Like the shock that Lina’s fate caused in the region, the Latest News from Alsacethe regional daily which closely followed the adventures of this long investigation “out of the norm”published on its front page Thursday, October 17 in the morning a close-up photo of the smiling teenager’s face under a more imposing title than usual: “Lina, the terrible ending”.
The day before, the press release from the Strasbourg public prosecutor had tragically ended more than a year of anguish and waiting by announcing the discovery of the body of the 15-year-old teenager, partly submerged in a watercourse, in a wooded and isolated area of the Nièvre. Emergency DNA analyzes confirmed that it was indeed the young girl.
Disappeared on September 23, 2023, a Saturday morning, along the path of a few kilometers that she regularly took between her home in Plaine (Bas-Rhin) and the Saint-Blaise-la-Roche station, the teenager remained untraceable. despite numerous field research: hunts joined by volunteers, surveys of neighboring lakes and ponds, dog tracking, etc.
Entrusted to two investigating judges from the Strasbourg public prosecutor’s office, the investigation seemed to stagnate for months. If each search in the various houses of the peaceful villages of the Bruche valley was closely followed by the media, no testimony or other element made it possible to retrace the few minutes when Lina seemed to have flown away between the last call made to her boyfriend and stopping the marking of his phone along the D350.
During these months of fruitless research, Lina’s mother, Fanny Groll, had organized with her lawyer several press conferences as well as calls to television shows to try to obtain information and denounce the attacks and harassment. of which she or her daughter were victims on social networks.
Suspect commits suicide
It was in the summer that the investigation had a twist with the identification of a suspect. Video surveillance had captured images of hundreds of vehicles. Among them, a Ford Puma stolen by Samuel Gonin, 43, and found in the south of France. When the search to find the teenager resumed on July 30, following the traces of the vehicle’s reconstructed route, the man was dead. He committed suicide at the beginning of the month when he was to be tried a few days later for the violent theft of the bag of a 90-year-old woman. At his home in Besançon where his body was found, he left a note which made no mention of Lina but stated: “I lost my honor, my dignity, my humanity. I have to leave. I don’t know how to control myself. » According to the details that the local press then reconstructed, the separated man and father of two children experienced an erratic and violent path recently, and until his death.
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