A mother and her American son were sentenced Friday in Paris to 16 and 12 years of criminal imprisonment for having tried to kill the French father of the latter, on the basis of “conspiracy” and family inheritance.
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The Assize Court also pronounced a permanent ban from French territory for June Hopkins, 60, and from the Paris region for 15 years for her son, Brendan Walsh, 30. Both showed no emotion at the verdict.
In 2010, June Hopkins and her son had just reconnected with the father of the latter, Grégoire L., whom they had not seen for fifteen years.
In the summer, an argument had broken out when Grégoire L. had noticed that his American family had searched his papers, in particular those concerning the estate of his father. His son had then, according to the father’s version, doused him with barbecue lighter, before trying to operate a lighter.
The court chose to reclassify this first attempted murder as intentional violence, “mainly for lack of material elements”, justified President Christophe Petiteau.
On the other hand, she found June Hopkins and Brendan Walsh guilty of the assassination attempts on Grégoire L. and his sister in 2015, in front of their home. Grégoire and Frédérique L. had been attacked in front of their home by “the Americans”, motorcycle helmets on their heads, who had tried to strangle them.
The investigation had shown that in the meantime, the mother and the son had lived in isolation and in secret in Paris for “more than two years, doing nothing but watching” Grégoire L., and “to convince oneself of the existence of a conspiracy”, which “is not corroborated by any element”, recalled the president.
The two defendants have always disputed the facts. June Hopkins argued during the hearing that they were, on the contrary, victims of a “plot” by the father and his relatives to eliminate them.
Brendan Walsh told him that he “believed his mother’s stories” at the time, but has since realized that he had “never been in danger”.
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