The son-in-law of a Monaco heiress gunned down in a Mafia-style killing has retracted his confession to ordering the shooting, his lawyer said.
Appearing before a bail judge, Wojciech Janowski “retracted his statements made while in custody” and “denies having ordered” the killing in May of 77-year-old Helene Pastor, lawyer Erick Campana said.
Prosecutors said last week that Janowski, a 64-year-old who had served as Poland’s honorary consul in Monaco, confessed to masterminding the killing of his partner Sylvia’s billionaire mother.
But Campana said Janowski had “misunderstood the meanings of the terms used by police and was speaking in French while he does not understand all the nuances of our language.”
Janowski was arrested early last week by police investigating the shooting of Pastor multiple times with a sawn-off shotgun as she was leaving a hospital in the French Riviera city of Nice.
Her driver, Mohammed Darwich, 64, also died from injuries sustained in the May 6 attack.
