“Yesterday, at the end of the afternoon, Mr. Frédéric Dovat, during a walk, made a horrible discovery in the Corjon woods, located 5 km from Oron-la-Ville, on the edge of the cantons of Vaud and Fribourg: the bodies of two young girls were lying there, their faces horribly swollen”, we learned in the press on June 20, 1949. The victims were killed by bullets. “We have no indication of the perpetrator of this crime.”
Even today, the mystery persists around the double murder of Hélène Monnard, 17, and Marie-Thérèse Bovet, 18. A “cold case” recounted in the latest episode of “Swiss Crimes”, the new RTS podcast dedicated to the criminal cases that have marked Switzerland. “Veveyse was boiling,” recalls Antoine Droux, author and narrator of the series. “The impact on the region was very strong. The police did not lay hands on the culprit(s), the population marched to protest. Thousands of people took part!”
The Vaud security police made the link with the attack of another young woman on the same road linking the Vevey village to Maracon, a few weeks earlier. A call for witnesses is launched, with a reward of 1000 francs up for grabs. Between the dozen rumors and the fingers pointed at local people, the trail of a sadist is favored. In total, some 300 people were questioned, to no avail. A dismissal of the case is pronounced…twenty years later.
Fascination for the true crime
Crime documentaries are popular, especially on Netflix. The RTS podcast is unsurprisingly successful with French-speaking audiences. “These stories reveal something about the black impulses that we all have within us,” analyzes Antoine Droux, who also hosted the show “Médialogues”. In our small country renowned for its tranquility, the material is there: an ax crime, a banker riddled with bullets, an anti-Semitic murder. The barrel affair, which shook Friborg in 1999, will also be the subject of a future episode of “Swiss Crimes”.
