The metal trunk was found in the Seine by a fisherman, washed up against a pontoon, one day in June 1995. Pierced in several places, it was supposed to fill with water to make its contents disappear forever: a human torso riddled with stab wounds. It took the police two years to identify the victim: Corinne Di Dio, 37, a saleswoman at Bouygues who was later discovered to have sometimes “worked the streets”, participated in a few robberies and loved several gangsters.
On June 19, 1995, the day she disappeared, in Guyancourt (Yvelines), Corinne had entrusted Romain, her 10-year-old son, to Marie-Thérèse Garcia, a friend she clearly trusted completely. In the 1980s, they had both fallen in love with the M.-G. brothers, Antonio and Francisco, two crooks. In May 2023, twenty-eight years later, an investigating judge at the Versailles court decided that the place of the woman nicknamed Ma Dalton at the time, now 77 years old, was in prison. According to her, Marie-Thérèse had participated in the kidnapping, sequestration and dismemberment of Corinne. The motive? Jealousy. Corinne had slept with Francisco M.-G., Marie-Thérèse’s former partner. A hypothesis that the suspect, confident, sends flying, convinced that she will end up benefiting from a dismissal as in 1997 and 2004 when she was already suspected of the same facts.
Yet her detractors are adamant: Marie-Thérèse Garcia is Ma Dalton. Or Calamity Jane. Spearheading this accusation is her own daughter, Nancy, and her clan. For them, Marie-Thérèse is “a snake”, “a liar capable of anything”. A criminal with a dark heart, capable of transporting a woman’s corpse to her laundry room and making her disappear. A money woman who allegedly recycled the dubious funds of her lovers, several of whom have been to prison. “Worse than a man.”
Corinne Di Dio disappeared on June 19, 1995. Her dismembered body was found nine days later in a trunk, not far from Les Andelys (Eure).
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“Marie-Thé” in the 1980s. She then had an affair with the robber Francisco M.-G. and earned her nickname “Ma Dalton”.
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Monster for some… Grandma Treasure for others
The spitting image of her little brother José, who was involved in at least one robbery… But for the rest of the family, children, grandchildren and nephews, Marie-Thérèse is Mamie Trésor. Or “Gabin”, because of her hoarse voice and her frankness. The one who spoils, broods and protects. The one who has “a huge heart” and knows how to give good advice. A “strong character”, from the height of her 1.58 meters and 60 kilos, whom they help as best they can in prison, where she cries every day, telling herself that she “drew the lottery of bad luck by being born”. A woman of the people, born in 1946 in the suburbs of Paris, to a Breton mother and a Spanish father, alternately a boxer and a delivery driver. Who sometimes had a crush on bad boys, it’s true, but with a clean criminal record and colossal empathy.
In front of the psychiatrist who was tasked last November with assessing her personality, Marie-Thérèse displays her cheeky Parisian cheekiness, she who hung out with Coluche and his pals in the streets of Montrouge, the gang’s stronghold. “Cassecouille” and “loudmouth”, she’s all for it. A bit of a tomboy too. “Enormously naughty”, but that was before. A believer, except when she’s angry with God, who has “ruined her life”. “He knows the truth,” she exclaims, “so why doesn’t He come to my rescue?”
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For her, life has not been kind, especially with her daughter Nancy, “the satanic one”
She says that life has not spoiled her, notably with this “satanic” girl, this Nancy, “wickedness in its purest form”, who decapitated her dolls before chasing her own daughter with a knife… thugs? She knew them through her brother José. First Alain, a robber who “did not tell him the whole truth”, who introduced him to one of his “colleagues”, Francisco M.-G., with whom the beautiful Corinne, also met in the 1970s, will have an affair and will end up reporting it to the police. That didn’t stop her from raising everyone’s children, like a nurturing grandmother: “They teach you a life lesson, children,” she explains.
Fancy dress party at a family party, at Marie-Thérèse’s home, in Saint-Hilarion (Yvelines).
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At her mother’s house, in Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine), with her daughter Kathy (left), who is now defending her.
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“I’m going to take them, but in pieces, in a suitcase!” »
But let’s return to the bloody trunk, in which around forty traces of DNA, of poor quality according to the defense, ended up being brought to light, allowing justice to reopen this cold case almost three decades after the events. A hair could belong to Marie-Thérèse Garcia, “or to a person from the same maternal lineage,” says the scientific police. The suspect is then placed under surveillance. She still is in January 2023, when she tries to cheer up one of her nephews, whose daughter, Leslie, 22, was found with her boyfriend, Kévin, in a wood in Deux-Montagnes. Sèvres, massacred with shovels against a backdrop of drug-related debt, Marie-Thérèse is furious: “It is better [que les gendarmes] grab them before we know who they are… Because I’m going to take them, but in pieces, in a suitcase! »
Words that convinced the investigating judge, three months later, to place the grandmother in custody. Guilty, Ma Dalton must be, according to her. Which the defense disputes by recalling that the investigators did not find the slightest clue when they turned over the suspect’s garden and the adjoining cesspool, in her house in Yvelines. And that the traces of blood detected in her laundry room only refer to Marie-Thérèse Garcia, while Corinne Di Dio’s body is supposed to have been cut up there. Sure that in prison, she will crack: such is the gamble of the prosecution, who considers the case strong enough to send it to a criminal court.
Ma Dalton, football fan, during a France-Portugal match, at the Stade de France, in 2015.
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“Cutting up a woman in front of a 9-year-old girl… that’s nonsense!” » she takes offense
Bad luck. Weakened by six strokes, Marie-Thérèse Garcia is wasting away but sticks to her denials. Certain of her innocence, her eldest daughter, Kathy, mobilizes Roger-Marc Moreau, a criminal lawyer known for tracking down miscarriages of justice, and seeks a new lawyer, the biting Najwa El Haïté. The counterattack is taking shape. Could Nancy have tried to harm her, hand in hand with the famous Francisco M.-G. (who, after dating the mother, set his sights on the daughter), by placing a grenade in her car on September 10, 2004, “for a money issue”? A written testimony would attest to this: a letter written by Nancy’s daughter, Bettina, who unfortunately died in a car accident while under the influence of drugs. Then there is this wiretap in which Bettina, in conversation with her dealer, mentions the fact that she saw, as a child, “a woman being cut into pieces”.
With her two granddaughters, Jessica (left), who supports her, and Meggie (right), in Quiberon (Morbihan), summer 2022.
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“First of all, I didn’t cut anyone up,” retorts Marie-Thérèse Garcia before hammering the point home in her own way. “And then, cutting up a woman in front of a 9-year-old girl… that’s nonsense!” This scene, maintains Marie-Thérèse Garcia, cannot have taken place at her home for a reason that is easy to verify: in 1995, Bettina, aged 9, was not living with her grandmother, but with her mother! Not to mention little Romain, Corinne’s son. Would Mamie Garcia have helped Corinne through difficult times and taken in the little boy if she had planned to kill her?
The deceased had not only asked Marie-Thérèse to take care of her son during the week at the time of his disappearance, insists her lawyer. Previously, she had called for help to recover Romain, kidnapped by his father, Antonio M.-G., Francisco’s brother.
Endearing for some, diabolical for others, his personality remains a mystery. At the Parc de Sceaux, in 2022.
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Clinging to her innocence, Marie-Thérèse suggests several avenues to the incredulous judge.
In front of the incredulous judge, Marie-Thérèse Garcia suggests several leads. She obviously thinks of the “vengeful” Francisco M.-G., who nevertheless served fourteen years in prison. There is also “Mr. Maurice”, Jean-Jacques by his first name. A robber who had tried to locate Corinne, his ex, whom he also blamed for having denounced him to the police. Released from prison, he had shot her a first time, proclaiming everywhere that he wanted to kill her before hanging himself shortly afterwards in prison, leaving a letter of explanation… which his father unfortunately preferred to burn. Simple diversionary tactic?
On June 4, a face-to-face meeting with the judge took place, in the preamble to which the latter put maximum pressure on Marie-Thérèse Garcia: the current letters rogatory could last at least a year. She should not regain her freedom anytime soon… unless she changes her attitude. Clinging to her innocence, the former market gardener firmly contests the new motive suggested by the prosecution, that of “clan collusion”, the argument of jealousy having a lead in the wing. To the point that the judge decided, the very next day, to close the case, the best way to ward off a third dismissal. A decision that Marie-Thérèse Garcia’s lawyer is preparing to contest, convinced that she can get out of prison the one who says she lives “a bad thriller”.
