A human skull was discovered on Wednesday in Buissière (Isère) during excavations intended to find the remains of the body of Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti, who disappeared in the neighboring town of Pontcharra in 1986, the Grenoble prosecutor announced on Friday.
“There is nothing to formally establish at this stage that these are the remains of Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti”, however indicated the prosecutor Eric Vaillant, expertise carried out “over the next few weeks” to confirm “the feminine nature of the discovered skull and its DNA identity”.
Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti, 25 and mother of two children, distributed newspapers in Pontcharra. She disappeared on May 22, 1986. A man, who lived nearby at the time, had been suspected and then released, and the investigation ended in a dismissal in November 1987.
Confessions in May
But in May, Éric Vaillant announced that the case had been solved. This same man, who lived in Savoy and who was then 56 years old, was arrested and admitted “to having killed” Bonfanti. He was indicted for “kidnapping, forcible confinement and murder” and is imprisoned.
Excavations organized on the “supposed place of removal of the body of the victim indicated by the indicted”, “allowed the discovery of a human skull about 65 meters” from the place in question, explained Friday to the Valiant press. A “partial bone” whose “human nature is not confirmed”, a press stud and a piece of fabric were also found, he added.
Double disappearance
On May 9, 1985, a year before the disappearance of Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti, a 19-year-old girl, Marie-Ange Billoud, disappeared as she was preparing to leave Pontcharra to go to Chambéry by car. stop.
After the elucidation of the murder of Bonfanti, a judicial investigation was reopened. The deputy prosecutor of Grenoble Boris Duffau had declared that, if nothing made it possible to link the Bonfanti affair to other unsolved murders or disappearances, nothing prevented “from questioning, investigating and possibly making new connections”.
In the mid-1980s, in Pontcharra, this double disappearance had struck many, 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.