Abduction and murder
According to Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court, Claude D. had been in contact with Marie from March 2013. On May 13, he went to her workplace in Payerne, canton Vaud, and forced her into his car. During the night of May 13–14, 2013, he killed her in a forest near Châtonnaye in canton Fribourg. He was arrested shortly afterward.
Why the case caused an institutional crisis
Claude D. had been sentenced in 2000 to 20 years in prison for an earlier murder and other offenses. By 2012 he had moved into a conditional-release regime, and in 2013 he was under electronic monitoring. Marie's murder therefore prompted intense scrutiny of risk assessment, supervised release and the exchange of information among Swiss justice, corrections and medical authorities.
Conviction and life sentence
In 2016, the Broye and North Vaud Criminal Court convicted Claude D. of murder, false imprisonment and abduction, sexual coercion and other offenses. It imposed life imprisonment and lifelong preventive detention. In February 2018, the Federal Supreme Court confirmed the murder conviction and life sentence but annulled the lifelong-detention measure because the statutory requirement for two independent experts to find the offender permanently untreatable had not been met.
Preventive detention after appeal
On remand, Vaud's cantonal court imposed ordinary preventive detention in addition to the life sentence. In February 2019, the Federal Supreme Court upheld that measure, making the sanction final. In March 2026, a district court in Yverdon rejected Claude D.'s request for conditional release and for a change in his detention regime; his lawyer announced an appeal.
Sources and further reading
Case context
The case became a national reference point for the limits of supervised release and for the legal distinction between lifelong and ordinary preventive detention. The final murder conviction and life sentence were not overturned when the detention measure was reconsidered.