Wife admits to killing chef, stuffing body in freezer

The common-law wife of a renowned French chef who was found dead in a freezer last Tuesday is now under investigation for aggravated manslaughter.

Guylene Collober, 51, confessed to punching retired chef Jean Francois Poinard in the stomach during an argument, saying that he fell, hit his head and died eighteen months ago.

Collober said she left the body in the bathroom for three days before deciding to buy a freezer in which to store the corpse.

Collober opened up to her daughter about Poinard during a night out, saying that “something unfortunate” had happened to him. Her daughter alerted police, who then raided her apartment last Tuesday in Lyon, France.

Police said Collober burst into tears when they arrived.

“I think you’ll find what you’re looking for,” she told police.

The body of 71-year-old Poinard was curled up in a fetal position and covered with plastic bags inside a chest freezer, police said.

“A full post-mortem examination will be carried out to discover the precise cause of death,” a police spokesperson said.

Collober is now under investigation for aggravated manslaughter and, under French law, could face a harsher penalty for killing her common-law husband, which is treated as a more serious crime than killing another party.

Poinard was widely recognized as one of Lyon’s best chefs in the 1970s and 1980s. Between the 1960s and the early 1990s, he ran the Restaurant de Paris and the Panier à Salade in Lyon.

Lyon newspaper Le Progrès described Poinard as one of the city’s “great names” in gastronomy and said he represented the fourth generation of one of France’s “great cooking dynasties.”

“He was a passionate and exacting chef, but also a true ‘bon viveur’ who was as well liked out of the kitchen as he was respected inside it,” Le Progrès reported.

Poinard's son — Jean-Stephane Poinard, also a chef — owns the Bistro de Leon restaurant in St. Augustine, Fla. In a statement, he described his father as an “amazing chef” and a “perfectionist who loved people and to share the pleasures of his food.”

Courtesy of Jean-Stephane Poinard

Artist Francois d'Izarny created this caricature of chef Jean-Francois Poinard.

“The last time I saw my Father was June 2007, just before my family and I came to the U.S.,” Jean-Stephane Poinard said. “There are so many things I never finished with my Father and sadly, the best part of his life was still ahead. ...

“Unfortunately, for many years he was a different man from the Father I knew growing up, actually before his relationship with Guylene Collober. Somehow she isolated him from everyone he loved. It was a mystery to me and to our entire family why he seemed to always be under a spell, even seemed to be caught in a spider web of strange occurrences.

“We all recognized that she knew how to manipulate my Father and cut him from people who loved him. One by one, he lost communication with his friends, culinary colleagues and family members. In fact, for over a year when I came to America I kept my French phone number and hoped that one day he would call but it never happened. Even our children wrote him letters and cards with no replies. ...

“We are very private people so I prefer not to go to France to his funeral. Once the gossip and spotlight have dimmed, I will go to pay my respects with my family. For now, I want to protect my children who are 12 and 13. I want to remember my Father as the incredible man who inspired me in my career.”