By joining the association Assistance and search for missing persons (ARPD), created in 2003, Patrick Mallet did not really imagine what his job as an investigator would be. Eight months ago, this former police officer from Lyon came out of retirement to help families deploring the mysterious disappearance of a loved one. Its mission today: to find them but also to contribute to the resolution of cold casesin other words unresolved or abandoned investigations, due to lack of evidence or clues.
How did the idea come to him?
It was when he “stumbled upon a report about the ARPD” that Patrick Mallet wanted to join the Assistance and missing searches for which he is a volunteer. “I sent them an email and it was a policeman I knew who answered me. I didn’t know he had joined the association,” he says. He who has spent “his entire career in the national police in Lyon and its metropolitan area” wanted to put his expertise and skills to good use: “I am not the best investigator, but I had contacts with the police, the gendarmerie, the press and the justice system. »
What role does the ARPD play?
The work of an investigator at the ARPD is first of all to “let the police services investigate”, before resuming the investigation if necessary, specifies Patrick Mallet from the outset. “They have a lot more resources than us. They can wiretap people, obtain requisitions, get help from specialists. These are things that do not belong to common law and that we cannot do, ”he argues.
The role of the ARPD is therefore, initially, devoted to the families of the victims. It is a question of “assisting them and helping them to understand what is happening”. But when the police or the gendarmes decide to abandon the search, it is the association which takes over to try to take an interest in the unexploited leads.
If the means remain limited, the investigators of the ARPD – 450 volunteers in total – have, however, no territorial limits, “unlike the police”. The association also benefits from the support of neighboring associations. “On one of our latest cases, we were investigating a 68-year-old man who had disappeared. The gendarmes had not found it useful to involve the search dogs because the disappearance dated back three days and the man had left by bicycle. An association of tracking dogs told us that dogs could still find his trace. With the agreement of the gendarmes, we relaunched the search and we were able to find the body of the man, a few days later in the Rhône”, says Patrick Mallet.
What is the biggest case solved?
If the work of the investigators can sometimes be tedious without bearing fruit, certain searches, on the other hand, make it possible to relaunch cases or even close them. By looking into the Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti affair thirty-four years later, the ARPD played a major role in the investigation. This mother had mysteriously disappeared on May 22, 1986 in Pontcharra (Isère), while she was distributing newspapers.
“There were no longer any ongoing investigations. The family has always fought so that the research continues and that it is not forgotten. We were seized in 2020 of this disappearance and thanks to a rereading of all the elements of the file, we were able to target a suspect, ”says Patrick Mallet. Yves Chatain, the neighbor of Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti, already suspected during the first investigation in 1987, was arrested in May 2022. “Our elements made it possible to reopen a judicial investigation”, completes the former police officer. Then the pole cold box de Grenoble – who worked on the murders of Maëlys De Araujo and Victorine Dartois – mobilized three gendarmes on the case. “They arrested the suspect who admitted the facts while in police custody,” adds the former police officer.
These confessions then led to the discovery of the victim’s skull in a forest in Isère. And allowed the family to finally have answers.