ELIANE ENGELER GENEVA
A SWISS court sentenced a woman to eight-and-a-half years in prison yesterday for murdering one of France's richest men by shooting him while he was dressed in a latex suit and tied up in a chair during sex games.
Cecile Brossard admitted killing Edouard Stern but said it was because he enraged her by suggesting she was a $1m prostitute.
The sentence handed down by the judge and a 12-member jury at Geneva's Court of Assizes said that her wrongdoing was "extremely serious" and the crime "particularly cowardly" because the victim had no way of defending himself or expecting such an act.
The body of the 50-year-old 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.
Having spent four years in pre-trial detention, and with conditional release after two-thirds of the term, she will be able to leave jail at the end of 2010.
Brossard told the court yesterday that she would love Stern forever.
"No words can express the extent of my suffering, nor the suffering of Beatrice Stern and the three children," she said, referring to Stern's divorced wife Beatrice David-Weill, who lives in New York with her children.
Brossard's defence lawyers said she would not appeal.
Marc Bonnant, the lawyer of Stern's children, said the verdict "rightly takes into account the seriousness of the crime as well as the lot of a woman who has been maltreated by life."
Prosecutor Daniel Zappelli had requested an 11-year prison term because he said Brossard took advantage of Stern's submissive position to shoot him.
Defence lawyer Alec Reymond had pleaded that it was a crime of passion rather than murder.
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 said to have been worth several hundred million pounds.-AP
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