December 25, 1972. It was almost one in the morning when the Méchinauds – Jacques, the father, a 31-year-old electromechanic, Pierrette, the mother, a 29-year-old housewife, and their two sons, Eric and Bruno, 7 and 4 years old – take leave of the friends with whom they spent New Year’s Eve. The evening went “perfectly well”, assure their hosts. “As normally as possible,” even. The family lives in Boutiers Saint-Trojan, in Charente. She only has 3.7 km to go to get home. At this time, there is no one on the road, less than 10 minutes are enough to make the journey. Even if, as everyone remembers, a thick mist envelopes the region that evening. The couple and their children climb into the Simca 1,100 Garnet and set off. They will never arrive home.
On January 6, Pierrette’s father, worried about not having any news, alerted the police. Inside the small house with green shutters, time seems to have stopped. The children’s presents are always under the tree. In the refrigerator, a turkey and oysters are decomposing. A checkbook is placed on the table. Can a family disappear overnight without leaving the slightest trace? Can a crime be committed without sowing the slightest clue? In any case, these are the questions that the Méchinaud affair poses. In this cold case – the oldest that the specialized Nanterre center has to deal with – no material element has ever been discovered. No leads ever came to fruition. Fifty-one years after the events, the mystery remains tenacious.
Accident, voluntary disappearance, romantic rivalry
In 2001, when chief warrant officer Stéphane Chalumeau arrived at the Cognac brigade, the investigation had been sleeping in a drawer for years. “There was a box with several unresolved files,” recalls the former gendarme, now retired. The Méchinaud affair took up about ten sheets of paper. » The accidental track was well considered, especially since part of the path runs along the Charente river. A helicopter flew over the area. The waters have been sounded. No trace of the car. Nothing.
At the time, the life of the Méchinauds was also scrutinized. In the village, they are portrayed as a discreet, ordinary family. However, the varnish quickly flakes off. Their neighbor’s son, Maurice B., easily admits that he was Pierrette’s lover. Above all, he assures that the latter’s husband had recently learned of it, that he would have become extremely angry. He even swears he saw Pierrette with a bruise on her face the week before New Year’s Eve. The friends with whom they spent the evening claim to have seen nothing like it.
“The children would have sought to reconnect with their origins”
Has Jacques Méchinaud, described by his colleagues as both hardworking and taciturn, decided to take revenge? The man allegedly confided to one of his relatives that if he learned that his wife was cheating on him, “he would make everyone disappear and they would never be found.” “These comments were said to have been made more than six months before their disappearance,” specifies Stéphane Chalumeau. Would he have waited this long before reacting if he knew his wife was cheating on him? » Their Christmas Eve hosts claim to have felt no tension in the couple. They were barely surprised by the late departure time, especially since the children were clamoring to come home to open their presents.
Maurice B.’s schedule is also scrutinized. He claims to have spent Christmas with his parents, in the house next to that of the Méchinauds. He says he is convinced that the family has left to start a new life abroad. In Australia, precisely. The trail of a voluntary disappearance was verified. The father traveled a lot. But the family’s identity papers are still with them. And their bank accounts never changed. “If they had left of their own free will, we can also imagine that years later, the children would have sought to reconnect with their origins,” continues the ex-gendarme.
Operation Bruneri 47
Without the slightest clue, the investigation is floundering. The following year, the investigations were closed. It must be said that at the time, the qualification of “disturbing disappearance” did not exist. If today, a family disappeared overnight, significant resources would be put in place. At the time, it was considered that they had the right to leave without telling anyone. Twenty-five years later, when he came across the file, Stéphane Chalumeau decided to look into the facts without being officially informed. It identifies inconsistencies, shortcomings, hypotheses to be verified. In 2011, after ten years of informal checks, he ended up approaching the public prosecutor’s office, which reopened the investigations. Then begins Operation Bruneri 47, in reference to the children’s first names, Bruno and Eric, at their ages at the time, 4 and 7 years old.
The Charente is dredged again, but much more widely than the first time. At the time, we simply checked the area along the route. Several cavities in the surrounding area are sifted. Nothing. In 2012, human bones were discovered in a wood. Hope is short-lived, the DNA is clear: it is not a family member. In 2013, a garnet Simca was fished out, a little downstream, in the Charente. False hope. Neither the license plate nor the serial number matches. “All the hypotheses hold water until proven otherwise, but if they had had an accident on the way home, we would have found them,” assures Stéphane Chalumeau. Just as he is very skeptical about fleeing abroad. The port of La Rochelle – the closest – was searched from top to bottom, the car was never found.
The investigation relaunched
In 2020, an anonymous letter relaunched the investigation. The crow directly targets Maurice B., Pierrette’s former lover. The septuagenarian never left the village. The man is questioned at length, he maintains that the family is in Australia. His house is searched, the land turned over. There is nothing to implicate him. A few months later, a new missive denounces a local thug, who has died for several years. But here again, the investigations are in vain.
“The problem is that there are no material elements. Today, we would have combed the house to find prints, traces of blood, we would have geolocated the phones. It didn’t exist at the time,” recalls Stéphane Chalumeau. But when we question him, when we try to pull the worms out of his nose to find out if he has any convictions in this matter, the former soldier easily admits that he has one. “Strong”, even. A point of view that he prefers to keep to himself, arguing that the investigations are continuing.