For more than four years, the relatives of the 36-year-old young woman have been moving mountains to move the file forward and prevent it from being closed. While the unsolved crimes center of Nanterre was created just a year ago, franceinfo returns to this case.
“The pole cold casesthat’s a huge relief. When I learned [le 18 janvier] he was taking the file, I had never been happier in four years.” Sybille Véron has put her life on hold since July 29, 2018. That day, her sister Tiphaine disappeared to Japan, where she was on a tourist trip. Since then, her family has been looking for her relentlessly. A quest “full time”for lack of a satisfactory police and judicial investigation on the Japanese and French sides, according to relatives of the disappeared.
Tiphaine Véron, 36, gave no sign of life on the second day of her arrival in the land of the rising sun. This school assistant from Poitiers (Vienne), passionate about Japanese culture, had carefully prepared the itinerary for her three-week trip. Arriving on July 27 in Tokyo, the former art history student, portrayed as “playful, original and reserved” by his brothers and sisters, immediately went to Nikko, the first stage of his journey. This small town, famous for its shrines, temples and red Shinkyo bridge, welcomes millions of tourists every year.
No criminal investigation opened in Japan
The day before her disappearance, the French tourist, smiling face and rainproof blue plastic poncho, is captured by Nikko surveillance cameras. Her phone, from which she regularly sends WhatsApp messages to her family, traces her comings and goings between the Turtle Inn hotel, where she has taken up residence for two nights, tourist sites and a restaurant. The next morning, three couples – German, French, Japanese – and a Japanese man meet her at breakfast. According to the testimony of the hotelier, the last person to declare having seen her, Tiphaine Véron left the establishment around 10:30 a.m. In fact, the telephone analyzes obtained with great struggle by her family will reveal that she surfs on her cell phone until 11:40 am from her hotel room. Then it’s blackout.
Did the young woman, or not, leave the hotel, leaving behind her suitcase and her passport? For four and a half years, this question has remained unanswered. It was the determination of his family that made it possible to reconstruct his schedule for the last hours before his disappearance. If a judicial investigation for “kidnapping and forcible confinement” was opened in Poitiers, in September 2018, in Japan, no criminal investigation has been launched. “To place someone in custody, you need heavy suspicion”explains Yohei Suda, the family’s Japanese lawyer.
“If a suspect is arrested and then cleared, it is very compromising for the Japanese police and prosecutor. They are therefore very careful and favor voluntary departure or accident first.”
Yohei Suda, Japanese lawyer for Tiphaine Véron’s familyat franceinfo
Tiphaine Véron’s entourage put a lot of energy into defeating these two theses, despite the distance and cultural misunderstandings. Faced with the “phenomenon of the disappeared”, these thousands of people who disappear each year in Japan to escape “to dishonor” or at “societal pressure”, Damien and Sybille Véron had to prove that their sister had no intention of fainting in the wild or committing suicide. As for the thesis of a fall in the river due to bad weather, they had to call on their own experts to demonstrate that no typhoon had passed through Nikko on those days. Their sister’s epilepsy, stabilized and treated, does not seem to them to be able to explain an accidental death either. The absence of a body, despite the many detentions in the river and the hunts organized at his expense by the family, weakens this track.
An outdated French justice
“However, from the start, the police officers themselves were worried and mentioned the criminal trailemphasizes Damien Véron. Some gave me the feeling that they were blocked by their procedure.” And by a certain image to preserve? For the brother of the deceased, “The fact that it’s a tourist spot is problematic. They don’t want to tarnish their reputation and ruin their economy.“Thus, the stains of “projection” discoveries on the bed and the wall of Tiphaine Véron’s bedroom using Luminol (a chemical product which reveals the presence of blood) have not been analyzed, except for a quick swab on the duvet under the eyes of Damien, who recounts the scene in the book co-written with Sybille, Tiphaine, where are you? (Robert Laffont). The hotelier was heard, witnesses found, but the 152-page file is, according to them, only a “brief compilation of statements” harvested.
Elements that can hardly be exploited by French justice. The family is received in April 2019 in the office of the investigating judge. In May, French police make a return trip to Japan. “At the start, we had to deal with people who were very attentive, very motivated. But this good will ended very quickly”, regrets Sybille Véron. Despite the agreement on mutual legal assistance which binds the two countries, the jurisdiction of Poitiers is struggling to obtain new investigations, Japanese sovereignty obliges. “No State will by nature allow another State to intervene in its justice”, notes the deputy (LREM) of Vienne, Sacha Houlié, who has followed the family from the start. Little by little, the instruction gets bogged down.
“It’s the whole problem of a complex file like ours when it is drowned in current affairs.”
Damien, brother of Tiphaine Véronat franceinfo
So the Vérons continue to conduct their investigation “private”, expensive. They go there six times, hire translators, detectives and Japanese lawyers, call on the engineers of Xavier Niel, the boss of Free, to decipher the telephone boundary data of Tiphaine, for lack of cooperation from the Japanese operator Softbank. They find out that his phone has stopped “operate for an abnormal reason between noon and 6 p.m.”, reports Sybille. The family also lists recent assaults on women in Nikko: “False wiper guide”, “ambush set by two men to two Irish and Australian tourists”, “assault of an American tourist”… None of these potential suspects have been sought for questioning.
A new lawyer to take over
In France, the family offers the services of criminal lawyer Antoine Vey, ex-partner of Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti, and former gendarme Jean-François Abgrall, known for having allowed the arrest of serial killer Francis Heaulme. Despite their progress on the case, the crushing blow falls in the summer of 2022: the judge will not travel to Japan and will close the investigation. The Poitiers prosecution makes a final indictment for the purposes of dismissal on June 30. “Asking for a dismissal is cruel for a family”is moved Sybille Véron.
The last card of the family to avoid the “legal fiasco” Her name is Corinne Herrmann. The lawyer, who specialized in the files of missing persons, including that of little Estelle Mouzin, largely contributed to the establishment in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), just a year ago, of a national hub dedicated to cold boxes, these unsolved cases. “He is the only person who could open the door to this pole for us”, believes Damien Véron. In fact, the criminal lawyer managed to “bring all the actors to agreement” and to obtain the transfer of the file from Poitiers to Nanterre, welcomes Sybille. “We needed an outside perspective, we were out of breath”, she adds. When Corinne Herrmann confirms with humility that she “enter the folder”this means that she appropriates it down to the smallest detail, a proven working method.
“We had to save this file, get it out of the rut.”
Corinne Herrmann, lawyerat franceinfo
For MP Sacha Houlié, this “nationalization” of the file does “raise a notch in the place it occupies in diplomatic relations”. While the next G7 is to be held in Hiroshima in May, “from the Elysée’s point of view, it is not a cold boxit is rather a very hot file”slips the elected of the majority.
Now that the judicial succession is assured, the stake for the family is a trip of the new French judge to Japan. According to our information, two magistrates, including Sabine Khéris, known for having succeeded in getting Michel Fourniret to speak in the Estelle Mouzin affair, were seized. They can request “carrying out investigative acts and attending them in person”, we explain to the parquet floor of Nanterre. For lawyer Yohei Suda, this “assessment of the file by a French judge is very important, because it will put pressure on the Japanese side”. Expectations are immense on the Véron side: “I have the impression that French justice no longer abandons Tiphaine, I have a lot of hope in the pole”, launches Sybille. His brother Damien says to himself “convinced that we will eventually find it. As long as there are open tracks, we won’t stop. If Tiphaine is somewhere, let her hold on, we’ll arrive.”