A small plastic bag containing a few strands of brown hair.
Those of Céline Giboire, 16, killed in February 2012 in Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine), and whose death has still not been resolved.
This handful of hair was certainly small but on it rested the immense hopes of the Giboire family who have been trying to understand for eight years how Celine lost her life.
Despite the existence of an investigation still in progress, the precious judicial seal was destroyed, pushing the family of the teenager to take the State to justice for "gross negligence".
On the morning of February 27, 2012, Céline left her house, a farm located in Piré-sur-Seiche (Ille-et-Vilaine) to go to school in the center of Rennes.
At noon, she is absent.
The high school student will be found dead the next day at the foot of a cliff in Saint-Servan, near Saint-Malo, an hour's drive from Rennes.
The instruction transferred to Rennes, but not the seal ...
Since then, the investigation opened in Saint-Malo has been transferred to Rennes and has passed from the hands of the police to those of the gendarmes.
From its inception, the investigation seems to have floundered, accuses Me Franck Berton.
In his summons, the lawyer for Céline's brothers and sisters, already points out several first failings according to him: "The crime scene was only partially exploited [...] No crime scene perimeter has been established".
The lawyer enumerates: the bloodstains left near the body of the young girl never mapped, the suicide immediately envisaged by the investigators "while the continuation of the investigations should nevertheless suggest a murder" and finally the exhumation of the teenager's body a few days after her funeral, for additional examinations.
The last straw comes in September 2018. Kept at the forensic institute (IML) in Rennes, Céline's hair is destroyed, among 255 other seals concerning other cases, with the authorization of the Saint-Malo public prosecutor.
And it was “by chance” in January 2020 that the Giboire family learned about it, by requesting a toxicological analysis.
"The seals having been destroyed on authorization from the TGI of Saint-Malo following the inventory of seals, I inform you that I will not be able to carry out this mission", writes the toxicology expert of the CHRU of Rennes in a mail.
“Today, we have the scientific capacity to find the truth about tiny elements.
It's on stuff like that that the truth can come out.
But they destroyed the seals, ”deplores Céline's father.
"We take full responsibility for this loss"
On July 3, 2020, in a letter acknowledging the “unjustified destruction” of the seal, the Attorney General at the Rennes Court of Appeal, Jean-François Thony, denounced “the absence of a real policy of computerized management of documents to conviction that the entire public prosecution has been claiming for many years without success ”.
"Each prosecutor tries to fill this gap by keeping an Excel table allowing him to identify, sealed by seal, where it is kept, to which jurisdiction it comes under and to which case it is attached," he wrote.
The costs related to this conservation oblige the courts to order regular destruction "except of course when it comes to ongoing cases", recognizes the magistrate.
Initially, the investigation had been opened in Saint-Malo before being transferred to Rennes.
According to the magistrate, the plastic pouch containing Celine's hair had not been listed as linked to a case in the jurisdiction of Rennes.
"The Saint-Malo prosecutor was unable to detect that he was referring to a transmitted file," wrote the prosecutor general in this letter which we have read.
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"We take all the responsibility for this loss and I ask you kindly to present to your customers our most sincere apologies for this regrettable error", asks the Attorney General who concludes: "I hope that your customers will understand the precarious conditions in which we are working on.
"
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But that is not enough for Me Frank Berton, nor for Céline's brothers and sisters.
If the lawyer salutes "the courage" of the magistrate who recognizes the flaws of the institution, he still attacks the state for gross negligence.
In a summons that will be sent to the Rennes TGI at the beginning of the week, Me Berton storms: "It is perfectly inadmissible that in France, in 2020, the discovery of the truth concerning the murder of a young woman of 16 years is made impossible by the inability of the French State to provide magistrates and officials of the public service of Justice with the IT tools enabling them to save evidence!
If the fault of the State is recognized, the Giboire family can hope for financial compensation.
“We're sick of getting beaten up.
We must not be mistaken in the battle: this will not bring our sister back to us, regrets Mélanie, the teenager's older sister.
But it is one more injustice next to that of having lost it.
"
The Estelle Mouzin example
Typically, court seals are stored in the basements of courthouses. If they are biological seals, it is a forensic institute (IML) or a laboratory that keeps them. With the advances of forensic science, these pieces can be fundamental to the manifestation of the truth. A DNA trace recently discovered on a mattress belonging to the killer Michel Fourniret has thus been able to bring some relief to the family of little Estelle Mouzin, who disappeared in 2003. New analyzes carried out on this same piece could also provide answers to d other bereaved families.