A 21-year-old man from Marseille, France, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2023 murder of a 70-year-old gay man.
The 70-year-old victim met the defendant on Coco.fr, an online chat site that required no registration and allowed users to remain anonymous. French authorities shut the site down in June 2024, alleging it had facilitated crimes including prostitution, sexual offenses, and even murder.
According to prosecutors, after meeting through the site, the then-18-year-old defendant went to the victim’s home in Marseille and offered sex in exchange for money.
Three days later, on Aug. 10, 2023, accompanied by his then-14-year-old brother, he returned to the victim’s home and stabbed him repeatedly, ultimately slitting his throat in the bathtub and leaving him “quasi-decapitated,” according to a forensic pathologist.
Prosecutors alleged the brothers stole the victim’s phone, keys, and money before fleeing the scene.
The man’s younger brother was sentenced in May 2025 to 15 years in prison for his role in the murder by the special juvenile chamber of the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal — receiving a lighter sentence because he was a minor.
The older brother’s trial focused largely on motive. His lawyers argued that the killing was a robbery gone wrong.
But prosecutors say the young man reportedly said he wanted to “rid the earth of a disgusting pedophile.” They argued the murder was a targeted hate crime, saying the defendant “admitted his action” and “presented himself as a sort of vigilante fighting society’s decadence who decides whether a man he suspected of pedophilia has a right to live or die.”
During the criminal investigation, the defendant allegedly made a number of disturbing statements, including that he had a “desire to know what it’s like to take someone’s life.” Several of his former teachers testified about his obsession with guns and drawings depicting weapons and scenes of people being decapitated.
According to Libération, the man’s family background was also examined during the trial, including his father’s lifelong passion for weapons and the brothers’ strict upbringing. The court also heard speculation that the older brother struggled to accept his homosexuality and that the family held particularly strong views about pedophilia.
A psychiatric expert who testified at trial said the older brother likely suffers from “autism spectrum disorder characterized by isolation, a lack of empathy, and difficulty understanding the emotions of others.”
On March 5, the Bouches-du-Rhône Assize Court sentenced the man to 25 years in prison followed by five years of probation. Prosecutors had sought a 30-year sentence, citing a “risk of recidivism.”
The man’s lawyers, Rami Chahine and Denis Fayolle, said they were satisfied with the sentence.
“The jurors grasped the full complexity of this tragedy,” Fayolle said in a statement. “They went beyond the horror of the crime to understand the exceptional circumstances that drove an 18-year-old, with no prior convictions, to such horror.”
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