He was sentenced in 2015 to twenty years in prison for the kidnapping and sequestration of his son. Sylvain Jouanneau, the father of little Mathis, missing since 2011, was indicted for murder. Investigators suspect him of having killed his 8-year-old boy on September 2, 2011 in Caen (Calvados).
According to a judicial source, the indictment for murder dates back to April 19, confirming information from France 3 Normandie.
The young boy has not given any sign of life since September 2011. After picking up Mathis from school, his father went to his parents’ house in Calvados. The thirty-year-old then fled, alone. Sylvain Jouanneau was arrested in Villeneuve-Lès-Avignon, in Gard, after three months on the run. He never provided the slightest explanation, repeating that he had entrusted the child to people abroad. Research had even been carried out in Morocco, in vain. In 2015, the police unsuccessfully launched a call for witnesses with a portrait of the aged child.
A DNA trace of the child found
According to a judicial source, Sylvain Jouanneau was eligible for release in 2028 and could have benefited from sentence adjustments by then. He was taken into police custody at the beginning of the year to explain the mysterious disappearance of his child. “There are issues of inconsistency, the fact that it was the last to have seen him alive, the fact that several people saw him alone after having kidnapped him or even that we found the DNA of the child on the floor mat of the trunk of the car he used. This suggests that a body was lying inside,” said this source, adding that this DNA analysis “had not been carried out” before.