Risqué Management: The Murder of Edouard Stern

As a young adult, Cécile obtained a job in England as an au pair and then as a waitress. But she soon wound back up in the Parisian suburbs, where she got another job in a restaurant at Charles de Gaulle International Airport. Shortly thereafter, Cécile began working in a duty-free shop at the airport, her only documented employment in France. Cécile then reportedly began working as an upscale call girl for wealthy men in Paris, at least according to her father, who volunteered to the press that he believed she had worked as a prostitute.

Whether or not Cécile was a prostitute remains unclear. If true, then it appears that it was for a short time. Cécile, for her part, claims she never sold sex for money, despite what her father told the press.

She did manage to purchase a house by herself near Charles de Gaulle airport in 1993 at Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. Although she was barely making more than a minimum-wage salary at her jobs at the airport, Cécile also had enough money left over to remodel the house's two bathrooms, adding a jacuzzi and a sauna. Her lawyer maintains that an unnamed friend and her father helped her with these expenses, not prostitution.

A few years after buying her house, Cécile met Xavier Gillet sometime in 1996 or 1997. While the pre-trial court documents list Cécile as single, Cécile and Gillet were married in Las Vegas in 1998. However, Cécile kept her house at Nanteuil-le-Haudouin.

After meeting Gillet, Cécile by most accounts engaged in an active extramarital sex life, which Gillet, at the very least, tolerated. According to some press reports, she had a particularly keen interest in sadomasochistic sex. But Cécile had other interests as well.

Cécile had harbored an interest in art since her childhood and pursued her interests in sculpture, painting, and interior decorating as an adult. At her house in Nanteuil-le-Haudouin, she sculpted erotically-themed statutes and composed sexually charged poems.