Elisa Pilarski Death: Christophe Ellul Sentenced to Four Years Suspended Prison Term, Euthanasia Ordered for Dog Curtis

A criminal court in Soissons, northern France, on Thursday, June 11, sentenced Christophe Ellul to a suspended prison term in the high-profile Pilarski case and ordered the euthanasia of Curtis, the dog identified by investigators as the likely source of the fatal injuries suffered by Elisa Pilarski in November 2019. The court said Ellul was responsible for training the animal in a way that conditioned it to attack and described Curtis as beyond control after years of confinement since the incident. The ruling matched the prosecutor’s request.

Ellul, 51, had been tried in March by the Soissons criminal court on a charge of involuntary manslaughter involving a dog attack. The case centered on the death of Pilarski, who was 29 and six months pregnant when her body was found in the Retz forest covered with bite wounds. Investigators said she had at least 56 injuries of varying sizes. She had been walking Curtis, the dog owned by Ellul, on the day she died.

Although a hunting event with 21 dogs was taking place in the forest that day, experts found no DNA from those dogs on Pilarski or her belongings. By contrast, Curtis’s DNA was found on the victim and her personal effects, a key element in the investigation.

The court considered that Ellul had illegally brought Curtis into France and had trained him using a suspended lure-biting method banned in the country. Those factors formed the basis of the prosecution’s case for involuntary manslaughter through a dog attack. During the trial, Ellul said he wanted proof of his dog’s guilt and asked that if Curtis were found responsible, he should be euthanized, provided the evidence was clear.

The dog’s behavior after the tragedy was also cited in court. In the hours following Pilarski’s death, Curtis bit Ellul’s hand at a police station and later attacked a volunteer from an animal welfare association after being placed in its care. He has since been kept in a kennel.

At the end of the trial, the prosecutor sought a four-year suspended sentence for Ellul, along with Curtis’s euthanasia, arguing that the dog had been dangerous and likely remained so. The request drew strong criticism from animal rights groups, which launched two petitions to save Curtis and gathered about 110,000 signatures combined.

In his final remarks to Pilarski, Ellul said he had loved her deeply and that she remained painfully absent from his life. He told the court he had fought for seven years for her and said that if he had known she could be at risk, he would have taken the necessary precautions.