Thanks to his DNA, a sixty-year-old man was taken into police custody this Monday, November 25, in Grenoble. He is suspected of being involved in two cold cases, dating from 1988 and 2000.
Monday, November 25, a suspect entered the premises of the gendarmes of the Grenoble research section. Aged around sixty, he is suspected of being involved in two cold cases (unresolved investigations) in Isère according to a source close to the case, confirming information from RTL. After being identified by his DNA, he was taken into police custody to be questioned by investigators. This pre-trial detention can be extended up to 96 hours.
He is suspected of murdering two women. The first, that of Nathalie Boyer, dates back to August 1988. The body of the 15-year-old girl was discovered alongside a railway track in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, in Isère. The autopsy revealed a slit throat, suffered without traces of sexual violence. Twelve years later, in 2000, it was Leila Afif, 40, who was found dead in La Verpillière, shot. The proximity of these two municipalities, located in the same sector, reinforces the hypothesis of a geographical link between the crimes according to Midi Libre.
The case of the “disappeared from Isère” has long been abandoned for lack of evidence. It was not until 2022 that the “cold-case” center in Nanterre, supported by the National Division of Unresolved Affairs (DIANE) and the Grenoble research section, decided to relaunch it.
Rightly so, since by searching the seals of the Leïla Afif case, the investigators discovered a trace of DNA, twenty-four years after the events. For Nathalie Boyer, no DNA was found, but certain clues made it possible to establish connections with the same individual. For the moment, the only information collected on his identity is his advanced age.
However, we know that the suspect lived near Nathalie Boyer's home and that he has a criminal record that investigators consider disturbing in the context of the investigation of the “disappeared from Isère”. “Are we on the trail of a serial killer? It’s possible,” Jacques Dallest, former attorney general of Grenoble, told France 3.
