After being slain, Paula Midge’s home was sent on fire by her alleged killer. (Stock photograph via Elements Envato)
Paula Migeon, a 50-year-old trans woman, was murdered and her home set on fire to conceal the crime.
Firefighters rushed to Migeon’s home in Reims, France on 7 April where they found the apartment ablaze.
As the flames razed the complex, Migeon body was found in the bathroom entrance. She had been stabbed 14 times in her throat and neck and the fire, investigators concluded, was accelerated with household cleaning products.
A 27-year-old man was indicted for murder, among other charges, on April 16 after police found he had stolen Migeon’s credit cards and used them to book hotels and order takeaway.
Loved ones remembered Migeon as a kindhearted and bashful woman who only felt comfortable living her life authentically in the safety of her home. She was afraid, they said, “of the gaze of others, of being rejected, of being assaulted”.
“[She] suffered from this solitude,” Brigitte Zagoyan, Migeon’s sister, told L’Indêpendant.
Man indicted for murdering Paula Migeon
A string of Uber Eats and Airbnb payments on the victim’s stolen credit cards enabled police to track down the suspect in her murder, Jean-Paul Isaki, of Châlons-en-Champagne.
Isaki was arrested on April 15 after being found in an Airbnb in Évry, south of Paris. Witnesses claim he was seen leaving Migeon’s apartment mere moments before fire seized the home.
He was indicted with a slew of charges, including aggravated rape and murder as well as theft and fraud, Lunion reported.
During a press conference, prosecutors said Isaki forcibly entered Migeon’s apartment as part of a counterfeit cheque scheme to scam her out of €500.
He strangled her, prosecutor Matthieu Bourrette alleged, leaving her unconscious so he could ransack her apartment for the money.
“The victim on the ground was starting to move again,” he added. “He then pulled her to her bed to rape her, while preventing her from screaming by putting a cushion on her head.”
Prosecutors believe that when she threatened to call the police, he stabbed her with a pair of scissors, which he used to cut off her hair and dress, before setting the place ablaze and swiping her credit cards.
“He killed an angel,” Zagoyan said.
“[She] was a very nice, pleasant person. Everyone said so. [She] never had a violent act.”
“I remember our difficult childhood, but especially the laughter that we shared between ourselves to hide our suffering,” she added.
“[Migeon] laughed all the time, wherever [she] went.”