On Tuesday August 2, 1988, Nathalie's mother had lunch with her daughter at midday, in Villefontaine, in the North of Isère. In the evening, surprised not to see the 15-year-old schoolgirl return, she alerted the police. Investigators from Grenoble, Vienne and La Verpillière are mobilized. The body of the young girl was found on Wednesday morning, on a path in the town of Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, 800 meters as the crow flies from the family apartment, not far from the Lyon-Grenoble railway line. Her throat was savagely slaughtered. His mother identifies him immediately. According to the gendarmes in charge of the investigation, quoted in AFP dispatches from the time, “the fatal injury was caused by a dagger or a broad-edged weapon.”
Quiet, good student, rather tall for her age
Originally from Reunion Island, the young girl is described as quiet, a good student and rather tall for her age. Initially, the gendarmes even thought they were dealing with an older woman, at least around twenty years old. At the time, Nathalie Boyer celebrated her birthday a month earlier. She is just fifteen years old and lives in a foster home. At the beginning of August, she returned to her mother in Villefontaine, for the holidays, and to find her brother and her two younger sisters. On Tuesday, she spent part of the afternoon in the family apartment and went down to the courtyard of her building around 5:30 p.m. “to see friends”.
She is seen for the last time by friends from her Pivolière neighborhood, before disappearing. From there, investigators lost track of him. According to Agence France Presse at the time, the gendarmes are sure of two things: “the place where Nathalie's body was found,[…] is not the one where she was killed since they did not find traces of blood on the ground”. Furthermore, criminal and sexual motives are excluded: Nathalie had no money on her at the time of the murder and, according to the autopsy, the teenager did not “not suffered sexual abuse”. For the gendarmes, Nathalie was probably grabbed under the arms and dragged several hundred meters, because one of her shoes was not found.
Neither sexual nor villainous motive
According to the newspaper archives that we consulted, a friend of Nathalie claims that she was killed “because she knew things about people“. This lead, taken seriously, will lead to the arrest of a couple of neighbors, accused of showing pornographic films in front of teenage girls – including Nathalie – and of even having raped one of them. But their timetable exonerates them for Nathalie’s death.
So, for lack of new information, the investigation stalled and the case was closed in 1993. It was reopened in 1994 when a 32-year-old man, an Algerian national, was arrested in August near Manchester, England. . On May 10, 1994, the newspapers Today in France et France Evening relate how he tried to enter Great Britain with false papers and kept, in his wallet, a six-year-old press cutting devoted to Nathalie's death. Placed in pre-trial detention, he was finally released five months later. On the night of the murder, he had a solid alibi: he worked in a British hotel.
DNA found in two cold cases
In September 2022, the case was taken over by the serial and unsolved crimes unit, based in Nanterre and created a little earlier in the year. Two years later, on November 25, 2024, a suspect is arrested in Dijon (Côte-d'Or) and placed in police custody. Aged around sixty, his DNA was found on the seals of another case: the murder of a mother, Laïla Afif, killed in 2000 in La Verpillière, a few kilometers from Nathalie's house . He should appear in the coming days before investigating judge Sabine Khéris, in charge of cold cases at the Nanterre center. To, perhaps, finally know what happened on Tuesday, August 2, 1988, thirty-six years ago.
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