In the early hours of August 27, 2017, eight-year-old Maëlys de Araujo disappeared from a wedding reception in a hall at Pont-de-Beauvoisin, in the Isère department of southeastern France. She was there with her parents. One of the guests was a 34-year-old former soldier who had never met her before that night. His name was Nordahl Lelandais. Within weeks he was the main suspect in her disappearance, and within months he was under investigation for the death of a young soldier who had vanished four months before her.
Lelandais was born on February 18, 1983; his verdict in the Maëlys case fell on his 39th birthday. He had served in the French army as a dog handler. Before 2017 his only criminal conviction, his lawyer told the court in 2021, was for arson in 2008. At the time of Maëlys's disappearance he lived at his parents' home in the Chambéry area.
Arthur Noyer was 23, a corporal in the 13th Alpine Infantry Battalion, a chasseurs alpins unit of the army's mountain troops. On the night of April 11 to 12, 2017, he left a nightclub in the center of Chambéry and was last seen hitchhiking in the early hours. He did not return.
In September 2017 a walker found fragments of a skull on a path in Cruet, a small village near Montmélian, about 20 kilometers from Chambéry. They were identified as Noyer's. More bones were found later at the site.
Maëlys disappeared during the reception on the night of August 26 to 27, 2017. Lelandais was questioned early and denied any involvement, and the search went on for months. Investigators found traces of her blood in the boot of his car and a trace of her DNA on a sofa at his parents' home. In February 2018, six months after she vanished, he admitted that he had killed her and led investigators to her remains in the Chartreuse massif. He said her death had been an accident.
Lelandais had not been connected to Noyer at all until he was already in custody over Maëlys. Analysis of telephone records then showed that his phone had connected to the same cell sites at the same times as the soldier's, and in December 2017 he was placed under formal investigation for Noyer's murder. Questioned at length on February 5, 2018, he admitted that he had picked Noyer up hitchhiking that night but denied killing him. On March 29, 2018, before investigating judges in Chambéry, he admitted that he had killed him, and went with the judge, investigators and his lawyer to Cruet.
Lelandais was tried for Noyer's murder before the Savoie assize court in Chambéry in May 2021, in a trial that lasted seven days. His account was that the two men had stopped in a parking lot, that Noyer struck him first, and that the fight ended with Noyer knocked unconscious. He said he put the body in his car, drove about 20 kilometers and left it by the side of a road.
His lawyer, Alain Jakubowicz, asked the jury for a conviction of deliberate violence causing death without intent to kill, which carries 15 years. "He had no reason to kill Arthur Noyer," he said. The prosecutor general, Thérèse Brunisso, acknowledged that without a crime scene or a body the investigation could not produce irrefutable evidence, but argued that the "extreme violence" of the blows showed an intention to kill. She asked for 30 years and suggested a sexual motive, which the defense rejected. Lelandais offered the Noyer family his "sincere apologies" and said he had never wanted to kill their son.
On May 11, 2021, after about seven hours of deliberation, the jury convicted him of murder. He was sentenced to 20 years, two-thirds of it to be served before any release could be considered. He did not appeal.
His trial for the abduction and murder of Maëlys opened before the Isère assize court in Grenoble on January 31, 2022, and lasted three weeks. More than 250 journalists were accredited. On the first day, holding back sobs, he admitted that he had caused her death and apologized to her family. Over the following weeks his account changed several times. He said she had got into his car to see his dogs. He said he had struck her in a moment of panic, in which he claimed to have seen Arthur Noyer's face on hers; a psychiatrist told the court that claim was invented. On February 11 he admitted that he had killed her deliberately. He denied any sexual assault on her. In the same trial he faced charges of sexually assaulting two young cousins, aged four and six, in the summer of 2017.
The advocate general, Jacques Dallest, called him "an absolute social danger" and asked for the maximum sentence. The defense asked for 30 years so that he could keep "a hope, however distant." In his last words to the court, Lelandais acknowledged all the facts he was charged with and apologized again, saying the families would never accept his apologies.
On February 18, 2022, after about seven hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty on all counts. He was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 22 years and ten years of socio-judicial supervision with compulsory treatment. The family showed no visible reaction. Maëlys's father, Joachim de Araujo, had called the apologies "a form of comedy." That evening Jakubowicz announced there would be no appeal. "It would be unworthy to prolong the family's ordeal," he said.
After his arrest, the gendarmerie set up a seven-person unit, called Ariane, to compare his life and movements with unsolved cases. By February 2019 it had checked about 900 files from about 20 departments and identified about 40, mostly disappearances in the Rhône-Alpes region, where a link could be considered. None formally implicated him, and the cases were passed to the investigators in charge of them. He was ruled out in the disappearances of Estelle Mouzin and of a Belgian cook, Adrien Mourialmé. Prosecutors in Valence examined the disappearances of Eric Folay and Nelly Balmain, and the family of Lucie Roux, who disappeared in 2012, sent their lawyer to the Noyer trial. No further killing has been charged.
In January 2024 a court in Charleville-Mézières, sitting in closed session, sentenced him to one year for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old cousin in March 2017; the sentence was upheld on appeal in March 2025. In September 2025 he was sentenced to another year for domestic violence against a partner in front of their son in the visiting room at Ensisheim prison, in Alsace, where he is held, and was barred from contact with the child for three years. As of October 2026 he is serving his life sentence.