So, as many suspected, the next-door neighbor was the probable murderer. The arrest on Tuesday, June 4, followed by the indictment and incarceration of a 28-year-old man by the Nanterre cold case unit confirmed the doubts of many close to Micheline Grandin, a septuagenarian found beaten to death in her apartment in the Collettes district of Draguignan on January 12, 2014.
DNA found under fingernails
“I knew it,” a neighbor of the old lady repeats today, tears in her eyes. “I told the investigators that this tall, thin young man was responsible. I never felt it, I don’t know why. The expression on his face, no doubt… And then I saw him hit his little sister, who was 8 or 9 years old at the time, because she wasn’t crossing the road fast enough…”
An impression, however strong and even confirmed by other neighbors, is not enough for investigators. It therefore took ten years and new expert reports, ordered following the reopening of the case by the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP), the Toulon judicial police and a magistrate from the unresolved cases unit in Nanterre, to transform doubts into certainties.
DNA analysis identified the genetic fingerprint of the neighbor, then aged 18, under the victim’s fingernails. In 2014, already suspected due to inconsistent statements, he had his DNA taken. But he had not “matched” and provided a solid alibi, claiming to be at a friend’s house at the time of the crime. Alibi confirmed by the latter. Until today. Faced with this new scientific police element, the friend in fact confessed to no longer remembering what he was doing that day.
“It was King’s Day Sunday,” recalls a neighbor, who, like Micheline, lived on the fifth floor of the building. “And we didn’t hear anything, my brother-in-law, my nephews or me. If she had screamed, we would have gone out immediately. Everyone here knew Mamie Grandin and her hoarse voice.”
A heinous crime?
The 77-year-old former shoe saleswoman had lived there since 1976. Always up to date with the gossip in her building, Micheline “loved to talk about everything and nothing,” confirms a neighbor. “She was a gossip,” adds another, two floors down. “Especially since her husband died in 2009. She was bored, she was alone. She never had children…”
This “very elegant lady, always well-dressed” according to a hairdresser who had her as a client was a woman of habit, as one can be at her age. Every Sunday, our colleagues from Le Nouveau Détective reported at the time, she would withdraw cash, up to 200 euros, in preparation for her Monday shopping. The motive for the crime? No doubt.
When the building’s caretaker discovered Micheline in a pool of blood on January 12 in the late afternoon, with a large wound on her face and her rib cage crushed by a blunt object, only a blue stool used to hit her and her handbag were missing. No trace of a break-in was found.
His wallet, empty of any money, was found at the foot of the building two days later. His checkbook was found the same day, in the city center, on Boulevard Clemenceau.
“She knew her murderer”
“She knew her murderer, that’s for sure,” her neighbor continues. “If she opened the door, it was to someone she knew. Otherwise, she would have screamed. Especially since she suddenly became afraid.” – “The suspect’s little sister often came home to get eggs and bread from him,” her husband continues. “We were surprised because it wasn’t her style to act like that, especially with a family like that… She gave him money out of fear. I think she was followed after she went to the cash machine.”
For the investigators, the existence of a dispute between the young adult and the pensioner is also one of the hypotheses being followed.
Disturbing facts: according to several witnesses, the suspect, his mother and his sister moved hastily two days after the murder. At the time, a feeling of insecurity could have explained this departure. It is quite different today.
This arrest does not, however, put an end to the investigation, which will continue in the coming months under the direction of the vice-president in charge of investigation within the unsolved crimes unit of the Nanterre judicial court.
Sixth indictment for the “cold case” unit
The Micheline Grandin case is the sixth case leading to an indictment within the unsolved crimes unit of the Nanterre judicial court. A figure that may seem low when you know that the former investigating judge and prosecutor Jacques Dallest estimates that around 180 murders remain unsolved each year in France. Or that the lawyer Didier Seban never misses an opportunity to alert the public to the lack of resources allocated to the unit. But a choice assumed in order to obtain better results by a specialization of magistrates, a grouping of cases and the creation of a criminal memory.
Today, the unit is dealing with 105 cases. And the first outcomes are there. Thus, 15 years after the murder of jogger Caroline Marcel in Loiret and a new exploitation of DNA, a suspect was placed in pre-trial detention last January. Exactly as in the case of the murder of Micheline Grandin, beaten to death on January 12, 2014 in Draguignan. Here, it was a neighbor who was caught by his genetic fingerprints, found under the victim’s fingernails.
Call for witnesses in the murder of Ginette Naime
The first indictment issued by the unit dates back to October 2022. It concerns a murder preceded by rape of a 23-year-old woman committed in December 1991 in Paris and an attempted rape with a weapon on a second young woman, in May 1999 in Villeparisis (Seine-et-Marne). The indicted person is none other than the main suspect in the Mazan rape case (Vaucluse), a retiree suspected of having drugged his wife and sexually subjecting her to other men between 2013 and 2020. This extraordinary trial (51 accused) will be held from September 2 to December 20 in Avignon.
From now on, the pole does not hesitate to participate in appeals for witnesses, like the one published on Wednesday June 12 concerning the murder of Ginette Naime in Ollioules in April 2000 (our previous editions).
