A 57-year-old man was indicted for “kidnapping, forcible confinement” and “murder”, then placed in pre-trial detention 36 years after the disappearance of Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti in Pontcharra in Isère, the Grenoble prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Thursday, May 12, confirming information from France Bleu Isère. He had already been arrested shortly after the events but had been released for lack of evidence. Now he acknowledges the murder.
On May 22, 1986, the young woman stopped to deliver newspapers and disappeared. Her car was found with the door open, the keys in the ignition, and her purse in the front seat.
An investigation was opened and favored the criminal track. Shortly after, the suspect was arrested, then released for lack of evidence. After unsuccessful searches, the investigation was closed in 1988. But in 2020, the Grenoble gendarmes who take care of the “cold cases” reopened the file. The public prosecutor of Grenoble, Eric Vaillant, announced in June 2021 that a judicial investigation against X was opened for “kidnapping and forcible confinement”.
Finally, in early May 2022, the same suspect was again arrested and placed in police custody. He confessed to the murder during questioning and said he hid the body in a nearby forest. Excavations will resume.
In a statement released late Thursday afternoon, the public prosecutor of Grenoble Eric Vaillant explains that a “complex legal debate will take place” about whether or not the murder was statute barred. He predicts that “the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office will argue in the direction of the absence of prescription of the murder but the Court of Cassation will probably have to intervene to definitively settle the debate”.
Eric Vaillant recalls that “the offense of kidnapping, forcible confinement being a continuous offense, it is still not prescribed despite the elapsed 36 years.” “Nevertheless, says the prosecutorif the ongoing investigation fails to establish the kidnapping, sequestration, then only the crime of murder will remain, which is likely to be prescribed (10 years after the last act of investigation interrupting the prescription )”.