This Thursday August 11 marks a very sad anniversary. It has been thirty-four years since Pauline Lafont is dead, and no one has forgotten the sad fate of Bernadette Lafont’s daughter. Young woman and actress in the making, Pauline Lafont, whose beauty made people talk a lot, had first disappeared for three months before the remains of her body were found in a ravine. A dark story and a huge scandal involving a famous animator.
It is a disappearance that had caused a lot of ink to flow at the time. And while Bernadette Lafont had tried to use her notoriety to find her daughter, some claimed to know where she was. This is the case of Guillaume Durand, an illustrious French journalist, radio and television presenter. So very powerful, he will make a huge mistake by announcing that he knows that Pauline Lafont is still alive. While several months pass during which the young woman of 25 years is still not found, some detractors even go so far as to declare that Bernadette Lafont has actually mounted a media stunt. It’s time for the craziest theories: Pauline is dead, alive or even committed suicide on the other side of the world.
A “knowledgeable” source
And the intervention of Guillaume Durand in full JT of 20h in September 1998 will not help. He says he knows where Pauline is, relying on a source he says “well informed“. The famous animator makes it known that he has “assurances that Pauline is alive“. The bomb is dropped. As soon as the newspaper opens, he announces that the young woman, tired, has gone to rest in a cure in the countryside but “will be back soon“. Revelations that will leave Bernadette Lafont in shock. Pauline Lafont’s mother struggles to understand why the journalist did not warn her before such information.
Guillaume Durand apologizes
Finally, the hour is with the tragedy: it turns out that the well-informed source of Guillaume Durand is none other than a man who made an anonymous call to him at the editorial staff of La Cinq a few minutes before the newspaper. Two months later, the body of Pauline Lafont in very advanced decomposition is found in a ravine. The day of her disappearance, the daughter of Bernadette Lafont died, fell into a ravine after a fatal fall of ten meters. Guillaume Durand will wait a year before apologizing to the actress. He evokes a “terrible debt” and a “gigantic bullshit”, while he participates in the 7 d’or. “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 the TV that doesn’t apologize“, he declares again years later, in 1997.