The veil on the Grégory affair - named after this four-year-old boy, assassinated on October 16, 1984 in Lépanges-sur-Vologne (Vosges) - is still far from being lifted.
However, what has become over the years one of the most significant news items of the last four decades, is again in the heart of the news this Monday, September 20.
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No judicial rebound this time, but the broadcast on TF1 of a television series called
Une Affaire Française
.
A fiction that looks back on the Grégory affair in its entirety.
The spectators will notice in particular the actor Michaël Youn interpreting the judge Lambert or Gérard Jugnot in the skin of Me Henri-René Garaud, lawyer of the parents of Grégory.
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Besides fiction, in reality, the investigation continues.
According to the latest news, the investigative chamber of the Dijon Court of Appeal, where the investigations are being conducted, was still awaiting the return of a series of new expertises ordered last January by the Attorney General Thierry Pocquet du Haut-Jussé , at the request of Grégory's parents.
Research carried out using the so-called “parentage” DNA method, which allows suspect DNA to be linked to DNA from the same parentage.
A genetic method that has, among other things, elucidated two cold-cases: the Élodie Kulik affair and that of the rapist of the Sénart forest.
The Jacob couple's trail
Last December, Christine and Jean-Marie Villemin, the parents of the little victim, wanted the genetic fingerprint of 37 other people to be taken.
These were some members of their extended family circle, but also neighbors and work colleagues.
Other requests for DNA tests had been made by the couple.
All these prints had to be compared to the nine traces taken from the boy's blue anorak found bound hand and foot in the Vologne, on letters from the raven as well as on a syringe discovered near the crime scene.
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The file was also enriched last December with an expertise in stylometry - which is interested in the style of writing. A turn of phrase, an unusual punctuation or a singular syntax are all elements on which this technique is based. The results of the expertise would have designated Jacqueline Jacob, great-aunt of little Grégory, as the main author of the anonymous letters. Scientists had spotted
"a style highly similar"
to that used by the latter.
In 2017, the Jacob couple - who had not been worried until then - had been indicted on the basis of expert opinions in writing.
The couple were suspected of having not only been the "crows" of the affair but also of being involved in the kidnapping and death of little Grégory.
But the procedure was finally canceled a year later for a technical defect.
Jacqueline and Marcel Jacob have always strongly proclaimed their innocence.
"See also -
Gregory case:" There are still DNA profiles to be exploited, "says the lawyer of the Villemin couple