'WE TRY TO FILL THE GAPS': THE DIFFICULT RECONSTRUCTION OF NORDAHL LELANDAIS' PAST
France Info
https://www.francetvinfo.fr/faits-d...enter-de-resoudre-des-cold-cases_2667816.html
Nordahl Lelandais. Until August 2017, this name was little known to police and justice services. The criminal record of the man, now 35, included only two mentions: a one-year prison sentence in April 2009 for burning down a snack bar and a four-month suspended sentence in early 2017 for slashing a car tire with a knife. The Savoyard changed category at a wedding in Pont-de-Beauvoisin (Isère), where he crossed paths with 9-year-old Maëlys. The remains of the girl's body were found on 14 February 2018 in a steep area in Savoy.
Nordahl Lelandais has gone from a petty criminal to a potential serial killer. Justice suspects that he also murdered Corporal Arthur Noyer, whose bones were discovered in September 2017 near Chambéry (Savoie). In this region, where he spent most of his life, several cold squares started flashing alerts.
The public prosecutor's office in Grenoble has already reopened four investigations into people who disappeared into Isère between 2010 and 2016. Checks are also carried out in other jurisdictions, from the public prosecutor's office in Chambéry to that in Valence, via Annecy and Nîmes. In total, some twenty disappearances or unsolved cases are revisited in the light of the cases of Nordahl Lelandais. His profile baffles investigators.
The trail of the former soldier will, for example, be explored in the investigation of two disappearances in the Drôme: a 48-year-old man in 2016, Eric Foray, and a 29-year-old woman, Nelly Balmain, in 2011. "The investigation is being revitalised: I have scheduled a working meeting with the Romans gendarmerie company and the Grenoble Investigation Section", Alex Perrin, the Drôme public prosecutor, explained at the beginning of March.
It will be a difficult task. It is necessary to make up for lost time because in these investigations, many elements were not exploited at the time, starting with the video surveillance images. "In the Balmain case, the young woman's scooter was not found. In Eric Foray's car, we didn't find his Suzuki SUV either. We are very close to the Swiss and Italian borders, but the toll cameras have not even been used," Philippe Folletet regrets. He is a retired commissioner who has taken up volunteer service at the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes branch of the Association d'assistance et recherche de personnes disparues (ARPD).
Problem, these images cannot be stored beyond one month, just like those recorded near vending machines.
"In reality, these images are often only kept for a few days. However, families who go to the police station to report the disappearance of a loved one often are told to wait 48 hours," according to lawyer Bernard Boulloud.
The Grenoble lawyer represents the parents of Corporal Noyer but also four families, including those of Eric Foray, Nelly Balmain and
Malik Boutvillain, a 32-year-old man who disappeared in Echirolles (Isère) on May 6, 2012. In this last disappearance case, "the 48 hours expired on a holiday, so nothing was done for 72 hours," he fulminates. The days and weeks that followed were hardly more fruitful. So his phone and computer were never investigated.
In Nelly Balmain's case, it might even be impossible: "When the case was closed without follow-up after two years, her parents gave Emmaus her computer and her telephone," he sighs.
"The treatment of suspicious disappearances of adults in France is catastrophic," Didier Seban deplores. He represents the families of Jean-Christophe Morin, 22, and Ahmed Hamadou, 45, who disappeared a year apart during a music festival at the Fort de Tamié, near Albertville (Savoie), in 2011 and 2012.
"Two different gendarmeries conducted the investigation because they disappeared 300 meters apart," the counsel regrets. He will ask for the police to check Jean-Christophe Morin's phone and bag, found during a search.
Did the two men cross Nordahl Lelandais' path? Again, time is not on the investigators' side. The telephone data, which shows whether two mobiles were confined to the same location, as was done in the Corporal Noyer investigation, are only kept for one year. Unless the courts ask that they be frozen.
Nothing of the sort has been done in the files of Jean-Christophe Morin and Ahmed Hamadou, as in most cases of disappearances of adults. However, according to former Commissioner Philippe Folletet, "the analysis of Imei numbers on mobile phones and Imsi numbers on SIM cards can yield results". Provided that these elements have been retained. "The memory of mobile phones that are nearly ten years old is not the same as that of current mobile phones," a source within the gendarmerie relativizes.
"Several years later, we try to fill in the gaps," Bernard Boulloud points out. The first thing that a lawyer advises his clients to do is to file a complaint with the constitution of a civil party, to obtain the opening of a judicial information and to have access to the file. This should be done as soon as the disappearance occurs. "The investigating judge plays the role of conductor, who will set the tempo. Investigators are obliged to follow. With the means at hand, we will try to do the neighbourhood surveys that have not been done. We can still take fingerprints on the objects and clothes of the disappeared," the lawyer lists.
According to him, media coverage of these cases can help fill the gaps: "It gets some people out of the woods." The local ARPD assists the families in these steps. "We help them to push the right doors and find the right arguments to advance investigations," emphasizes Philippe Folletet.
Then it is up to the magistrates to share the information gathered by these different actors. "The judges seized of certain disappearances can start by asking their colleagues for a copy of the Lelandais files," Bernard Boulloud suggests. And to send the elements to the judicial pole of the national gendarmerie (PJGN) in Pontoise (Oise), where a cell coordinates all the collected information on these files of not elucidated disappearances and on Nordahl Lelandais.
Called "Ariane", this unit has about ten people: experts based in Pontoise and investigators spread over the research sections of Grenoble, Chambéry and Reims. Nordahl Lelandais spent five years as a dog handler in the 132nd army dog battalion, based in Suippes, Marne.
The mission of this dedicated team consists of two stages. The first step is to take a closer look at Nordahl Lelandais' life course, interviewing all the judicial bases but also private service providers such as telephone operators, banks and insurance companies. In the jargon of the gendarmes, this work aims to "fix in time and space" the suspect. Concretely, it consists in finding his various addresses, the places he frequented, his employers, his friends, his banking movements, his old vehicles and mobile phones. Has it been checked anywhere? What gyms did he use? What nightclubs? The objective is to go back as far as possible in time.
The thousands of data collected will then be compared with the information available to investigators on all unsolved disappearance cases, through the AnaCrim software. This 360-strong unit was created in the 1990s, when Constable Jean-François Abgrall headed the investigation unit devoted to the "murder backpacker" Francis Heaulme. Since then, the system has made possible to implicate the serial killer Patrice Alègre for certain crimes and it was used to revive the case of little Gregory, in early 2017. AnaCrim makes it possible to create relational diagrams and chronologies, even when the protagonists of a file are very numerous.
Investigators have already been able to exclude Nordahl Lelandais' involvement in three cold cases: the disappearance of little Estelle Mouzin in 2003 in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne), since he was on mission in French Guiana at that time; the Chevaline massacre in September 2012 in Savoie, and
the disappearance of Lucas Tronche in March 2015 in the Gard. In this case, however, the courts are awaiting final results. "We have a number of elements that lead us to believe that he was not in the Gard at the time. But as long as we are not sure, it is an element on which we continue to work", the public prosecutor of Nîmes indicated.
If it is ruled out in certain cases, the Lelandais lead will at least have made it possible to reactivate the investigations. And families have regained hope that one day they will know the truth about what happened to their loved ones. "We will close the door if it is not him but we will open others," former Commissioner Philippe Folletet formulates his hopes.
BBM
To everyone who bought a computer or a phone from charity Emmaus in 2014, in St Paul lès Romans, please report to the Police.
:facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm:
