French paedophile and child-murderer Nordahl Lelandais has fathered a child in prison (Picture: AFP/Getty)
France’s most notorious child-killing paedophile has fathered a child behind bars while serving a double life sentence.
Nordahl Lelandais, 40, was confirmed to be a new parent on Saturday after striking up a relationship with an unnamed woman in prison.
The former soldier gained notoriety in his home country for the horrific killing of eight-year-old Maelys de Araujo, whom he snatched from a family wedding in the summer of 2017.
He also received a second life sentence for the murder of Arthur Noyer, a young soldier whom he met at a disco.
Lelandais is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of eight-year-old Maelys de Araujo (Picture: AP)
Lelandais, who was once a military dog handler, has also been recently convicted of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl and has been accused of sexual violence against two more children, aged 5 and 6.
The prisoner was caught having sex inside Saint-Quentin-Fallavier prison, near Lyon, early last year after being convicted of Maelys’s murder in February 2022.
He was then transferred to the high-security Ensisheim prison in northeast France, where he currently resides.
The prison is home to some of France’s most notorious sex criminals, yet unlike British prisons, inmates are permitted to have ‘intimate relations’ with visitors.
Le Parisien newspaper reports that Lelandai has become well known for his ‘romantic relationships’ behind bars, which culminated in him becoming a father two months ago, his lawyer Mathieu Moutous confirmed.
‘Like any prisoner, he has the right to rebuild his life behind bars,’ said defence barrister Mr Moutous.
‘Deprivation of liberty does not result in the suppression of other rights, in particular that of having a partner or becoming a father.’
Lelandi is also serving a life-sentence for the murder of Arthur Noye (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)
Lovers were those ‘who took the initiative to write to him in prison,’ said another source.
One woman, who is not the mother of his child, was reported to have struck up a relationship with Lelandi and made several conjugal visits to the prison.
However, she later broke up with him after being caught providing him with two mobile phones, rum and cocaine.
The woman later described ‘an unhealthy and violent sexuality,’ and said she has been used as ‘a tool’ by Lelandai.
While in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier prison in April 2022, Lelandai was ‘surprised in the middle of sexual intercourse with another young woman, eight years his junior,’ according to the source.
They were in a standard prison visiting room at the time, and kept in touch following his transfer to Ensisheim prison.
Lelandais admitted abducting Maelys from a wedding reception in August 2017 after inviting her to look at his dogs in his car.
He fathered his child while serving part of his sentence at Saint-Quentin-Fallavier prison (Picture: Getty)
After killing her, he returned to the wedding reception and showed little interest while everyone else was looking for the missing child.
Prosecutors described him as an ‘absolute social danger’ and a ‘major criminal and predator’.
Lelandais is also suspected of being involved in up to 15 unsolved murder enquiries, including the so-called Alps Murders – the unsolved case of the Al-Hillis, from Claygate, Surrey.
Saad al-Hilli, his wife Iqbal and her mother Suhaila al-Allaf, were gunned down in a forest layby near Annecy in 2012, along with a French cyclist called Sylvain Mollier.
The couple’s seven-year-old daughter, Zainab, was pistol-whipped, while her sister Zeena, four, was later discovered hiding under her mother’s body inside the family BMW.
This was just 30 miles from the town of Chambery, from where Maelys was kidnapped by Lelandais, and the criminal has long been suspected of being involved.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, check our news page.
Nordahl Lelandais was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of an eight-year-old girl.