GENEVA — While dressed in a latex suit and tethered to a chair, one of France’s richest men was slain by his Swiss mistress — all because he called his hot-headed lover a high-priced prostitute during sex.
“One million for a whore, that’s expensive!” Edouard Stern sniped to an enraged Cecile Brossard, she told a Swiss court.
Brossard, 40, said she was so offended by the slight from the man she adored, she shot Stern, 50, in the head — and then pulled the trigger three more times after he managed to get up out of the chair.
Brossard was sentenced to 8½ years in prison yesterday.
A jury of six women and six men found that Stern had sometimes been “humiliating, tormenting and even cruel” to Brossard. But it said her deed was “particularly cowardly” given that Stern — who was tied to a chair in a submissive position — had no way of defending himself or expecting such an act.
Brossard told the court she will love Stern forever. “I’ve always protected his memory,” he said.
“No words can express the extent of my suffering, nor the suffering of Beatrice Stern and the three children,” she added, referring to Stern’s divorced wife Beatrice David-Weill, who lives in New York with her children.
The body of Stern, dressed in a head-to-toe latex suit, was found in his penthouse apartment in Geneva in 2005, authorities said. Brossard was arrested two weeks later and admitted shooting the banker.
She said Stern deposited the $1 million he had promised in a special account for her, but that the two quarreled over control of the money. She denied that she killed him over the money, which she said she only wanted as proof of his love for her.
But the $1 million and the promise of marriage went hand in hand, she said, adding that the love story was shattered when Stern blocked the bank account and refused to marry her. She felt humiliated and used, she said.
She admitted that after the crime, she cleaned up the murder scene and threw away the gun — which was later recovered — into Lake Geneva. Then she flew to Italy and then Australia.
Prosecutor Daniel Zappelli had requested an 11-year prison term because he said Brossard took advantage of Stern’s submissive position to shoot him, acting out of hate and egoism. The maximum sentence was 20 years.
Defense lawyer Alec Reymond had pleaded that it was a crime of passion rather than murder and said Brossard felt guilty and was psychologically wracked. During the four years in detention, she was brought to a psychiatric clinic 11 times and once tried to commit suicide, he added.
With four years she spent in pretrial detention and conditional release after two-thirds of the term, she will be able to get out of jail at the end of 2010.
“The jury clearly said that it was not a crime committed by a mercenary woman looking for money. The jury recognized her as a woman who loved Edouard Stern, and that is what counted most for her,” Pascal Maurer, another defense lawyer, told reporters.
The jury rejected the defense’s argument that she committed a crime of passion in a moment of extreme distress, noting that she had been deliberate in trying to cover her tracks.
However, it recognized a “slightly reduced responsibility” on the part of Brossard, whom a psychiatrist testified has a borderline personality and suffered sexual abuse as a child.
Stern had a long background in investment banking, working for his family firm Banque Stern from the age of 22 and forcing his father out of the company two years later.
He was once in line to succeed his father-in-law, Michel David-Weill, as head of the investment bank Lazard LLC, but left the company in 1997 after they argued.