The bars of the Grands Crus route are full on this winter Friday evening in Beaune (Côte-d'Or).
Virginie Bluzet, a pretty 21-year-old blonde, spends the evening with friends.
An argument breaks out with her boyfriend and the young woman leaves the place.
Forty days later, on March 17, 1997, she was found handcuffed, partially naked and her face masked by a gag in the Saône in Verdun-sur-le-Doubs (Saône-et-Loire).
Twenty-three years later, her murderer is still running.
During all these years, justice has managed to identify only one lead: that of Virginia's boyfriend, indicted for a time before being dismissed in 2002. And justice seems to be s' be resolved never to solve this crime.
The Dijon public prosecutor's office thus requested, on September 24, a dismissal in this case and the end of the investigations.
"I do not understand, breathes Michel Bluzet, the father of Virginie, who has never ceased to fight to know the identity of the murderer of his daughter.
It's like they want to give up, move on.
That my daughter's death no longer interested anyone.
This Wednesday, Me Didier Seban, lawyer for the Bluzet family, will therefore be before the Dijon investigative chamber in order to oppose this request.
Disturbing similarities with the Blétry affair
For Me Seban and her colleague Me Corinne Herrmann, there are indeed many avenues to explore to finally establish the truth about the death of Virginie Bluzet.
The first leads, according to them, to Pascal Jardin sentenced in 2017 - then in 2018 on appeal - to life imprisonment for the murder of Christelle Blétry, committed a few weeks before Virginie's disappearance and less than sixty kilometers away. from Beaune.
Like Virginie Bluzet, Christelle Blétry was young and pretty.
Like Virginie Bluzet, she disappeared in the middle of the night after an evening with friends.
Like Virginie Bluzet, Christelle Blétry frequented the Tropicana at that time, a nightclub in Torcy where Pascal Jardin had his habits.
So many elements that push the lawyers of the Bluzet family to ask for new investigations on the course of this sixty-year-old with a disturbing profile.
During his trial, the psychiatrist Daniel Zagury had mentioned the "psychopathic traits" of Jardin and a behavior close to certain "sex offenders and serial killers".
The psychiatrist had also considered the murderer's modus operandi "compatible with the commission of other crimes."
"
The killer of Christelle Blétry had also himself delivered a disturbing element during his two trials.
Asked about the young woman's death, he said she knocked on the window of his car, that they had had sex and that she was gone.
Faced with the doubts of the court, he had assured that the situation was not unprecedented and had remembered a similar scene with a certain… Virginia.
DNA comparisons demanded
Despite these elements, “justice has never compared the DNA of Pascal Jardin with that of the Bluzet seals, underline Mes Didier Seban and Corinne Herrmann.
She also never sought to verify the activities and the course of Pascal Jardin at the time of the murder of Virginia.
"Nothing really seems to hook him up to this affair, tempers a source close to the investigation.
But his personality and his geographical proximity to the murder of Virginie Bluzet deserve verification.
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The other track which requires further investigation leads to Michel Fourniret.
The serial killer "has raged on several occasions in the Yonne" and went "regularly to Dijon to exchange gold with a numismatist", remind lawyers of Michel Bluzet.
Monique Olivier, the killer's ex-wife, also assured, during an interrogation, that a "murder had been committed in 1997" by the couple.
However, justice has never succeeded in establishing a formal link between these statements and a criminal case.
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PODCAST. Michel Fourniret: in the footsteps of a monster who has not revealed all his secrets
But justice has, in recent months, opened new avenues as to the criminal route of the serial killer.
As part of the investigation into the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin, scientists discovered on a mattress that belonged to Michel Fourniret a dozen unknown DNA in addition to that of the girl who disappeared in 2003 in Guermantes (Seine-et- Marl).
“We must compare the DNA of Virginie Bluzet with those highlighted in the Fourniret affair”, therefore ask Mes Seban and Herrmann.
Very close to the mother of Christelle Blétry, who waited more than 18 years for the murderer of her daughter to be arrested, Michel Bluzet for his part begs justice "to dig all the tracks, even if she does not believe it.
I am 72 years old, I would like the murderer of my daughter to be arrested before I die.
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