“Kiss of death” prison guard lawyer reveals client’s mafia boss assassination role

This week, the lawyer for a former female prison guard at the Borgo penitentiary center in Corsica was pleading for leniency for his client in a courtroom in Aix-en-Provence. Cathy Sénéchal, who has been behind bars for six years now, has already pled guilty and “admitted everything” and cooperated fully with the investigation into the revenge murder of Jean-Luc Codaccioni, a Corsican mafia boss.

Sénéchal is implicated in his killing for giving him a ‘baiser de la mort’ or kiss of death to signal who the incognito mafia boss was to an awaiting assassin. During the assassination hit on the gangster outside Bastia-Poretta airport, another member of the notorious “Brise de Mer” (Sea Breeze in English) gang, Antoine Quilichini, aka ‘Tony the Butcher’, was shot as well.

The latter, who had been release 15 days prior from the penal institution, died instantly while the former, who was returning from a prison leave, succumbed to his wounds seven days later.

“Kiss of death” prison guard lawyer reveals client’s mafia boss assassination role

Sénéchal, 48, moved to the Mediterranean island in 2014 from the north of Fance. She worked at the Borgo penitentiary center that while not a Club Med, had a cordial atmosphere. Inmates and guards, who were on a first-name basis, would have a coffee together in offices or cells and aggressions against guards were rare.

But how did the mother-of-four get involved with the mafia? That will be one of the main challenges for Sénéchal’s lawyer Renaud Portejoie to explain to the court.

In a letter she wrote to an RTL journalist nearly two years ago Sénéchal explained she started learning Corsican from the inmates. “How could I not fall in love? My favorite activity is learning all about Corsica. It’s my passion.” She also said that she devours mafia books and thrillers. An expert psychologist explained that she had become “Corsicanized”.

The assassination of Codaccioni was a revenge killing organized by a group that investigators have dubbed ‘the clan of orphans’. Their fathers were killed in the late 2000s in a feud between founding members of the Brise de Mer, which got its name from a café in Bastia’s Old Port where they would meet.

Sénéchal, who had become bored with her family routine and whose husband is depressive told investigators that she did it for the money, being promised a “six-figure sum”. However, above all she did it because “it spiced up my life.”

This is along the lines that her lawyer Portejoie argued in court on Monday as well. “Some have rightly underlined the romanesque side of her actions à la Emma Bovary, namely a form of weariness regarding her daily life as a rather bored mother-of-four,” he explained.