The Quais du thriller festival, which takes place in Lyon this weekend, highlights the various facts in its programming and in particular the "cold cases".
Specialized in handling unresolved cases, lawyers Didier Seban and Corinne Herrmann will host a debut on the subject on Saturday afternoon.
The opportunity to come back to the fascination engendered by “cold cases” but also by the dysfunctions of justice.
They remain an inexhaustible source of inspiration for writers. They fascinate, intrigue, enthrall… The Quais du thriller festival, which takes place this weekend in Lyon, has decided to put the spotlight this year on the various facts and more particularly the “cold cases”. In other words, unresolved cases. Didier Seban and Corinne Herrmann will also host a conference on this subject on Saturday afternoon.
In twenty years, the two lawyers have established themselves as specialists in “cold affairs” in France.
They are the ones who made it possible to convict Emile Louis for the murders of missing persons from Yonne.
They too, who unearthed the case of the missing from Isère and relaunched the Michel Fourniret track in the disappearance of the young Estelle Mouzin.
They always took over the file of the mysterious Parisian serial killer "Hail".
Without forgetting the resolution of the murder of Isabelle Mesnage in 1986, for which Jacques Rançon has just been sentenced to 30 years of criminal imprisonment.
"The fact of not knowing contributes to the fascination"
“I think the most inspiring thing about cold cases is above all the enigma. The fact of not knowing contributes to the fascination ”, notes Didier Seban. The story itself too. “Often unresolved cases involve murders of young women. Of course, these are terrible stories. People can identify with the victims, with their families, the lawyer continues. They want to understand. And they do not understand why we still do not know, why the case has still not been resolved by justice. "
The speculations are then well underway.
"Everyone has the impression of knowing everything and ultimately wants to contribute to the investigation, to discover the truth," analyzes the lawyer.
Even when it comes to building the craziest theories.
“In all media business, we have to have people contacting us to tell us to look there or do that.
Most are keen to do well, but sometimes we have a few weirdos, ”laughs the lawyer.
Around 200 unsolved homicides in France each year
Long lagging behind, France now wants to catch up on cold case resolutions. A number ? In 2020, 863 homicides were perpetrated in the territory. If the Ministry of the Interior is pleased to have elucidated 75%, the reality is however the following: 200 have not been resolved. Two hundred is the average each year. Do the math and you will have a staggering number over the past ten years.
“Typically, the problem with our justice is that it works like an organ pipe. In each case, there is a different judge and there is no reconciliation between the cases, regrets Didier Seban. However, if we want to elucidate a case, we must know the path and the functioning of the killer. To resolve the cases, the lawyer and his colleague are investigating on their side, asking the families to search the archives of the local press to verify whether there have been murders or convictions in the area. They also reread each file thoroughly. Draw parallels. Often come up against the dysfunctions of justice.
"It is difficult to have a criminal policy when we know that the prosecution is unable to know the names of victims of crimes for the last 20 or 30 years in its jurisdiction", tackles the lawyer.
And to qualify as a conclusion: "However, we are starting to see a unit of gendarmerie and police officers specializing in the resolution of cold cases."
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