In August 1988, a thunderclap in the media: the fashionable young actress, Pauline Lafont, daughter of Bernadette Lafont, disappeared overnight at only 25 years old. Wanted for several months by her mother, who uses her notoriety to move the search, she does not reappear and intrigues the crowds who are passionate about history.
And the general public can count on journalists to feed their thirst for information on the subject: the case is in the headlines, some even claiming that Bernadette Lafont is in the middle of a media coup. The craziest theories are put forward: Pauline would be dead, alive, suicidal, in treatment, in China, at the other end of France…
Theories that will explode when the powerful journalist Guillaume Durand, at the beginning of September 1988, announces a huge scoop in his 8 p.m. news: he knows where Pauline is! According to him and a source he says “knowledgeable“, he has “assurances that Pauline is alive”. A huge bomb which opens the newspaper, in which he explains that the young woman, tired, has gone to rest in a cure in the countryside but “will be back soon“.
A blow of buzz… which falls into the water
Statements that strike Bernadette Lafont, who does not understand why the journalist did not warn her before leaving such a case. She will have the answer shortly later: he did not have much more information than her: his “well-informed source” is in fact a man who made an anonymous call to the editorial staff of La Cinq a few minutes before the newspaper to give this information.
And it will turn out, less than two months later, that everything was false: the remains of the young woman are found in a ravine in November in a very advanced state of decomposition, which means that the actress died from the day of his disappearance. Fallen into a ravine, she indeed fell ten meters and seems to have died instantly. Disavowed, most journalists apologize to the family of Pauline Lafont.
Guillaume Durand, meanwhile, will do so the following year, when he participates in the 7 d’or: speaking of a “terrible debt“and one”gigantic bullshit“, he had flatly apologized to the actress. In 1997, invited in a program, he had again asked for forgiveness to the family: “One day when I presented the newspaper, someone arrived, persuaded to have interesting information on Pauline Lafont. We crashed. I hated that case. And I don’t accept TV that doesn’t apologize.” he had asserted.