Witnesses Defend Lover Who Fatally Shot Banker During S&M Session
June 13th, 2009Via: AFP:
GENEVA: A prominent French banker who was shot dead by his lover during a sado-masochistic sex session was “calculating and manipulative”, a witness told a Geneva court yesterday.
Edouard Stern, 50, scion of one of France’s wealthiest families and whose influential circle of friends included President Nicolas Sarkozy, was found dead in March 2005 wearing a latex suit, with two bullet holes in the head and two in the torso.
His lover, Cecile Brossard, has admitted killing Stern at his Geneva penthouse apartment, but her defence has said it was a “crime of passion” and not murder, as alleged by prosecutors.
Yesterday, a Parisian art dealer told the court that Stern was “incredibly charming” but also “calculating and manipulative”.
He said he had witnessed Brossard’s “mental torture” and described the banker as extremely possessive.
“He followed her, pestered her – her and all those around her. It was diabolical,” the art trader told the court.
Asked about written commitments made by the banker to marry his mistress and offer her a million dollars, the dealer said he “didn’t believe it, knowing Edouard”.
A businessman in his 70s, a friend of the couple who remains close to Brossard, described their relationship as “cat and mouse”.
“Edouard Stern had his prey and wanted to have it completely at his mercy. He was the master,” the businessman said.
The banker’s mistress was a woman driven “to the brink of suicide”, he added. The $1 million handed over by Stern “would not interest her” if it wasn’t a token of love, he said.
Earlier, an aristocrat friend of the lovers told the court: “Cecile Brossard was very much in love. She was not interested” in the money, he added.
These statements contradict the argument put forward by the Stern family lawyers, who claim Brossard murdered the banker because he had blocked $1 million paid into a bank account in the name of his mistress.
An attractive young, blonde woman told the court she had sexual relations with the banker and his mistress, at the request of Brossard, who was her friend.
The young woman claimed she was not shocked by the staging of the threesome in a hotel: the two women were dressed as schoolgirls and the sex games were spiced up with sado-masochistic accessories.
She said that during a break, Stern read a magazine which included “a ranking of the 100 richest people”. “He was a bit disappointed to not be in it,” she noted.
