a year after its opening, the “Cold Cases” center overloaded

Anaïs Marcelli was just 10 years old when she disappeared on January 14, 1991 on her way home from school. Three months later, the girl’s body was found along a road about forty kilometers from Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin). Very quickly, the investigators suspect the grandfather of the girl, because he has no alibi and makes contradictory declarations. Placed in police custody, he will never be indicted until his death in December 2022. The case remains a mystery today, 32 years later. The file was sent to the “Cold Cases” center in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), “Last Chance Operation”according to the family lawyer.

Hope revived for the families of the disappeared

Investigators specializing in unsolved cases will therefore reopen the file and resume the entire investigation. “We will rely on the eyes of other people”, underlines Franck Dannerolle, head of the Central Office for the repression of violence against people, who quotes psycho-criminologists or even the scientific police. A year after its creation, the “Cold Cases” unit manages more than 70 unsolved cases. A jurisdiction already overloaded according to the families of victims, but which revives the hope of those close to hundreds of disappeared.