“Success is rare”, corn “it’s a long-term job”, explained Friday, December 3 to franceinfo Frédéric Courtot, deputy head of the Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP), one of the two services which investigated the murder of the teenager Nadège Desnoix in 1994 in the Aisne. Her killer, who admitted the facts, was arrested Tuesday after his DNA was taken in a domestic violence case. A murder case resolved 27 years later, also called a “cold-case”, is a fact that has “an exceptional little side“, he explains.
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franceinfo: Is this kind of cold case resolution, more than 25 years after the fact, a rare occurrence?
Frédéric Courtot: It is indeed, compared to the duration, the time which passed between the initial fact and this resolution, a small particular and exceptional side. However, our daily job is to try to resolve such cases in association with the local investigative services. Indeed, successes are rare, but they are also caused by the work and the means which are implemented by our service and by the territorial services. And so, indeed, it is our objective to arrive at the resolution of this type of file, even 10 years, 15 years, 20 years after the facts.
What triggers this arrest is a DNA found in a domestic violence case that corresponds with that found at the scene of the crime. Can we speak of a fluke?
No, I wouldn’t speak of luck, even though luck is a factor that is part of police investigations. I will tell you that luck is provoked. The discovery of this DNA is also the consequence and the result of long-term work. To be completely exact, the DNA present at the scene of the crime was discovered on an element taken at the scene of the crime but it is a DNA which was only revealed on a new seal exploitation which took place in 2011, so already well after the events. This underlines the character of pugnacity and the investment of the investigations, the files within the territorial services and within our office.
Is the creation of this pole specializing in cold cases going in the right direction? Should we put even more resources into the resolution of these cases?
This is something that we strongly urged because there is a loss of memory and some elements of these files erased over time. Consequently, the important thing is to work on this memory side and to centralize the information, to have a coordinated and uniform treatment throughout the territory. As these files are disseminated all over France, there is already a difficulty in reporting information. The fact of having this judicial pole with referent magistrates who have a real culture of the matter, who have the memory of this type of file, it is a huge added value and indeed, we see this as a major advance in in terms of taking into account and processing these files.