This year, a new judicial unit was created in France and located in Nanterre for criminal cases. It is more exactly a pole of justice which will be entirely devoted to unsolved criminal cases. Also called “cold case”, these cases relate more specifically to investigations started more than 18 months ago and which have not been successful: the perpetrator has not been identified and no trial can be held. 241 unsolved case files have been recorded to date, including 173 unsolved crimes and 68 serial crime proceedings. According to the Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti, the new judicial unit set up “must allow these files to remain alive judicially and to offer an answer to the victims [dont] the sufferings are still alive”.
A look back at 5 criminal cases still unsolved today and whose mystery still makes us shudder.
- Viguier case
On February 27, 2000, Suzanne Blanch disappeared. The 38-year-old is the wife of Jacques Viguier, a law professor at the University of Toulouse with whom she shares three children. At the time of the facts, the couple counts 12 years of marriage but Suzanne wishes to divorce. Her husband did not declare his disappearance until several days later, on March 1, 2000, and if Suzanne’s body was not found, the murder hypothesis was quickly raised and the number one suspect was Jacques Viguier. During the investigation, Olivier Durandet declares himself to be Suzanne’s lover and his statements confirm the suspicion hanging over Jacques Viguier and lead to a first trial in 2009. Everything seems to want to accuse Jacques Viguier, whose many infidelities are known . But the evidence is lacking and Suzanne’s husband is finally acquitted. His acquittal was confirmed on appeal in 2010. Éric Dupond-Moretti was then a defense lawyer and declared about this long and winding trial that it “became a Lépine contest of the hypothesis”. Faced with this acquittal, Jacques Viguier is definitively eliminated from the list of suspects. Suzanne Blanch’s body was never found. The film An intimate conviction directed by Antoine Raimbault and currently on Netflix returns with great precision to the second trial of this unsolved case.
2. Dupont de Ligonnès case
The Dupont de Ligonnès affair, also called “the Nantes massacre”, concerns the assassination of the wife and four children of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès in 2011. The entire family disappeared in April and the bodies of Agnès Dupont de Ligonnès and her children are found several days after their death, buried under the terrace of their house. With them also lie the bodies of the two dogs of the family. According to the autopsy, the family members all received at least one bullet in the head and some one or more bullets in the chest. The father of the family has disappeared. His questionable behavior before his disappearance quickly makes him the main suspect: rifle shooting lessons, closed bank accounts, cement and bags of lime bought in large quantities, strange letters to his family. According to the prosecutor, he would have justified his absence and that of his family in a letter where he would have written “that he was in a way a secret agent for the United States and had to return there within the framework of a witness protection program to attend a drug trial”. He would also have mentioned a transfer to Australia. Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was seen for the last time in the Var on April 15, 2011 before disappearing completely. The last image of him shows him on a surveillance camera at 4:10 p.m. leaving the hotel where he had spent the night. No one knows what has become of him, but the investigation has resulted in more than 900 reports since 2011. Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès is the subject of an international arrest warrant even if some believe that he is suicide.
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