The communication was eagerly awaited. This Tuesday, December 10, it was through a press release that the public prosecutor of Roanne, Xavier Laurent, announced the closure of the investigation into the causes of the death of Nathalie Goutorbe, Yves's chief of staff. Nicolin, who occurred on June 19 at his home in Saint-Jean-Saint-Maurice.
In this document, the Prosecutor's Office confirms that three letters left before her act by the deceased and other previous letters had been seized shortly after the discovery of the body by the local gendarmerie. The investigation was then entrusted, under the authority of the Roanne public prosecutor's office, to the Lyon research section of the gendarmerie.
“These letters reveal the plurality of personal and professional causes of her action. In particular, she mentions on several occasions the deterioration of her professional environment as having contributed to her discomfort and cites as such, by initials, the mayor of Roanne Yves Nicolin, whose attitude she describes as vexatious over the past year. Explicitly, however, she mentions a prospect of marital breakdown as a trigger for her suicidal gesture.
Marital crisis and unhappiness at work
“In the context of several dozen hearings carried out in the personal and professional environments of Nathalie Goutorbe, it was possible to determine that if she had made little mention of her family problems to those around her, she was indeed going through a marital crisis , while at the same time, she had experienced the evolution of her professional environment badly, in the context of tensions with several members of the mayor's team, of whom she had been a close collaborator for a long time. Her assignment to a more distant office. by Yves Nicolin could be mentioned as the badly experienced marker of a loss of confidence. In her writings, she evokes a “professional blow” the previous November and an event “extremely painful for her. [elle] at work” in the spring of 2024. The investigation highlighted a climate described as deleterious and professional unhappiness reported by several witnesses”, as reported, word for word, in the press release from the Prosecutor's Office.
Certain digital elements could not be used
The prosecutor continues: “In terms of digital investigations, the exploitation of Nathalie Goutorbe's professional messaging did not reveal any element likely to shed further light on the causes of her action. The professional digital media discovered at her home in the days following his death and handed over to investigators, but whose identifiers and passwords remained unknown, could not be clarified despite the technical means implemented by the investigation service over the last month, and were therefore not used in the context of this procedure.”
“No evidence of criminal offenses directly contributing to his suicide has been identified.”
On the basis of these various elements, the Prosecutor's Office announced that it proceeded, Friday, December 6, to the closure of the investigation procedure into the causes of death: “It is therefore established that the cause of death of Nathalie Goutorbe results from suicide by hanging, and that no intervention by a third party was noted If the investigation was able to determine that this action occurred in the context of a professional situation experienced by Nathalie Goutorbe. as degraded for several months and an announced breakup with her husband, revealing both personal and professional causes for her unhappiness, no evidence of criminal offenses having directly contributed to her suicide has been identified.”
Reactions and comments to come.
