A matter of gold and blood

by NewsPress articles

BEHIND THE DISAPPEARANCES OF ORVAULT, THE TROADECS' FAMILY TRAGEDY (France Info story)

A blue and white column slowly progresses through a wooded and soggy landscape. Death caterpillar in the mist…

…An examining magistrate, a forensic doctor, an anthropologist and investigators from the judicial police lead the way, followed by a dozen agents from the technical and scientific police, a cohort of CRS and peacekeepers. The group makes its way through this rugged and marshy terrain, tormented by the Zeus storm that has just hit Brittany. The buildings of the Stang farm stand in the background.

Heads are bent, looking for the slightest clue. Thirty-two hectares to be combed for fragments. Body parts, scattered, pulverized. We are not at the site of an air disaster, but at a crime scene. There are four victims, Brigitte and Pascal Troadec, aged 47 and 49, and their two children, Charlotte and Sébastien, aged 18 and 21.

It is on this image, captured on 8 March in Pont-de-Buis (Finistère), that the case of the missing persons of Orvault, which has become that of the Troadec family, closes. A terrible story, which began two weeks earlier, 280 km away, in a house in Loire-Atlantique. The story.

THE DISAPPEARANCE

Still no message, no call. From Landerneau (Finistère), Denise is worried. For several days now she has had no news of her daughter, who lives in Orvault (Loire-Atlantique).

His phone doesn’t answer anymore. Brigitte is used to calling him every week. A few streets away, Hélène is just as worried. No sign of her sister or her family. She can’t take it anymore and calls her work, the tax office in Nantes. Brigitte didn’t show up on Monday 20 February, the day she was supposed to return to work after a few days’ holiday. Her anxiety grew. Hélène contacted the police to report her disappearance.

The police arrived at the Troadec family’s house, located in a residential area of Orvault. The shutters are closed, the one-storey house is empty. The heating was turned off and the temperature was 8°C. The sheets have been removed from the beds. In the bathroom, no toothbrush or hairbrush. A cup and a glass are found in the kitchen sink. In the fridge, several items of food had expired. Sheets, not quite dry, are spread out inside. Wet clothes are still in the washing machine.

It is as if the house had stopped living at a given moment. (Pierre Sennès, public prosecutor in Nantes, in Presse Océan).

The investigators notice pinkish marks on the staircase, as if blood had been summarily wiped off. In a room on the ground floor, a mobile phone and its earpieces were stained with blood, as was a pair of socks. The technical and forensic police arrive as backup. With the help of the Bluestar, they detect other traces of blood in significant quantities on the floor. A watch, broken and stained with blood, was found under a bed. Everything suggests that a “scene of violence”, in the words of the prosecutor, took place in this house. The analyses quickly confirm these fears: the blood does belong to three members of the family, Brigitte, Pascal and Sébastien.

An empty house, traces of blood, no body… The case immediately evokes another, which has marked the minds in Nantes. In 2011, the remains of the wife and four children of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès were found after several days under the terrace of a bourgeois house in the City of Dukes. The father, the presumed murderer, is still untraceable today. In the Troadec case, the investigation, opened for “deliberate homicide, kidnapping and sequestration”, is quickly directed towards a family member. Especially since a detail intrigues the investigators. In front of the house, the couple’s two cars, an Audi and a BMW, are still parked. But the son’s car, a Peugeot 308, is missing.

THE SON'S FALSE TRAIL

The neighbourhood investigation begins. With its share of banalities. The Troadecs are described as “reserved people” who had been living in Orvault for at least ten years. “They were people who didn’t talk about themselves and who didn’t necessarily want to make friends”, according to a neighbour. In the neighbourhood, the morning “good morning” has dried up over time.

Some people mention the “depressive disorders” from which the father, employed in an SME specialising in the manufacture of illuminated signs, suffered “in the past”. His son is portrayed as having “suffered from psychological fragility”. The possibility of a father-son family dispute is emerging. Investigators and the media are looking into the digital life of the teenager, a second year student of BTS Digital Systems in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre (Vendée). The son of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès attended the same school. The fantasy machine is running wild.

Sébastien had created, like many teenagers of his age, several profiles on different social networks. In the midst of hundreds of harmless comments, a few old messages were enough to obscure the portrait of the young man. In 2014, at the age of 18, he tweeted: “I can’t take it anymore, I want to die but I can’t even do it”. On the Ask.fm forum, someone asked him if it was “possible to justify murder”. “The thing I hate the most? My reflection,” he writes again, quick to denigrate himself or talk about his own death.

In 30 years, I’ve been dead for 27 years.

Sébastien Troadec, on his Twitter account, in 2014.

Sébastien Troadec also confided on social networks his disagreement with his father. “I’m fed up with this, I’m going to the police station to lodge a complaint against my father”, “for moral harassment :'( #LT”, he stormed in April 2013. “My father is a big fucking alcoholic asshole because he farts in the shower and says it’s my fault when he’s the last one to have taken one,” he ranted a week later. There is also this message, dated May 1: “If they really knew what was going on in my head, they’d think I was crazy without morals. Photos of him posing with a knife or with his face hidden by a scarf were reported in the media. Le Parisien reported that he was sentenced to community service in 2013 for death threats.

While some testimonies confirm Sébastien’s “somewhat special” personality, his friends argue that it is only the construction of an online persona. In Le Parisien, his maternal aunt assures us that “Sébastien was getting better and better since he entered the BTS. He had many friends and went out with them at the weekend. He was more open. My nephew had literally transformed himself. He felt better about himself.

Nevertheless. If the investigators remain cautious and are exploring all avenues of investigation, the wanted notice broadcast to the whole of France mentions the possibility of “a disastrous project” by the son, “aimed at eliminating the members of his family and perhaps himself”. Among the disturbing elements, his mobile phone, the last to be switched off on the night of 16 to 17 February.

THE MORBID TRAIL GAME

The case of the missing persons of Orvault holds the country in suspense. But the investigation is stalling. At least in appearance.

The journalists cling to the slim elements that are filtering through: Charlotte, 18, went to the police station with her mother to lodge a complaint on the day of the disappearance. The reason was that her bank card had been hacked to buy video games… The focus was again on Sébastien, who was described as a “geek”. Mother and daughter would then have bought sushi. Consumable until 17 February, they were found in the fridge. So many clues reported by the press but which do not provide the beginning of a serious lead…

One detail is bothering the investigators: the blood of Charlotte, who has been at school since the beginning of the school year at the Notre-Dame de Fontenay-le-Comte high school (Vendée), in the first year of a BTS, was not found in the house. What happened to her? Plane tickets for Portugal, dated 10 April, were also found in the letterbox.

It was 27 February, ten days after the Troadecs’ disappearance, and the mystery remained. The public prosecutor’s office opened a judicial investigation and appointed two investigating judges. Two days later, the case had its first twist: a pair of trousers, a bank card and Charlotte’s Vitale card were found by a jogger in Dirinon (Finistère), near Brest. The next day, 500 metres away, investigators discovered two children’s books belonging to Pascal Troadec. But the real turning point came when Sébastien’s car was spotted in the car park of a church in Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique). The floor mat had disappeared, but no trace of blood was visible to the naked eye.

For the psycho-criminologist Jean-François Abgrall, the perpetrator “favours disorienting the investigators”. During a new press conference, eagerly awaited by all the media, the prosecutor Pierre Sennès confirmed “a possible morbid game of chance” and an “extraordinary case”. The magistrate also dismissed the hypothesis that Charlotte’s credit card had been stolen or used by Sébastien. The teenager and her mother went to the bank, not the police station, to stop Charlotte’s card. Charlotte herself had bought video game credits on the internet as a gift for Sébastien, and realised that the sum debited via an American server exceeded the purchase price. The brother’s trail seems to have gone cold.

THE BROTHER-IN-LAW'S CONFESSION

Officially, Sébastien’s car has not yet revealed its secrets. The prosecutor had warned that the results of the analyses would not be communicated in real time, to preserve the investigation. Unofficially, the investigators have a major clue: the DNA of Hubert Caouissin, Pascal Troadec’s brother-in-law, was found in the vehicle – on the headrest, according to Le Parisien. Another secret point: the companion of Lydie Troadec, Pascal’s sister, also left his genetic fingerprint in the Orvault house, on a glass.

If it is impossible to date this DNA, these elements contradict the version of the individual, heard in the early stages of the investigation. While in police custody, Hubert Caouissin had explained that he had not seen the Troadecs for a long time, because of a dispute over an alleged inheritance. On 5 March, the man and his companion were again placed in police custody. The information circulated, giving a whole new direction to this drama.

Time was running out, as the investigators had already used up the number of hours in custody. During the night, Hubert Caouissin breaks down and confesses. Yes, he killed the four members of the Troadec family for a story of “gold coins”. France wakes up with the name of a presumed culprit. A few hours later, Pierre Sennès gives another press conference and literally transports the audience to the scene of the quadruple murder. A one-shot story, based on the statements of the 40-year-old.

On the evening of Thursday 16 February, Hubert Caouissin went to the Orvault pavilion with “the intention of spying to see if he could gather information on this inheritance problem”. He applied “a stethoscope” to the window to try to listen inside the house. Later that evening, the suspect waits for the family to go to bed before entering the house and hiding in the laundry room. “He enters with the intention of retrieving a key seen on a piece of furniture,” the magistrate continued. But in trying to achieve his goal, the suspect made a noise, attracting the attention of the Troadec couple, who went downstairs “with a crowbar”. Hubert Caouissin managed to get hold of it. Refusing to give “more precise details”, the prosecutor evokes a “criminal scene of great violence”.

The rest of the scenario was recounted by Pierre Sennès and then clarified by Le Parisien the following days: Hubert Caouissin stayed with the Troadecs until the early hours of the morning, before returning home to the Pont-de-Buis farm, where he had been living for two years with Lydie Troadec. According to the newspaper, the presumed murderer immediately confided in his 8-year-old son, even before talking to his partner.

You will see, they will tell you that your father is a monster. But I’ll explain and tell you the truth.

Hubert Caouissin to his son, according to comments reported by Le Parisien.
The couple returned to Orvault on the evening of the 17th and 18th. Hubert Caouissin washed the house while Lydie waited in a car with a walkie-talkie, Le Parisien reported. A macabre detail reported by the newspaper: exhausted by the cleaning, the presumed murderer fell asleep for four hours in Sébastien’s bed. The duo left with the bodies, loaded into the 308. For two or three days, Hubert Caouissin tried to make the bodies disappear,” said Pierre Sennès. It seems that the bodies were dismembered, one part buried, the other part burned.

Then, with the help of his companion, Hubert Caouissin cleaned Sébastien’s vehicle and left it in Saint-Nazaire “a little bit at random”. “His idea was to direct the search towards the port. A sort of diversion,” the magistrate said. The suspect also took the family’s belongings with him to make it look like he was going on holiday. Hubert Caouissin is under investigation for “murder” and “attacking the integrity of a corpse”, his companion for “altering the state of a crime scene and receiving corpses”. Both were imprisoned.

A matter of gold and blood
(Audio)

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The scene of a crime, suicide or natural death has no mystery for the “cleaners”

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It's a job that is rarely mentioned, as if to ward off bad luck. The very mention of it brings to mind crime scenes seen on television in a second. "After-death cleaner".

20 Minute : 09.05.2017

It’s done, the words are out. They are few to do so and “no, it has nothing to do with the film Léon”, warns Julien Martel, the director of Groupe NAD, a young Alsatian company specialising in this field, whom 20 Minutes met.

Visit to an Alsatian company specialising in cleaning up after a death. It uses mainly organic products and respects to the letter safety and hygiene procedures

It’s a job that is rarely mentioned, as if to ward off bad luck. The very mention of it brings to mind crime scenes seen on television in a second. “Cleaner after death”. It’s done, the words are out. They are few to do so and “no, this has nothing to do with the film Léon”, warns Julien Martel, the director of Groupe NAD, a young Alsatian company specialising in this field, whom 20 Minutes met.

Although he denies that his job is shrouded in mystery, the thirty-year-old unwillingly sets the scene for a US series from the outset. Julien Martel leads us into his office where demonstration containers are lined up for soiled waste. I don’t like the term “cleaner”, this is not the United States, the relationship with death is not the same”, he warns. I’ve already had, as one anecdote among others, a phone call from someone who told me they had a “problem” and wanted me to come and clean it up, no questions asked. And wanted to pay in cash…”. The innuendos and silences are long. “We have very strict intervention protocols. For example, in the case of a homicide, we only intervene once the seals have been removed; moreover, we ask the police or the gendarmes to be there when they are removed and we attach these documents to our file. It’s a job where you have to be very rigorous, meticulous but also passionate. As for natural deaths, the body must have remained at the scene for at least 48 hours, or the death must be due to an infectious, viral or bacterial disease, otherwise we have no reason to intervene. “

Illustration. Group NAD agent gelling agent sprinkling operation – Group NAD

Like in a movie, or almost

Come, follow me,” he says before leading us into his back garage, where his “laboratory” is located. And this is not CSI Miami. A small, dark space where a cement pavement with blood splatters and a white protective suit, mask and gloves hang. “There is no projection, you are safe. This is blood, the scene is frozen,” says the cleaner. “This is pig’s blood, very close to human blood.

We use this laboratory as much as necessary for our blood homicide or suicide intervention protocol, as we are constantly improving our techniques and research. “. A place where every employee, before going out into the field, is trained for a month before taking an assessment test. “There is no such thing as training,” says Julien Martel. So it is he who personally oversees the training of the employees, who are considered to be a “band of friends” and who, all together, meet every fortnight in the company of a psychologist, in order to share or discuss the problems encountered.

This research allows it, and this is a particularity, to use no (or very few) chemical products. The young company has chosen to invest in innovative technologies for cleaning and disinfecting surfaces, but also for airborne disinfection, including the destruction of odours using an ozone generator. This prevents any resistant and allergenic strains after our visit,” says Julien Martel, “without using chemicals automatically. And to ensure that nothing is left behind, the cleaners use Bluestar or a UV lamp on homicides or suicides, whenever they have a doubt during certain interventions to look for traces of blood that would have been washed away, so as not to leave anything behind after their passage.

Illustration. Taking pictures to study the behaviour of blood – NAD Group

Dry steam cleaning

While clients will not get back their mattresses or carpets stained with blood and organic matter where bacteria proliferate, the premises will be disinfected, clean. “We have the same protocol as in operating theatres. In fact, after a homicide or suicide, we use the same machine for cleaning and disinfection as the one used in the Versailles hospital. It sprays dry steam, the temperature of which rises to 180°, and not a single interstice escapes it,” says Julien Martel. We restore the premises so that the families do not see the other side of the coin, to help them. “

A field that the young entrepreneur knows very well. A former soldier, he “comes from the world of the funeral industry” and has spent three long years thinking about the needs of his profession before launching his business. “It is a service that we offer. A continuation of the funeral service. “

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Traces of blood were found in his marital home, revealed by the “Bluestar”.

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Nancy: the charred body of a young woman found in the forest

16.07.2014 – EUROPE 1 – FRANCE

Traces of blood revealed by the “Blue-star”, a technique which allows the detection of micro-drops after cleaning.

It could be the body of a 34-year-old nurse, missing since the end of June, whose companion has been charged with voluntary manslaughter.

NEWS. The body of a young woman found burned in a forest near Nancy on Monday could be that of a 34-year-old nurse who has been missing since late June, and whose partner has been charged with voluntary manslaughter, police said Wednesday. “A police source said the body of the young woman, who disappeared during the night of 28-29 June, is believed to be that of a nurse.

The body, which was lying on a cold hearth and showed traces of charring, notably on the cranial region, was discovered by a walker on Monday morning in a forest in Villers-lès-Nancy, according to the Est Républicain. “We have already established that it was a woman. Other clues allow us to establish that a connection with the case of the disappearance is taking place,” continued the same source.

Traces of blood found at the home of the missing nurse. The young woman, a nurse and mother of a young child, had suddenly disappeared, without taking any news of her baby, whom she had entrusted to relatives for the weekend, “which is absolutely not in her habits”, said a source close to the case. Traces of blood were found at her marital home, revealed by the “Blue-star”, a technique that allows the detection of micro-drops after cleaning.

Her 36-year-old companion was charged with voluntary manslaughter and placed in pre-trial detention. He has always denied the charges against him. The investigation into the burnt body has been entrusted to the Nancy SRPJ, which could however be relinquished in favour of the Meurthe-et-Moselle departmental security service, which is in charge of the initial disappearance case.

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Traces of blood were found in his marital home, revealed by the “Bluestar”.

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Chief Warrant Officer Benitez left a bloody trail

by NewsPress articlesReal Cases solved with BLUESTAR® FORENSIC

The clues are accumulating around Chief Warrant Officer Benitez and his involvement in the disappearance of Allison and her mother Marie-Josée on 14 July in Perpignan.

Midi Libre : 27.09.2013

What can you do with eight litres of bleach, if not a major cleaning? In the middle of July, Francisco Benitez obviously had a big cleaning to do, since he bought this large quantity of disinfectant and corrosive product, with properties well known to crime fans, in Perpignan.

 © DR

Bleach degrades DNA and makes it difficult for experts to search for traces of blood that have been erased at the scene of the crime with special products such as Luminol or Bluestar.

Lots of blood

“He had to cut them up. We have the impression that it bled a lot”, explains a Parisian policeman, associated with the investigation led by the SRPJ of Montpellier on the disappearance of Allison and her mother Marie-Josée, on July 14 in Perpignan. Because there is a lot of blood in the elements gathered over the last two months by the investigators. First of all in the clues, taken during the searches in the family flat, as well as in the barracks of the Foreign Legion. “Stains invisible to the naked eye”, revealed at the family home. Allison’s blood, “in the drainpipe” of the family freezer, in “the seal of the window” of the washing machine, but also inside the flat occupied by the legionnaire in the barracks, said a source close to the case. The forensic identification technicians also found some at the foot of his bed in his bedroom: again, it was that of his own daughter.

A witness says

But there is also the blood that several witnesses saw and told the investigators about. Three days after the double disappearance, Francisco Benitez asked one of his comrades to come and help him carry the freezer that he had suddenly decided to donate to the barracks. The man later told the police that he had seen blood in a blocked sink in the Benitez flat.

Missing sheets at the barracks

Dark traces, taken from a tumble dryer used by the soldiers, are still being analysed. The disappearance in July of some thirty bed sheets from the barracks also intrigues the investigators: could they have been used to wrap bodies, or body parts? And then there is this sentence pronounced by the chief warrant officer in front of another soldier, which today takes on a sinister resonance. At the end of July, the latter was surprised to see him hosing down a blood-stained floor mat and sheets in a barracks washing machine. Francisco Benitez replied: “I defrosted some meat. “

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L’adjudant-chef Benitez a laissé un sillage sanglant

by ActualitésArticles de presseBLUESTAR® FORENSIC : Cas réels

Les indices s’accumulent autour de l’adjudant-chef Benitez et de son implication dans la disparition d’Allison et de sa mère Marie-Josée, le 14 juillet à Perpignan.

Midi Libre : 27.09.2013

Que peut-on faire avec huit litres d’eau de Javel, sinon un très grand nettoyage ? A la mi-juillet dernier, Francisco Benitez avait visiblement un gros ménage à faire, puisqu’il a acheté à Perpignan cette importante quantité de produit désinfectant et corrosif, aux propriétés bien connues des amateurs d’affaires criminelles.

 © DR

L’eau de Javel permet de dégrader l’ADN, et complique considérablement cette recherche des traces de sang effacées que les experts mènent sur les lieux du crime avec des produits spéciaux, le Luminol ou le Bluestar.

Beaucoup de sang

« Il a dû les découper. On a l’impression que ça a saigné beaucoup », explique un policier parisien, associé à l’enquête menée par le SRPJ de Montpellier sur la disparition d’Allison et de sa mère Marie-Josée, le 14 juillet à Perpignan. Car du sang, il y en a beaucoup, dans les éléments rassemblés depuis deux mois par les enquêteurs. Tout d’abord dans les indices, prélevés au cours des perquisitions dans l’appartement familial, comme à la caserne de la Légion étrangère. « Des taches invisibles à l’œil nu », révélées au domicile familial. Du sang d’Allison, « dans le conduit d’évacuation » du congélateur familial, dans « le joint du hublot » du lave-linge, mais aussi à l’intérieur du logement qu’occupait le légionnaire à la caserne, indique une source proche du dossier. Les techniciens de l’identité judiciaire en ont aussi trouvé au pied de son lit, dans sa chambre à coucher : là encore, il s’agit de celui de sa propre fille.

Un témoin raconte

Mais il y a aussi ce sang qu’ont vu plusieurs témoins, et dont ils ont parlé aux enquêteurs. Trois jours après la double disparition, Francisco Benitez demande à l’un de ses camarades de venir l’aider à transporter ce congélateur qu’il a soudain décidé de donner à la caserne. L’homme racontera ensuite aux policiers avoir vu du sang dans un lavabo bouché de l’appartement des Benitez.

Disparition de draps à la caserne

Des traces sombres, prélevées dans un sèche-linge utilisé par les militaires, sont toujours en cours d’analyse. La disparition courant juillet d’une trentaine de draps de lit à la caserne intrigue aussi les enquêteurs : ont-ils pu servir d’emballage pour des corps, ou des morceaux de corps ? Et puis il y cette phrase prononcée par l’adjudant-chef devant un autre militaire, et qui prend aujourd’hui une sinistre résonnance. Ce dernier, fin juillet, s’étonnait de le voir nettoyer au jet d’eau un tapis de sol et des draps tâchés de sang, dans une machine à laver de la caserne . Réponse de Francisco Benitez : « J’ai décongelé de la viande. »

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The Flactif case: An investigation solved with Bluestar

by NewsPress articlesReal Cases solved with BLUESTAR® FORENSIC

At a crime scene, he makes the bloodstains talk

“When I entered the Flactif house, I immediately noticed the traces of sponge strokes in the small living room and suspected that the chalet had been cleaned thoroughly. “Warrant Officer Philippe Esperança, 39 years old, will never forget this 18 April 2003.

 A French specialist in the morpho-analysis of bloodstains, he had to wait his turn to go through the house with a fine-tooth comb: “We only intervene when all the other findings are complete. “

The Bluestar, world star

The result was worth it. “Like at every crime scene, I sprayed our usual product, Bluestar. Its great quality is that it leaves the DNA prints intact,” explains Philippe Esperança. Another advantage is that it allows us to work in semi-darkness, whereas previously we had to work in total darkness. In three days in the chalet, the analysis of the few visible traces of blood and the use of this chemical revealed five bleeding sites – as many as there were victims – and one storage site. “The hypothesis of a quintuple murder on the spot was emerging. “From that moment on, my gendarme colleagues stopped looking for the Flactif family elsewhere than in Grand-Bornand. “

DNA analyses showed that among the bloodstains, some of them tiny, there were those of the five members of the Flactif family. But also traces left by employees or visitors to the chalet in recent years. Plus two unknown DNAs. One was David Hotyat’s.

Since helping to solve the Grand-Bornand mystery, Philippe Esperança has lectured around the world and worked with the Americans at the FBI. Trained as an entomologist (study of insects), he was a naturalist at the Jardin des plantes before becoming a gendarme. After three years of training in Canada, he created the blood trace morpho-analysis service at the IRCGN (1) in Rosny-sous-Bois in 1999. And as the previous chemical products did not suit him, he developed Bluestar himself. “This product went around the world in one year. It is so powerful that DNA has been identified on machine-washed clothes and in a high-pressure kitchen. “The oldest blood trace found in France in a criminal case was 17 years ago.

About 100 cases per year

Philippe Esperança can give you a lecture on the difference between the shape of degraded blood traces (when a hand has moved them from one place to another); passive blood traces, due to gravity, and projected blood traces, when a force – that of the aggressor – is added to gravity. “As the blood sprays quite far, these analyses can allow us to calculate the trajectory of the blow, the position of the victim or the aggressor, the nature of the weapon used, the distinction between a blow and a shock, etc. “During a suicide in a cornfield near Toulouse, specialists had found drops of blood carried by insects.

The week we met him, Philippe Esparança had three crime reconstructions on his agenda, including one in Guadeloupe, and two testimonies in a criminal court. “Our colleagues in the gendarmerie, and even the investigating judges directly, call us on about a hundred cases a year. “But the gendarmes are not there “only” to serve the prosecution. Warrant Officer Esperança remembers concluding that a drunkard had died in an accident after falling on a bottle of champagne. In March 2005, before the Nantes assizes, his expertise also contributed to the acquittal of Joaquim, a young man accused of the murder of a friend. “For us, it was a suicide. “

Michel TANNEAU.

(1) Criminal Research Institute of the Gendarmerie Nationale.

Jealousy – RTL – 16/09/2003

The scenario of what happened on April 11 at the Flactif’s chalet is being confirmed, written by the investigators according to the confessions of suspect n°1, dissatisfied tenant, shuffled from one flat to another by his landlord. Well decided, his scenario in place, David Hotyat enters alone in the chalet between 18h30 and 21h in the kitchen where Xavier Flactif and two of his children are. He fired his 6.35 revolver. The mother hears the shots and is shot as she goes up the stairs. He shot the last child upstairs in his room, he would have told during his hearing, it is there that the investigators find the most clues: blood, pieces of teeth, and a shell of the revolver. It is on this order of the victims that David Hotyat contradicts himself, suggesting that there are still grey areas. He explained that he then burned the bodies of Xavier Flactif, his wife and their children in a forest in the region, after having loaded them into a vehicle and driven 10 km away. He then returned to Grand Bornand, seemingly out of the blue, making up a story to explain their disappearance.

How David Hotyat was identified

The Gendarmerie’s criminal research institute was dealing with traces of blood in the empty Flactif chalet, traces of blood that had been washed away. In spite of everything, the scientists of the gendarmerie first managed to identify the origin of this blood, it belonged to the five members of the Flactif family, and then very thorough analyses made it possible to establish that the blood of several of the members of the family was mixed with another blood, another genetic trace, it is this genetic trace, this DNA belongs to David Hotyat.

It is because this DNA was found mixed with the blood of several of the victims that the gendarmes, before the arrest, were already convinced that the owner of this genetic trace was the murderer. It was thanks to this DNA that the gendarmes were able to trace the case. Since May, the gendarmes have taken DNA samples from 130 people, business relations, craftsmen and people close to Flactif. This is how the investigators were able to target the main suspect.

France Info – 17/09/03

David Hotyat was confirmed by DNA samples taken from nearly 130 people who had relations with Xavier Flactif and his family, or who lived in the region. David Hotyat’s genetic fingerprint matched the mysterious sixth DNA found in the chalet alongside the fingerprints of the five family members. The property developer, his wife, Graziella Ortolano, and their three children were last seen on 11 April in the late afternoon. Investigations found multiple traces of blood belonging to the family members, a shell casing and splinters of teeth in their cottage. Blood also belonging to the missing persons was found in Xavier Flactif’s vehicle, abandoned near Geneva-Cointrin airport on the Swiss side on 13 May.

According to Alexandra Lefèvre, Hotyat told her that he had first shot two children, alone at the chalet, then their mother, the last child and finally the father. As he was cleaning up the traces of blood, with a flashlight in his mouth, Hotyat, overcome with nausea, was disturbed by the call of a tenant of Flactif and then the arrival of a pizza delivery man…

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Forensics, how does it work?

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Crime scene, DNA, ballistics, the role and excesses of files

Le Monde : 10.01.2010

Forensic investigators are the new heroes of American series – Les Experts – and French series – RIS Police scientifique.

Since 2003, forensic scientists have been using a new molecule that reacts to iron ions in the blood, Bluestar luminol, which is active in the dark

Every week a DNA analysis makes the headlines, as we saw this autumn with the traces found on the envelope of the Grégory case’s corbel, then during the escape of Jean-Pierre Treiber… But how does the real French scientific policy work? To find out, I went into the laboratories of Marseille and Lyon, interviewed investigators, met researchers who are passionate about police investigation work and are bound by their professional code of ethics – and noted the growing, and worrying, importance of DNA files in solving criminal investigations

REPORTAGE (published in part in Le Monde Magazine, January 2010)

1- WHERE WE ATTEND THE MORNING TOUR OF THE FORENSIC LABORATORY OF MARSEILLE

We have hair traces in 4522, the case of the robbery with kidnapping of elderly people. Hair was found on the adhesives that bound them.

Coffee in hand, the head of the “Biology” section opens the discussion in a small, low room. The eight heads of department of the Marseille forensic laboratory, engineers and former doctoral students, dressed very casually, meet for the morning’s overview – the “demand review”. Philippe Shaad, the director, the only one wearing a tie, looks stern and says: “We have to try to prioritise. “

That morning, 16 files and 58 coded and numbered seals arrived for biology alone, transmitted by police services in a hurry. Most of them are from robberies and burglaries. There are several DNA samples from ‘individuals’ (the police always say ‘individual’), bloodstains and a swab from a telephone cable.

-The other emergency is 4777, the homicide with a presumption of rape,” continued the Biology Officer. We have 21 stab wounds, blood. The body has been moved, we should see if we can find any plants. He was outside for a long time, and as it has rained a lot, I’m afraid that the DNA won’t tell us anything. We should do some more tests, and concentrate on the car, seal it up… maybe we’ll find some usable traces.

-Well, I’ll call the Commissioner,” says the director. He’s feeling the pressure. Speeding up the result is his job – “I have to streamline” he says.

INPS Marseille handles 500 cases per month, thousands of seals

Since the Sarkozy law of 2003 on “Internal Security” and the methodical collection of DNA by the police, requests to the forensic police have soared. “We are moving from the craft to the industry,” explains Philippe Shaad.

The floor is given to the “Fire-explosions”. Big suspense. Because that morning, a heavy gun battle once again made the headlines in Marseille. Machine-gunned in front of the Velodrome stadium” headlines La Provence. What happened?

At around midday, two individuals wearing black helmets fired automatic pistols and Kalashnikovs at a man who was leaving a gym. Ten bullets, head and chest. The man, a former released bank robber, was suspected of having shot a known gangster in September 2007. Revenge, no doubt. Before fleeing, the two assailants set fire to their car. The men of the “fire and explosion” unit are trying to identify the explosive used. If it was a grenade, they will be able to cross-check. If it was a Molotov cocktail, they will analyse the fuses and the petrol.

Why did the killers set the car on fire? To remove traces of DNA. It’s become commonplace,” a sergeant explained. Banditry, large and small, as Vidocq well recounted in his memoirs (1828), has always adapted to advances in police expertise. Today, to eliminate DNA, they “blow up the stuff” as Chéri Bibi used to say.

Now it is the turn of “ballistics” to intervene. The technicians analyse the cartridge cases discovered after the Vélodrome shooting. Each weapon has a “fingerprint”. In Marseille, the police are used to the use of Kalashnikovs by the milieu. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has become the favourite weapon of the small-time crooks of the French Riviera.

New case of the day, toxicology expert causes a stir:

We have a drug rape, with blood on cotton wool. The sample is insufficient. It is not suitable for our analysis.

Director’s ticking. Slowdown in sight. What’s the difference between “narcotics” and “tox” experts? The former deal with seizures of hard drugs that have not been consumed – the port of Marseille was the port of the “French connection” – but also with hashish from Morocco, sold by the small-time kings of the cities – at war with each other. They try to identify the drugs, the cut products, and then compare them with the substances seized in several cases to trace the networks.

The “tox” people confuse drunk drivers, stoned people responsible for an accident, or process substances found in dead people: carbon monoxide, drugs, chemicals, etc. They do forensic work. They do forensic work. What else did the ‘tox’ do on 25 September 2009? Three roadside alcohol tests. The usual.

2- WHERE WE LEARN THAT FORENSIC SCIENTISTS ARE NOT POLICEMEN AND DISCOVER THE HISTORY OF "CRIMINALISTICS

In France, police experts are not multi-skilled super-cops capable of detecting a micro-trace of blood, conducting a profiling interview of a serial killer and then drawing their weapon faster than Agent Catherine Willows in “CSI Las Vegas”. In fact, the jobs of police investigation, evidence collection and forensics remain separate – unlike in the series “RIS. Police Scientifique”.

When a crime occurs and the investigation begins, the forensic identification officers, the “ijists”, “freeze” the “crime scene” on the spot. Trained for this, gloved, masked, protected, they put up barriers, make sure that no one, journalist or neighbour, comes to pollute the place by spitting or with their shoes. Then they take photographs, make sketches, record clues and DNA samples, which are then placed under seal by the judicial police officer. The investigators then call in the services of the forensic laboratories.

In France, three-quarters of the ‘experts’ are not police officers, but former doctoral students from science faculties, engineers and technicians working for the magistrates and the judicial police. These researchers are also civil servants of a public establishment, the Institut National de la Police Scientifique (INPS), which groups together all the technical and scientific police services: biology, ballistics, trace documents, fingerprints, fire-explosions, physical chemistry, narcotics, toxicology, technological traces, all the ‘forensics’.

French forensic science has a long history. Some historians trace it back to the investigation of the “poisoners of Versailles”, conducted by La Reynie under Louis XIV. But the pioneer was Edmond Locard, Alphonse Bertillon’s colleague, who founded the first technical police laboratory in Lyon in 1910…

We are in the Third Republic, Jules Ferry is educating the countryside, and a republican and positivist impulse wants to make us forget the brutal practices and the political filing of the Second Empire police. Edmond Locard wanted to replace the traditional police search for witnesses – unreliable – with the methodical search for convincing evidence – the constitution of proof – and the obtaining of confessions – “the queen of proofs” often obtained by sequestration and beating (formerly by the dreadful questioning or torture) – and sometimes retracted.

With anthropometry, dactyloscopy (fingerprint analysis) and the search for clues, Edmond Locard set the roadmap for a more objective police force: “No individual can stay in a place without leaving the mark of his passage,” he wrote, “especially when he has had to act with the intensity that criminal action requires…”.

Modern French forensic science was really developed at the initiative of the socialist Pierre Joxe, following a distressing report on the state of the premises and equipment of the technical police

In 1985, he allocated significant funds to them, hired scientists and engineers, and brought together all the laboratories and archive and documentation services. This reunification continued under the Jospin government with the authorisation of DNA sampling and the creation of the National Automated DNA Database (Fnaeg, initially intended for sexual offences and later for organised crime and terrorist cases) and the law of 15 November 2001 on “Daily Security” (LSQ), adopted two months after 11 September.

This law will be said to be liberticidal by human rights associations for having liberated telephone tapping and punished by prison the refusal to take a DNA sample. It founded the Institut National de la Police Scientifique or INPS, a public institution under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior.

In the opinion of the director of the Marseille laboratory, the separation of police and scientific analysis tasks through the INPS is very important: it preserves the independence of the expertise from police or judicial pressure. The separation of the professions is appropriate because it enriches the investigation. Generally, we hardly know the case we are dealing with. We are objective and neutral. These different views on the same investigation avoid false leads and enrich the investigation. Sometimes, they nuance or counteract the overly fixed “intimate conviction” of a judge or a police officer in a hurry.

In 2004-2005, the appalling miscarriage of justice in Outreau left its mark on the judicial and police apparatus.

Magistrates and lawyers reproached the young judge Burgaud for his fixed ideas, his summoning of children to the police station, his contempt for the defence. The psychological experts, in this case judicial, have accumulated errors of interpretation. The expertise, often called “scientific”, has been discredited. In fact, the expression “scientific police” can be worrying. It seems to imply that this police force is never wrong. That they are armed with an exact science that is always conclusive. That an expert, a psychological or genetic profiler, always tells the truth. But we know that the police arrest one-day suspects, that “false guilt” appears. That “irrefutable” evidence is difficult to establish.
 
The police and the judiciary have to build up a ‘body of evidence’ to convince themselves of the guilt of an ‘individual’, and experts provide them with ‘investigative evidence’. Sometimes they are wrong. Alphonse Bertillon, the father of anthropometry, gave a graphological expertise of the famous “bordereau” of the German embassy which accused the unfortunate Captain Dreyfus – but he had not written it. In other words, an expert opinion does not establish guilt for sure.

What does the director of the Marseille forensic laboratories think?

We never make a judgment of guilt. We answer a question asked by the investigator or magistrate. What make of car is this paint chip found in the wound of an accident victim? Was this shell casing fired from this weapon? Did this person die by drowning? We can go back to an investigator to discuss how he or she collected evidence, or ask to expand the search. The fact that we are not on either side of the fence, neither police nor judge, guarantees our independence. This is well noted on the journalists’ handbook.

3 - WHERE WE DISCOVER THE EXISTENCE OF "FALSE POSITIVES" AND THE RISKS OF "ALL DNA".

Since 2003, forensic scientists have been using a new molecule that reacts to iron ions in blood, Bluestar luminol, which is active in the dark. Whether the soil has been washed away or the blood diluted a thousand times, there are always a few metal ions left at a “crime scene” – and luminol reveals this by chemiluminescence. Blood traces provide DNA, their projections give ‘morphoanalysts’ clues as to how a blow was struck, how the blood flowed or gushed out.

Many criminal cases have been solved with luminol, such as the sudden disappearance of the Flactif family and their three children in April 2003. But while luminol is an effective detection product, beware of misinterpretation. It also reacts to copper, blood in urine, faeces and sodium in bleach: it could, for example, indicate a walker who has relieved himself in the wrong place. This has happened. All the experts in Marseilles say it: technology is useful for an investigation, it does not give the truth.

Forensic science, how does it work? (Audio)

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Flactif, The cursed cottage is for sale

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The parents of Xavier Flactif, massacred with his family in April 2003, have returned to the scene of the tragedy. The chalet of Grand-Bornand, in Haute-Savoie, is put on sale.

Le Journal du Dimanche : 08.03.2009

Inside, nothing or almost nothing has changed for six years. The seals of the gendarmes are still installed. An unbearable visit in the form of a final tribute.

The parents of Xavier Flactif, massacred with his family in April 2003, returned to the scene of the tragedy. The chalet of Grand-Bornand, in Haute-Savoie, is put on sale. Inside, nothing or almost nothing has changed for six years. The seals of the gendarmes are still in place. An unbearable visit in the form of a final tribute.

“The outlines of blood traces, invisible to the naked eye. They had been carefully bleached by the assassin after the quintuple homicide, but were then revealed by the “Bluestar”; this product sprayed by the experts of the Gendarmerie Nationale’s criminal research institute (IRCGN) which makes all the hemoglobin stains reappear in the half-light, even if they were meticulously wiped off. “

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The secrets of real experts (LE FIGARO)

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Philippe Esperança, morpho-analyst: Blood on the trail

By Le Figaro, 21/07/2006.

“Espé” is the French specialist in the revelation and analysis of bloodstains. At the Institut de recherche criminelle de la gendarmerie nationale (IRCGN) in Rosny-sous-Bois, where he is assigned to the ATO department (anthropology, thanatology, odontology), Chief Philippe Esperança, 38, is the expert who discovered the terrible truth inside the chalet in Grand-Bornand (Haute-Savoie) after the massacre, in April 2003, of the five members of the Flactif family (Xavier, a 41-year-old property developer, his partner Graziella Ortolano, 36, and their three children, aged between 6 and 10). David Hotyat was sentenced on 30 June by the Haute-Savoie Assize Court to life imprisonment, with a security sentence of 22 years (David Hotyat has appealed this sentence).

Philippe Esperança, who was called to the stand to comment on his expert reports, told the court how the first IRCGN experts, who arrived at the chalet after the Flactif family’s unexplained disappearance, had called him because they suspected that “the place had been cleaned”.

When I arrived,” he said, “the chalet was perfectly tidy and clean. After my colleagues had made all the other findings (fingerprints, footprints, particle samples), we used the BlueStar. In a darkened room, this luminescent product turns blood traces blue, even if they have been carefully washed.

It didn't take me long," says Philippe Esperança, "to be sure that the small living room of the chalet had been cleaned. Thanks to the product we had sprayed, I could clearly see the traces of blood left on the floor by a sponge about fifteen centimetres wide."

Philippe Esperança, who was called to the stand to comment on his expert reports, told the court how the first IRCGN experts, who arrived at the chalet after the unexplained disappearance of the Flactif family, had called him because they suspected that “the place had been cleaned”.

When I arrived,” he said, “the chalet was perfectly tidy and clean. After my colleagues had made all the other findings (fingerprints, footprints, particle samples), we used BlueStar. In a dark room, this luminescent product turns blood traces blue, even if they have been carefully washed.

A few weeks later, at the request of the magistrate appointed to investigate the case, Chief Esperança returned to the chalet in Grand-Bornand. His mission: to reveal the traces in all the rooms and to proceed with their morphological analysis. On the second floor of the house, called ‘le gîte’,” explains the gendarme, “I found traces of blood from a person who had been hit at a height of less than a metre. DNA analysis showed that it was Mrs Ortolano. On the floor, the BlueStar showed extensive cleaning of the landing and a blood trail from the landing to the laundry room. On the staircase leading to the third level, after the product was used, you could clearly see the handling and dumping of bodies there given the very large amount of blood that had been spilled here.”

“On level three,” he continued, “we discovered several cleaning sites in the small living room, the kitchen and the large room, as well as acts of violence committed, for the first one, in the small living room with a firearm and which the DNA will say was Xavier Flactif. In the kitchen and its vicinity, we found evidence of violence committed by a blow (a first area of blood revealed between the kitchen table and the wall, and another between the kitchen table and the hall table). These two areas of blood matched the DNA of one of the couple’s two daughters.”

On the top floor of the cottage, the bedrooms: “There were, in the bedroom of Sarah, one of the Flactif’s daughters, traces – cleaned and revealed by the BlueStar – of blood spatter on the walls indicating that a blow had been delivered always at a height of less than a metre. The DNA was that of one of the two girls.

During the trial of the perpetrators and accomplices of this carnage, Philippe Esperança was questioned at length by the president of the assizes on the version of the facts given by David Hotyat, who explained that two mysterious individuals had hit him inside the chalet and that he had fainted.

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