Notorious French singer faces new probe over ex-wife's death

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BORDEAUX — A notorious French singer who beat his girlfriend to death is to face a new legal investigation over the suicide of his ex-wife following a Netflix documentary about his violent behaviour, prosecutors said Thursday.

Bertrand Cantat, former singer with popular 1980s rock band Noir Desir (“Black Desire”), was the subject of a widely watched three-part Netflix documentary that aired from March this year.

He was sentenced to prison over the killing of actress Marie Trintignant in a Vilnius hotel room in 2003, but worked and performed after being released despite protests and calls for a boycott.

Prosecutors in Cantat’s hometown Bordeaux said in a statement Thursday they were looking into “potential acts of intentional violence” against his ex-wife Krisztina Rady, who was found hanged at her home in 2010.

Prosecutors will look into “several claims and testimonies not included” in four previous investigations into the circumstances of Rady’s death, all of which were closed without charges, the statement said.

A ‘violent argument’

In “The Cantat Case” on Netflix, a nurse claims that Rady visited a hospital in Bordeaux “following an altercation with her partner, a violent argument” which had resulted in a “scalp detachment and bruises.”

The nurse said he consulted her hospital file out of “curiosity” in the archives of a hospital in the city where he was a temporary worker.

Rady, a Hungarian-born former interpreter, had also left a terrorised message on her parents’ answering machine before her death. In it, she referred to violence by Cantat, the documentary and a 2013 book written by two French journalists claimed.

Bertrand Cantat’s lawyer, Antonin Levy, said he was not aware of the reopening of an investigation into the case when contacted by AFP.

Albums and concerts

After being released from jail in 2007, the Bordeaux singer worked on a new album and toured with the band Detroit.

His case sparked fierce debate, with many fans prepared to pardon his criminal record and seeing him as someone who had served out his punishment behind bars — four years out of an eight-year sentence.

Women’s rights campaigners viewed him as a symbol of violent misogyny, even more so after the death of Rady in 2010.

The release of his first solo album “Amor Fati” in 2017 sparked more controversy in the midst of the #MeToo movement, which saw women around the world speak out more forcefully about domestic violence and sexual assault.

It led to several of Cantat’s concerts being cancelled and protests from feminist organisations.

At a major concert at the Zenith venue in northeast Paris in 2018 attended by thousands of fans, Cantat targeted journalists saying “I have nothing against you, you have something against me… I couldn’t give less of a shit.”

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