Bertrand Cantat case: we explain why the justice system is reopening an investigation, 15 years after the death of Kristina Rady, the singer's ex-wife.

A new judicial chapter, fifteen years after the death of Kristina Rady . The Bordeaux prosecutor's office announced on Thursday, July 24, the reopening of the investigation for "intentional violence by spouse or cohabitant" targeting the singer Bertrand Cantat . He is suspected of having committed violence against his ex-partner, with whom he had moved in after his release from prison, who was found hanged at her home in January 2010. The Bordeaux public prosecutor explains this decision by "viewing" the documentary series From Rockstar to Killer: The Cantat Case , broadcast since March on the Netflix streaming platform .

Who was Kristina Rady?

Born in Budapest in 1968, Kristina Rady was a trained performer, writer, theater artist, and translator. She met Bertrand Cantat in 1993 at the Sziget Festival in Hungary. Married in 1997, the couple had two children and never divorced, although they separated shortly after the birth of their daughter in 2002, when the singer began dating actress Marie Trintignant.

In the summer of 2023, a few days after receiving multiple blows from Bertrand Cantat in a hotel room in Vilnius, Lithuania, Marie Trintignant died from her injuries. During the singer's murder trial, Kristina Rady testified in support of the singer, who was sentenced to eight years in prison by a Lithuanian court in 2004.

"I have never suffered any violence from Bertrand," she said at the time during a press conference, quoted by Le Monde . In 2007, when Bertrand Cantat was released from prison for good behavior, after four years in detention, the couple moved back in together.

How did she die?

In January 2010, Kristina Rady was found dead at her home in Bordeaux at the age of 41. Bertrand Cantat was at the home and asleep at the time. The couple's two children—a 12-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl—were not present. It was the eldest child who discovered his mother at midday when he returned home.

The autopsy concluded that it was suicide by hanging. Kristina Rady "left a note, the content of which was reserved for the family, to explain her actions," the prosecution explained, which "confirmed the absence of intervention by a third party and that the cause of death was asphyxia due to hanging." The Noir Désir singer was questioned. "He was questioned in a completely normal manner, as after any suicide," his lawyer assured at the time.

What legal action was taken?

In addition to the case investigating the causes of death opened in 2010, "three other subsequent procedures" were opened in 2013, 2014 and 2018, the Bordeaux prosecutor's office recalled. The last two were opened following complaints from Yael Mellul, president of the association Femme et libre and a lawyer specializing in violence against women. She believes that the investigation was conducted too quickly and wants to have the concept of "forced suicide" recognized, a consequence of psychological violence.

It is based in particular on the book Marie Trintignant-Bertrand Cantat: L'Amour à mort , published in June 2013. The authors, Frédéric Vézard and Stéphane Bouchet, claim that, in a telephone message left in July 2009 to her parents, Kristina Rady described Bertrand Cantat as a violent man. In this recording, broadcast in the Netflix documentary, Kristina Rady is heard saying that the singer is "crazy" and that she is "thinking of running away" .

Kristina Rady's family and her former partner François Saubadu accuse Bertrand Cantat of having behaved violently towards the victim for many years. "In a way, he terrorized her. He had broken her phones and glasses several times. He threatened men who approached her, he even broke her elbow," her parents testified in Paris-Match in November 2012. The first complaint filed in 2014 by Yael Mellul was dismissed.

The lawyer filed a second complaint in 2018, also dismissed, after the publication of an article in Le Point and a book by journalist Anne-Sophie Jahn. In this investigation into the "omerta" surrounding Bertrand Cantat, an anonymous member of Noir Désir claims that the singer had been violent with Kristina Rady , before the death of Marie Trintignant: "Kristina asked me, and all the other members of the group, to hide what we knew. She didn't want her children to know that their father was a violent man."

"I knew he had hit the woman he was with before Krisztina. I knew he had tried to strangle his girlfriend in 1989. I knew he had hit Kristina. But, that day, we all decided to lie. We were all under his influence," this source further told Le Point . Bertrand Cantat filed a complaint against the magazine for "defamation or insult." In 2020, the courts acquitted Le Point on the grounds of good faith.

What new elements appeared in the documentary?

The Bordeaux prosecutor explained that the documentary broadcast on the streaming platform contains " several statements and testimonies not included in the four previous cases." Lawyer Yael Mellul told AFP that she was "very relieved" by the "radical change in position of the prosecution." According to her, the anonymous testimony of a nurse in the Netflix documentary is a "new element" that "corroborates the fact that Kristina Rady was a victim of domestic violence."

In The Cantat Case , this nurse states that Kristina Rady had gone to the emergency room after "an altercation with her partner" with "scalp detachment and bruises, hematomas" . This "most likely means that Kristina Rady was very violently grabbed by the hair or dragged by the hair" , he adds.

"In his observations, [the doctor] noted that Kristina Rady cried a lot, but that she did not want to file a complaint to protect her two children," said this anonymous witness, who said he came across the file by chance in the archives of a hospital in the Bordeaux region where he was a temporary worker and that he consulted it out of "curiosity." "Our source is obviously very reliable, verified," the producer of the documentary assured Le Nouvel Obs .

Other evidence could emerge after the opening of this new procedure. Yael Mellul assures that she has "new evidence to transmit to the Bordeaux prosecutor's office," without specifying its nature. She is not the only one. Journalist Anne-Sophie Jahn, who co-directed the documentary, told franceinfo that she also has additional documents at the disposal of the courts , which have not been broadcast for reasons of anonymity. "There are documents indeed. The courts have not contacted us, we will see if they contact us later," she assures.