People have a right to disappear, France said. Then came a serial killer
People Have a Right to Disappear, France Said. Then Came a Serial Killer
More than 1,000 people disappear in France every year, but no one investigates. The arrest of an apparent serial killer is making the French realize they have a problem
If he’d stuck with older victims, he might never have been caught. No one considered him a suspect after a soldier was murdered two months earlier, and no one thought of looking into why so many people had disappeared close to where he lived. People disappear, the authorities told the families. They run from debts, start a new life, commit suicide. There’s nothing to be done.
But a year ago, on August 27, Nordahl Lelandais made a move that led to his capture. He bundled his latest victim, Maëlys de Araujo, not yet 9 years old, into his car. The discovery of her body, half a year later, would open a Pandora’s box and also touch off a larger public debate in France. Was it possible that a serial killer had been operating unhindered in the country for more than a decade? The French would find out very quickly that the answer might be yes – but also that he might not be the only one. A country that has a higher murder rate than its neighbors, where 1,000 unidentified bodies are found every year and where searches for missing people are not conducted for reasons of principle, might be said to have a problem.
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Maëlys de Araujo, the girl in the white dress, with her dark brown eyes and a braid – as she appears in photographs taken at the family wedding – was the last victim of Nordahl Lelandais. But how many were there before her?
A search for the answer to that question turns up appalling yet ambiguous statistical information about France. United Nations and European Union crime data show that more people are murdered in France than in the country’s neighbors – Switzerland, Italy, Britain, Holland, Spain, Portugal and Germany.
Between 2010 and 2014, an average of 801 people were murdered in France every year, as compared to 718 in Germany, whose population is larger by nearly 16 million (67 million versus 82.7 million). Of France’s close neighbors, only Belgium has a higher murder rate.
On top of this, about 1,000 unidentified bodies are discovered in France every year and are buried by local authorities without documentation or a proper DNA examination. In Britain, which has a population of about the same size, 66 unidentified bodies and parts of bodies were discovered in 2016. That huge disparity, experts say, stems from the completely different procedures followed in the two countries. France, in contrast to other countries, including Israel, does not have a national database containing the details of unidentified bodies discovered there – where and when they were found, gender, estimated age, physical description, cause of death, DNA. The other side of the coin is that France also lacks a national database that holds information about missing persons, together with their or their relatives’ DNA.
At this point, we come to the number of missing persons. Every year, authorities in France receive between 40,000 and 67,000 missing-persons reports. The vast majority of these cases are solved quickly: The missing individual returns home or is found alive, or his or her body is discovered. Still, a certain unknown percentage of the files remain open: The missing persons are never found. It’s difficult to estimate the scale of the phenomenon, because no official body in France or elsewhere provides precise information. (The French Interior Ministry refused to respond to any questions on the subject from Haaretz.)
BBM
On Sunday, August 27, it will be one year after the disappearance of Maëlys.
Haaretz has published a lengthy overview of the case, its ramifications and the structural problems in France. Well worth a read!
