The examining magistrate in charge of the investigation into the theft of one of Vince’s horns, the white rhino shot three times in the head in 2017 in a zoo in Yvelines, pronounced a dismissal, has learned AFP after having requested the floor of Versailles. On March 7, 2017, the zoo keepers in Thoiry (Yvelines), near Paris, discovered one of their rhinos, Vince, four years old, shot three times in the head, the main horn sawed and stolen.
After more than four years of investigation entrusted to the gendarmerie of Mantes-la-Jolie, a dismissal was pronounced on November 29, no author having been identified, specified the parquet floor of Versailles. The murder and mutilation of the animal, unprecedented for a European zoo, had caused a stir, well beyond the French borders, and made react the Minister of Ecology at the time, Ségolène Royal.
A value of several tens of thousands of euros
The market value of Vince’s horn, about twenty centimeters long, had been estimated at between “30,000 and 40,000 euros” by investigators. The white rhino, native to South Africa, nearly disappeared in the 19th century and became a subspecies extremely threatened by poaching.
Its horn is trafficked around the world, being snatched up for tens of thousands of dollars on the black market, especially in China and Vietnam. Traditional medicine attributes all kinds of false virtues to it, such as curing cancer or impotence. Its international trade has been banned since 1977, but this measure has not stopped the slaughter of rhinos in Africa.