why is this criminal case not in the hands of the Nanterre cold case unit?

Forty years after the macabre discovery of the body of Grégory Villemin in the Vologne, Vosges river, the mystery remains unsolved. Who attacked the 4 year old? Is it one or more people? Who is the crow that threatened his parents for years? So many unanswered questions which suggest that the Grégory affair meets all the criteria of a “cold case”.

Since 2021, a center dedicated to these unresolved cases has emerged within the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office. However, the Grégory affair is not one of them. “The objective, when we try to determine whether this or that file will join the center, it is already to check what is the level of monitoring, locally, of this file. Because the unit recovered a certain number of files for which there was no no more investigation underway“, explained Pascal Prache, prosecutor at the head of this department, on RTL.

Questioned in turn on RTL last Tuesday October 15, Philippe Astruc, new attorney general of Dijon, confirmed that the investigation was continuing at the local level. “There is no longer a cell, that is to say a group of investigators who work full time on it,” he explained. On the other hand, the latter “respond on a case-by-case basis according to the requests of the investigating magistrate for a particular act”.

The Villemin parents’ fight

Gregory’s parents, Jean-Marie and Christine Villemin are still following the investigation carefully and regularly request that new analyzes be carried out. This is how they obtained in 2023 the examination of 9 unidentified DNA in this case or even the use of voice recognition to identify the crow(s) of which they were victims throughout of the investigation.

Without conclusive evidence, science appears today as the last chance to resolve this enigma which began on October 16, 1984 and continued with many twists and turns. The monumental file matters today 17,000 procedural documents and 42 volumes.

If it is not processed within the cold case center, This does not exclude the Nanterre jurisdiction from being able to provide its expertise in the future. “There are very regular exchanges with local prosecutors in particular, in order to determine if, once again, we can provide added value“, indicated the public prosecutor of Nanterre, Pascal Prache.

The Nanterre cold-case center currently handles 105 unsolved crime cases. He also examines the paths of numerous serial killers to try to make the link between unsolved murders and the presence of these criminals in the place where they were committed.

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