a damn.
All I saw was a coward.
He killed my mother. There are no excuses.
The least you can do is apologize to a child
when you kill their mother. That's what I think.
[uneasy music playing]
In the Cantat group, there was one highly anticipated testimony
that would be a deciding factor in the trial.
It was Kristina Rady, Cantat's Hungarian ex-wife.
She was there from the moment that he was arrested.
[reporter] Tell us how you're feeling today.
I'm unhappy.
And Mr. Kiejman, who was the lawyer for the Trintignant family,
knew that she'd be very important.
Kristina Rady is somebody who really stands out.
She's a beautiful woman,
who is very sure of herself,
and although she's not originally from France,
she expresses herself in French with a lot of authority.
I don't want to talk right now. You must be able to understand that.
[Fines] She was with Bertrand Cantat for almost ten years, more or less.
She's the mother of his two children.
She's the woman that he left for Marie.
She's the woman who was rejected, betrayed.
The separation from him that time in my life,
was, from my perspective, it was excruciatingly painful.
We have no idea what Kristina Rady will say.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Fines] And above all, everyone wants to know
whether Bertrand Cantat was violent towards her as well.
If he hit her.
What she said was going to be absolutely crucial to the verdict,
because we would know if Bertrand Cantat was or wasn't someone
who was inherently violent towards women in the past,
or if this was the first time.
When she reached the witness stand, she stood up…
and she said, straight from the witness stand…
"Bertrand Cantat never hit me."
[reporter] Kristina was Cantat's wife and the mother of his children.
She said, "He never raised a hand towards me."
[tense music playing]
Mr. Kiejman, the lawyer for Marie Trintignant's family, insisted,
but Kristina was adamant,
"I could never have lived with an abuser."
Kristina Rady claimed that Cantat was not a violent man at all.
She came out in full support, defending Cantat,
claiming he was a man who was level-headed
and incapable of any acts of violence.
I am very supportive of women's rights,
so I could never have lived with a person who beat his wife,
or even somebody who didn't fully live up to the beliefs that he portrayed
to the general public.
For me, when I heard Kristina Rady, in that moment,
I thought to myself, "The debate's over. The case is closed."
MARCH 29, 2004 DAY OF THE VERDICT
[reporter 1] This morning, the verdict from the Vilnius court
is in for Bertrand Cantat for the murder of Marie Trintignant.
[suspenseful music playing]
[reporter 2] We see anxiety in their eyes.
They've been waiting for this moment for eight months.
And the verdict is in.
Bertrand Cantat has been sentenced to eight years in prison.
Eight years in prison.
[man] To eight years for causing the death of his partner Marie Trintignant.
It's eight years in prison for Bertrand Cantat.
[reporter 3] The singer is showing no reaction. He begged for forgiveness.
But these three judges decided that his guilt was indisputable.
Kristina Rady played a very significant role
when it came to reducing Cantat's sentence.
She played a huge role.
She fought, and she helped him. She did everything. Yeah.
But Kristina called me, by the way, for that very reason,
to, well, basically to ask for my help,
because she had helped him.
So then, that's what we did. We helped get him out.
We helped make sure that he spent as little time in prison as possible.
[Kiejman] Kristina Rady, without her testimony,
the sentence for Cantat would have been much harsher.
When she described him as a man incapable of violence,
she reinforced the idea that the tragedy was accidental.
He was convicted of manslaughter,
but he could have gotten 15 years. He only got eight.
Eight years for the death of a woman is not enough at all.
It's a sentence that could be considered moderate,
but in Paris, the sentence would have been about the same.
And so that's why I ended up advising that Nadine not appeal the sentence.
[tut]
I'm just so… devastated.
Devastated.
If he spent 20 years in prison, what difference would it make?
That still wouldn't bring anyone back.
Her family and all her friends, what do we do?
How do we cope with it?
He took someone's life.
At the same time, he also destroyed lives.
How do we manage all of that?
Another horrible thing is that when she spoke out defending Cantat,
Kristina Rady put herself in grave danger.
2009 5 YEARS AFTER THE TRIAL
BUDAPEST HUNGARY
[phone ringing]
[phone continues ringing]
[voicemail] Please leave a message after the tone.
[beep]
[Kristina] Hi, Mom, hi, Dad. It's Kristina.
I know that we haven't talked for a very long time.
Terrible things have happened since we last spoke.
Um… Bertrand's crazy.
If those horrible events back in 2003 didn't happen to me at that point in time,
well, it seems like they're happening to me now.
Yeah.
Kristina Rady left a message that was a cry for help.
This message was a cry for help.
[Kristina] Yeah, it's impossible for me to get out of this safely.
That's a message from a woman who's being terrorized,
who's afraid of dying.
[closing theme music playing]