There were fifteen of them. There’s only one left. This Saturday, June 22, a tribute will be paid to those shot in the Bois de la Reulle, in Castelmaurou (Haute-Garonne). But of the 15 resistance fighters shot on June 27, 1944 by the Germans, in this wood located between Castelmaurou and Gragnague, northeast of Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), only one remains unknown to this day. And yet, after the identification of 10 people in September 1944, when the Germans were forced to dig up the bodies, the research group of those shot in the Bois de la Reulle spared no effort to give a name to the victims. last five missing.
Christine Keyser, a researcher specializing in the study of ancient DNA and an expert in the courts, was contacted in 2011 by Rose de Hepcée. Daughter of the Belgian aviator and resistance fighter Charley de Hepcée, she promised her mother to find her father’s body.
“Several matches at the 5th degree but nothing conclusive”
“Thanks to DNA identification techniques, like those used in criminal investigations, we were able to see that one of the five resistance fighters buried in a single coffin matched the genetic profile of his father,” explains the professor at the university. from Strasbourg. It is then Pierre Cartelet, Marcel Joyeux and Jean-Baptiste Giorgetti who will be identified.
But as we prepare to pay tribute to them, 80 years after their execution, one last resistance fighter remains unknown. “For everyone, we had a close relative each time to carry out comparative analyses,” emphasizes Christine Keyser.
Last year, contacted as part of her research work by an American company about a new research kit, she spoke about it to the research group. Enough to compare degraded DNA to the databases of genealogical platforms that have been popular for several years. “We had several matches at the 5th degree but nothing conclusive and we cannot always have the contact details of the profiles,” regrets the researcher, who does not lose hope.
