A 37-YEAR-OLD Frenchman has insisted on his innocence as he appeals his conviction for murdering an Australian student who was severely beaten, strangled and dumped in a car park outside Paris.
Brazilian-born Adriano Araujo Da Silva was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison in January 2012 for the murder 11 years earlier of 28-year-old Jeannette O'Keefe.
O'Keefe's body was found rolled up in a sleeping bag in a parking lot in the Paris suburb of Les Mureaux on January 2, 2001 -- three days after a series of events left her alone and without a bed for the night on New Year's Eve.
"I am innocent, I must be acquitted," Araujo Da Silva told the court as his appeal began in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
A ruling is expected on Thursday.
Araujo Da Silva had confessed to the crime twice before retracting his testimony, admitting to taking the woman to his home and having an argument with her, but insisting she left unharmed.
He said he had met O'Keefe on the Champs Elysees in Paris on New Year's Eve and taken her to his home in Les Mureaux, where her body was found three days later.
French investigators found male DNA under the victim's fingernails, but it was eight years before they found a match, when Araujo Da Silva's genetic profile was entered into a database after he was arrested for petty theft.
He confessed to the killing when detained by police, saying he had beaten O'Keefe and strangled her to death when she refused to have sex with him a second time and threatened to call police.
An autopsy found she had been struck by at least 13 blows before being strangled to death.
Araujo Da Silva told the court on Tuesday that he had only confessed under pressure from police, who had said he would receive a lighter sentence if he admitted to the crime.
"I was tricked and manipulated during questioning," he said.
O'Keefe's four brothers and sisters, who are civil plaintiffs, were in court for the start of the appeal.
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