An emblematic “cold case” is about to be resolved in Isère. Thirty-six years after the disappearance of Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti in Pontcharra, a 56-year-old man has just been arrested and indicted for “kidnapping”, “kidnapping” and “murder”, as have in turn turn revealed Wednesday night RTL and The Dauphine Libere. The radio specifies that in front of the investigators of the research section of the Isère gendarmerie, the suspect admitted the facts, while indicating that he had hidden the body in a forest.
On May 22, 1986, in the middle of the afternoon, Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti disappeared after parking her car near the Pontcharra station (Isère). The body of the 25-year-old mother, who had not given the slightest sign of life since that day, has never been found, despite extensive research.
The indicted man was released in 1986
So much so that this file had been closed in 1988, before being reopened in November 2020 by the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office, through a judicial investigation against X for “kidnapping” and “sequestration”. The investigation had been entrusted to the “cold case” group of the research section of the Isère gendarmerie, located in Grenoble.
The man indicted earlier this week was the main suspect in this case 36 years ago. But for lack of evidence and confessions, he was released at the time after his custody. “It’s a very big relief,” reacted the lawyer for the victim’s family on Wednesday evening for RTL. The public prosecutor of Grenoble, Eric Vaillant, who had relaunched the file in 2020, has just announced that he will hold a press conference, this Thursday at 4 p.m. in Grenoble, about this Bonfanti affair.