Sadistic kidnapping, settling of political scores… The murder of Isabelle Fisch, in Alsace in 1977, generated a number of theories but has never been elucidated. Forty years later, a woman confided to an investigator her suspicions about her own father.
“Private murder of a young girl, become public, I can only hear these voices of men, who defend you and who kill you.” These words are spoken by Marianne Gosset in “Passée sous silence”, a documentary dedicated to the murder of Isabelle Fisch. A sentence that echoes the statements of director Dominik Moll regarding the subject of his film The Night of the 12th, released in 2022: “It is very strange that it is men who kill but also men who investigate.”
As in the Caesarized feature film, the avenues are numerous and never closed: “All hypotheses are possible, a drunken affair, a sadistic kidnapping, a coup by the extreme right, or even a settling of scores within the Communist Party”confided Rémy Fisch, Isabelle’s father, whose words the writer Didier Daeninckx will quote in his collection Handrailpublished in 1993.
A final dismissal of the case was pronounced on October 9, 1996. Isabelle’s brother and sister appealed this decision, but were dismissed by the Court of Cassation on April 7, 1998. No investigative action was carried out for ten years , leading to the statute of limitations in 2006. “One might wonder by what right a dismissal of the case is pronounced against the opinion of the family, we did not even have the right to enter the deliberations room”relates Éliane, Isabelle Fisch’s little sister.
