It is one of the "cold cases" of Isère.
The investigating chamber of the Grenoble Court of Appeal decided on Tuesday not to prescribe the murder in 1986 of Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti in Pontcharra (Isère), announced the lawyer for the family of the disappeared.
This file experienced a rebound last year with the arrest in May of a suspect, then his indictment and his placement in pre-trial detention.
According to counsel, the limitation period was ten years in this case.
“It's a great victory and a decision that does honor to justice.
The magistrates considered that the starting point of the prescription should run from the day the suspect in the file confessed "the murder, Me Bernard Boulloud told AFP.
“Today, the case is sent back to the investigating judge.
If there is no appeal, no appeal to the Court of Cassation, the investigation will continue and there will be a trial,” he added.
Aged 25, Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti, mother of two children, disappeared on May 22, 1986 while distributing newspapers in Pontcharra.
A neighbor had been suspected and then released and the investigation ended in a dismissal in November 1987. The latter, then 56 years old, had been arrested again last May and placed in police custody.
Faced with his contradictions, he ended up admitting to having killed Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti and had indicated where to find the remains of the victim.
The suspect indicted for "kidnapping, forcible confinement and murder"
Excavations organized in a forest in Isère led to the discovery of the victim's skull last October.
After the elucidation of the murder of Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti, a judicial investigation had been reopened.
The suspect was thus indicted for "kidnapping, forcible confinement and murder" and imprisoned.
On December 14, the lawyers of the mis en cause had filed an appeal to request the cancellation of the indictment of their client in the name of the prescription.
Contacted by AFP on Tuesday, the suspect's defense could not be reached immediately.
The disappearance of Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti had been preceded a year earlier by that of a 19-year-old girl, Marie-Ange Billoud, who disappeared as she was about to leave Pontcharra to go to Chambéry in hitchhiking.
This double disappearance had struck the spirits a lot, especially since it occurred a few years after the murder of another young woman from the locality, Liliane Chevènement, 30, found in 1981 strangled, four months after her disappearance.
The murderer was never identified.
