These 98 files were selected by the national police according to “the age of the facts” and the “risk that they fall into the statute of limitations”, learned franceinfo on Tuesday.
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Officially set up on March 1, 2022 in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), the national judicial center dedicated to “cold cases”, these unsolved cases, is currently selecting the cases it will recover. According to information from franceinfo and the Parisian/Today in France, Tuesday, May 17, the national police have already brought up 98 files in Nanterre. This is a new stage in the constitution of this pole eagerly awaited by the families of the victims.
These 98 files were selected on the basis of “the age of the facts” and “risk that they fall into the prescription”explains Franck Dannerolle, the head of the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP), referent on “cold cases” in France. “The proven or strongly suspected seriality of the facts”, “certain particularly violent modes of operation”, or “the victimology of certain victims such as children” have been the subject of a “particular attention” to make this selection. It remains to add to these 98 files those of the gendarmerie and the Paris police headquarters.
The boss of the OCRVP is also delighted with the creation by this judicial center of a new legal tool which should enable investigators to “continue to refine the course” individuals suspected criminal, “even if they are in prison”. Until now they could only work from specific crimes, such as murder or rape, at a specific time and place. With this new tool, they will now be able to take the opposite route, starting from the path of an individual suspected of having committed several crimes. “There was no specific legal framework”says Franck Dannerolle. “Once the investigation of the facts was completed, we could no longer work on them.”
With this new tool for which the Nanterre judicial center will have exclusive jurisdiction, the investigators therefore hope to speed up the resolution of certain unsolved cases. This idea had been supported and requested for decades by associations of families of victims and by lawyers specializing in “cold cases”, in particular by Didier Seban and Corinne Herrmann, notably known for defending the father of Estelle Mouzin, whose serial killer Michel Fourniret admitted the murder.