A disappearance that immediately made the front page: when in August 1988, Pauline Lafont disappeared into the wild during a day of family vacation, the media were informed very quickly. It must be said that the 25-year-old young woman is no stranger: daughter of actress Bernadette Lafont, she is a hopeful of cinema who has an unparalleled cheekiness and beauty.
Quickly, a gendarme speaks to the press about the investigation and the journalists begin the hypotheses: for some it would be a kidnapping, for others an accident. Still others receive testimonies that are sure to have seen her in a convent, committing suicide, abroad, etc… Everything is linked, without really paying attention to the Lafont family and more particularly to Bernadette who will become the target of certain journalists.
Bernadette Lafont suspected of having staged a publicity stunt
Indeed, the actress uses her celebrity to talk about her daughter and appears several times in television shows to broadcast her photo. But her attitude is cold, she doesn’t cry and even smiles sometimes: it doesn’t take much for some to think that the actress is part of a set-up to advertise. Accusations that will hurt her a lot.
“I was tortured. I was harassed. Someone even asked me one day to swear that I didn’t know where Pauline was… I don’t have to account to anyone for my pain, nor for the way I feel it and express it“, she had told the following summer in Paris Match. The actress ends up trying to go, at the beginning of September, to a nightclub in Switzerland for which her daughter had made an advertisement, hoping it will come back by some miracle. Followed by dozens of journalists, she is once again accused of having wanted to make a media stunt and takes the opportunity to speak in front of them.
False information on the 8 p.m. news
“It goes so far that I had the visit of the gendarmes this morning at 9 a.m. to ask me: ‘Are you sure you know nothing’ because we have already made inquiries in your profession“, she says. But it is the day after this story that the horror will touch her even more: live on the news, Guillaume Durand explains that his daughter is alive, recluse in a rest center. The actress, amazed, was not contacted and learns live on television, like everyone else.
But in reality, Guillaume Durand knows nothing, an unverified anonymous source only gave him the information at the last minute… which turned out to be false. In November, Pauline’s remains are found at the bottom of a 10-meter ravine: the young girl simply fell during her hike and unfortunately died instantly. A scandal for the presenter who will officially apologize the following year during the 7 d’or, speaking of a “gigantic bullshit“and one”terrible debt“.