Nearly twenty-five years after the unexplained murder of Ginette Naime in western Var, a suspect was arrested this Tuesday morning and placed in police custody in Toulon, we learned from the national serial crimes center or not clarified (PCSNE), confirming information from the newspaper The Parisian.
Ginette Naime, born in Lyon on November 17, 1953, was 46 years old when she was stabbed with around ten stab wounds. His body was discovered on Thursday April 13, 2000, around 3:35 p.m., by hikers near the Route des Crêtes, in the Gros Cerveau massif on the heights of Ollioules.
A man with bloodstained clothes was seen by witnesses near the scene. This medium-sized individual fled behind the wheel of the victim’s car. The vehicle had been abandoned in the parking lot of a residence on rue Maurice-Ravel in La Seyne.
A mother without stories
Investigators from the Toulon police station then tried to reconstruct the schedule of Ginette Naime, an uneventful housekeeper. Less than an hour before the crime, she was in a car in front of the municipal social action center (CCAS) in La Seyne, a town in which she lived with one of her children, then aged 20.
“She was sitting on the front passenger side and tapping on the window“, indicates the police quoting a CCAS employee alerted by screams. Twenty minutes later, the Seynoise made two money withdrawals from the ATM of a bank in Six-Fours. “A witness [remarquait] the presence of a man on the sidewalk opposite, appearing to watch the victim.”
According to a source close to the case, a sketch of the suspect was able to be drawn up at the time of the events. Without result. The Toulon investigating judge in charge of the case had to rely on the broadcast of a call for witnesses published by Var-Matin. In vain. A first dismissal of the case was pronounced in 2008, then a second in 2020.
“Science has undoubtedly spoken”
The investigation was relaunched with the creation of a “cold cases” unit, with national jurisdiction, at the Nanterre judicial court in March 2022.The prosecution of the serial or unsolved crimes unit took up the case of the murder of Ginette Naime during the summer of 2022 [avant de rouvrir]in May 2023, a preliminary investigation entrusted to the central office for the repression of violence against persons (OCRVP)“.
A new call for witnesses was notably publicized in June 2024, while the investigations continued actively.
Enough to identify a Varois aged around sixty years old. OCRVP police officers came from Nanterre to “pick” him this Tuesday morning. He was taken into custody at 7:45 a.m., specifies the prosecution of the “cold cases” center.
According to our information, he was confronted with compromising elements and was to be transferred to the Paris region, from this Wednesday evening, with a view to being presented this Thursday before an investigating judge at the Nanterre judicial court.
“It’s a mixture of relief and amazement, but we know we still need to be careful“, reacts Me Bertrand Pin, lawyer for Ginette Naime’s sister. “We don’t yet know what can call it into question, but if we came to look for it after twenty-five years, it’s because science has undoubtedly spoken.”
