This Monday, November 25, 2024, a man was taken into custody by the Grenoble SR gendarmes for his alleged involvement in two cold cases in Isère. The trail of a serial killer is considered.
A big step forward has been made in the case of the “disappeared from Isère”, a series of crimes that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, marked by numerous mysteries.
A man, identified using his DNA, was taken into custody by the Grenoble gendarmes on November 25, 2024, reports information from RTL.
He is suspected of being linked to two unresolved cases: the murder of Leïla Afif, shot and found in 2000 in La Verpillière, and that of Nathalie Boyer, a 15-year-old girl, whose throat was slit in 1988 in Saint-Quentin. Fallavier. These municipalities, located in the same sector, reinforce the hypotheses of geographical and potentially criminal links.
The two files relaunched in 2022
The two files were relaunched in 2022 by the “cold-case” center in Nanterre, supported by the National Division of Unsolved Cases (DIANE) and the Grenoble research section.
In the Leïla Afif case, DNA discovered in the seals made it possible to identify the suspect, 24 years after the events. For Nathalie Boyer, although no DNA is available, other clues establish connections with this same individual.
The body of Nathalie Boyer was found in 1988, on the side of a railway track, one day after her disappearance. The autopsy revealed that her throat had been slit without suffering sexual violence. The investigation at the time was abandoned until it was resumed in 2022.
For its part, the investigation into Leïla Afif was also closed for lack of evidence. This mother disappeared in May 2000 after going to Saint-Quentin-Fallavier to enroll her son in training. Her body was found five days later in a canal, shot to death. The “cold-case” department had reopened this file in parallel with that of Nathalie Boyer.
A suspect taken into custody
According to RTLthe man placed in police custody, now in his sixties, could be the main suspect in these cases. Investigators now have 96 hours to verify the links between these crimes and the suspect.
