Bertrand Cantat’s former conjoint Kristina Rady had left an unequivocal message to her parents six months before her suicide. She described the extremely violent and unbearable behavior of the leader of Noir Désir.
Kristina Rady at the center of all attention. The Bordeaux prosecutor’s office announced, Thursday, July 24, reopen the file linked to the death by suicide of the former conjodate of Bertrand Cantat. The public prosecutor of Bordeaux, Renaud Gaudeul, sparked a preliminary investigation for “voluntary violence” by spouse. Justice seeks to determine whether the gesture of Kristina Rady could be the consequence of repeated domestic violence on the part of the singer. In other words, did he play a role or not?
Since 2010, several surveys have been opened to try to define the reasons which pushed Kristina Rady to death by hanging at her home in 2010, without success. The last procedure was classified in 2018. As a reminder, the singer of Noir Désir lived in his ex-wife after his release in 2007 and was at home on the night of death.
“Several affirmations and testimonies not in the four files” in the hands of justice, but present in the documentary “The Cantat case”, broadcast on Netflix last March, led the prosecution to the reopening of the investigation into the causes of the death of Kristina Rady. “Research allowed me to find three other subsequent procedures opened in 2013, 2014 then 2018, classified without follow -up,” also said the Bordeaux prosecutor.
As a reminder, as early as 2013, a dependent investigation against Bertrand Cantat was released in bookstores. “Bertrand Cantat-Marie Trintignant. Love to death”, published by Éditions de l’Archipel, from which extracts were published by L’Express. To support the story, the authors – journalists Stéphane Bouchet and Frédéric Vézard – released a message left by Kristina Rady from her parents six months before her suicide.
“I must disappear,” Kristina Rady describes several domestic violence
Kristina Rady was the one Bertrand Cantat had chosen to share her life again after the drama of Vilnius in 2003 and her return to France. A difficult life if we believe the message exhumed by the authors of the book. “Alas, I don’t have much good to offer you,” says Kristina Rady who apologizes for not having given news for months. Then she gives some details on “hell” that Bertrand Cantat would make her live. She says she has “work”, which Cantat does not “support”. She claims to undergo domestic violence, having “almost left a tooth”, having the elbow “totally swollen”, a cartilage “broken” after Cantat “threw something”. She says that the day before, “Bertrand broke everything”. “He swung my phone, my glasses. In my opinion, Bertrand is crazy,” she continues.
“Everyone, of course, in the street considers him as an icon. Like an example, like a star, and everyone wants for him everything to go well” also despairs Kristina Rady in this message. “And then he comes home and he does horrible things with me in front of his family.” Kristina Rady even talks about the argument that cost Marie Trintignant in 2003: “At the time that hadn’t happened to me, while now it happens to me”. She also says that a “series of events even more regrettable than those of 2003 took place”. And if she or another testified to the singer’s violence, she seems certain that he “would commit suicide, and then the children would remain there, orphans”.
In the 7 -minute message left to her parents, Kristina Rady therefore plans to escape, to “bring together [ses] Forces now “and” run away with Liszka [le surnom de leur fille – NDLR]but without even knowing where “.” If I have the strength and it is not too late, I will move to another country and I will simply disappear, because I must disappear, “she continues. It is obviously another choice than the ex-wife of Bertrand Cantat made. Their tormented idyll ended on January 10, 2010, day she hung in Bordeaux. Married in 1997, Kristina Rady and Bertrand Cantat had two children, Alice and Milo.
Today, in 2025, the former lawyer for the last companion of Kristina Rady acknowledges being “very relieved” of the “radical change of position of the Bordeaux prosecution”, with AFP. For what she describes as a “forced suicide affair”, she specifies that the testimony of a nurse – in Netflix’s documentary – is an “new element” which “corroborates the fact that Kristina Rady was the victim of domestic violence”. She also claims to have “new testimonies to transmit to the Bordeaux prosecutor’s office”. The rest of the events promises to be complex. Will the directors of the documentary agree to communicate to justice the identity of the anonymous witness? Will this witness agree to be heard? Questions that remain unanswered. This is the fourth time that justice has been interested in possible violence committed by Bertrand Cantat on his ex-spouse.
