Episode 1/5 – On January 7, 1993, the gendarmes discovered the lifeless bodies of Michèle Marinescu, 42, and her daughter Christine, 13, in their house in Sassenage (Isère). The crime scene defies all logic and marks the beginning of an enigma that will rebound thirty years later.
It is a dead end in a small residential area, dominated by the Vercors massif. Six kilometers northwest of Grenoble, this row of terraced houses, without chic or charm, hardly provides work for the Sassenage gendarmerie brigade. Barely ten complaints of theft have been made in recent years in the entire neighborhood. But this Thursday, January 7, 1993, at 6:50 p.m., the hamlet revealed itself to be the scene of a double murder of incomprehensible savagery.
At 28, rue de la Cerisaie, the gendarmes discovered the wooden gate wide open. They walk along the small gravel driveway, lined with hedges, inspect the garage, whose light remains on, then push the front door. On the floor, on the tiles, drops of blood encourage them to call their colleagues from the scientific team for reinforcement.
The crime scene defies all logic: at the very back of the home, in a bedroom, the mother, Michèle Marinescu, 42, lies on her back, between the bed and the wall cupboard. A hemp string surrounds his hands, feet and neck. A particularly sadistic binding: a single movement on his part could result in his strangulation. However, this is not the cause of his death: a gaping wound deforms his neck. Her throat was slit. She wears a black skirt, a jacket, a sweater, shoes but has no tights or panties. Legs apart, “offered sex”investigators will note.
Bloody knife, phone disconnected
The string that hinders it has been unwound to the next room. A stereo box conceals from the eyes of the police the remains of the second victim, face down on the ground: Christine, 13 years old, the girl. However, she was not attached. Only one wound, on his neck, was fatal. The fly of her pants is open but her panties are still on. The murder weapon, a kitchen knife still covered in blood, was left right next to the body. The stereo still contains a CD by Véronique Sanson and, on the bed, the booklet of lyrics is open to the song “Louise” which says, in English: “I had a friend
He had a name
I saw him again last night
He looked at me
He felt guilty”
Did the killer hide the teenager's body because he felt guilty?
Christine's bedroom window is open. As if the attacker had fled through the back of the building. However, no traces of passage are noted in the garden.
The motive for the crime does not seem villainous: nothing was stolen, Michèle Marinescu's handbag is clearly visible on the living room table. It still contains money, credit card and checkbook.
The assailant took care to unplug the living room telephone. A second device in the master bedroom is still connected to the socket, as if it had been forgotten. Despite the proximity of the immediate houses, no neighbors heard anything.
READ ALSO: The RN20 strangler: will the conviction of a former suspect awaken justice?
The local residents, interviewed the same evening, however, made it possible to estimate the date of the tragedy. On Wednesday morning, that is to say the day before, the neighbor who usually gets up at the same time as Michèle Marinescu saw the light on in the kitchen window. But not in the evening or this Thursday morning. The crime was therefore probably committed the day before. Another clue points in this direction: the police found the clothes still soaked in the washing machine. However, it was on Wednesday that the hostess did her laundry.
It was her employer who alerted the military, worried about not seeing her take up her post this Thursday morning. Michèle Marinescu worked as an accountant at the IT company Digigram in Montbonnot, twenty kilometers further, which also employs her husband as technical director. It is therefore the boss of the company who also warns the husband, Marian Marinescu, who was absent at the time of the massacre: he in fact left France on December 24 to spend the Christmas holidays with his family in his native country, Romania. He took his son, 7 years old, leaving his wife and daughter in Isère who did not want to miss the start of the school year. Father and son were due to return to France on January 11.
Disjointed life and letting go
The first testimonies collected by the gendarmes nevertheless shed another light on this split in the family: for several years, the Marinescu had lived in separate rooms. They had met during their studies in Grenoble – he had passed a competition to escape the Ceaucescu regime – and had never left each other, apparently, since they were also work colleagues. As associate director of the company, however, Marian had odd hours, hardly coming home before 10 p.m., or even midnight when he was not sleeping on the carpet in his office. He could even go on a business trip without telling his wife. A disjointed life during the week, unbalanced at the weekend, with her taking care of household chores, leaving him to manage the household. So much so that when they discovered the crime scene, the soldiers also found a disorderly house where an atmosphere of carelessness reigned.
The marital crisis was so serious that the residents of the cul-de-sac had heard shouting and insults more than once, “at least once a week”indicates a resident of rue de la Cerisaie.
Michèle’s sister also assures that Marian had hit his wife, “ two or three years” earlier. However, she “never had the idea of divorce because she thought above all of her children. She was afraid that her husband would go abroad with Christine and Julien”. If there was a last sign of this disenchantment, it would be to be found in the bank: Michèle Marinescu had preferred to designate her sister rather than her husband as the beneficiary of her two life insurance contracts.
READ ALSO: Thirty years after the savage murder of the Nougué-Cazenave sisters in Pau, a new avenue opens
However, a local resident confided to the gendarmes that these disputes tended to be spaced out for several weeks, the last one dating from Saturday December 12. From Romania, Marian Marinescu spoke on the phone every two days with his wife and daughter. According to him, their last exchange dated from January 6 in the afternoon – which was confirmed by his sister and brother-in-law who were staying with him in Buzău.
The affair immediately made the headlines in the regional press. Investigators are trying to establish the profile of the killer. A sexual motive? Possible: young Christine had a bruise on her vagina. The theory of rape is neither excluded nor really confirmed. His mother, on the other hand, does not appear to have suffered sexual abuse.
His tying up with such a particular procedure necessarily says something about the person who carried it out. He “resembles commando techniques but has many defects”the investigators will emphasize. A bit like a former soldier who “could have received ad hoc instruction but would have lost the practice”they note. To succeed in attaching Michèle Marinescu in this way, there had to be two attackers. Or the victim is knocked out or dead. Which would then support another thesis, reinforced by the degrading position of his body: that of a staging. Are we dealing with a pervert? Or to someone who wanted to pass themselves off as such?
A witness comes forward
On February 9, 1993, the Grenoble public prosecutor opened a judicial investigation into intentional homicide. Interviewed, Marian Marinescu is unable to sketch a hypothesis, ensuring that the family had no enemy. He just refers to a clash between his partner and one of their cleaning ladies, Corinne, who had complained about a salary of 80 francs which would never have been paid to her.
Despite the clues left behind by the assassin, the investigations bogged down for several months. We had to wait until the following year for a witness to come forward, a close neighbor. If it took him so long to speak, it was because “the general atmosphere around this affair”, investigators note: the savagery of the crimes and the profile of Marian Marinescu. Since moving to the neighborhood, he has suffered from stereotypes about Romania, which associate Eastern countries with the KGB, just four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And then, the couple received little and hardly exchanged with local residents, further reinforcing the ready-made ideas.
READ ALSO: Unknown location, missing boyfriend… The enigma of the six dead women from the cursed plateau of Castellet
After trying to make an anonymous call to the gendarmerie, this neighbor ended up speaking openly. And describes what he thinks he saw on Wednesday January 6, 1993: “As darkness fell maybe around 5-5:30 p.m., I walked a friend to his vehicle on the street. As I was returning to my villa, I saw two individuals coming out of the Marinescu house. One was around 30-40 years old, between 1.70 m and 1.80 m, dry face, unfriendly, unshaven, brown hair, poorly styled. He was dressed in a three-quarter length leather jacket. He passed my gate and said good evening to me in a curt tone. The other was smaller, around 1.60 m, fairly heavy build, appearing older than the other, 40-50 years old. He had a heavy gait. He wore a Canadian sheepskin jacket.
This clothing detail – the animal skin jacket – will occupy the investigators a lot. And soon lead them on the trail of two men, two brothers, as violent as they are dissimulators.
Episode 2 to read Monday December 23 on Marianne.net
