A “cold case” elucidated 36 years later: a man confesses to the murder of a mother near Grenoble

Aged 25 and mother of two children, Marie-Thérèse Bonfanti had disappeared without a trace on May 22, 1986 in Pontcharra (Isère) while she was distributing newspapers. His car had been found that evening near a dilapidated house. The vehicle keys were still on the dashboard and her bag was in the front seat. Despite extensive searches carried out for ten days by the gendarmerie with the help of a helicopter, the young woman had remained untraceable. The investigation, which had been the subject of a dismissal in November 1987, had been reopened in 2020 in particular thanks to “the perseverance of the families” and the “will” of the investigators, declared Eric Vaillant, prosecutor of the Republic of Grenoble during a press briefing. The man in question, who had already been suspected at the time, “admitted to having killed her”, he added. His deputy Boris Duffau for his part clarified that the declared motive was a “dispute” and “at this stage (without) any sexual connotation”. The suspect’s violent profile had already “attracted the attention of investigators” at the time. The lawyer for the Bonfanti family, Me Bernard Boulloud, for his part expressed the “great relief” of his clients. After all this time, the victim’s husband, Thierry Bonfanti, feels “no hatred”, he assured. Mr. Vaillant welcomed the elucidation of this “cold case”, the second in Grenoble in less than a year, he underlined, after that of the Marinescu case in June 2021. In this case , a man had been indicted and imprisoned, 28 years after the events, for the murder of his wife and the murder and rape of his daughter, found with their throats slit in 1993 near Grenoble. This result is “first of all the consequence of the perseverance of the families helped by their lawyers and the associations of the families of the disappeared”, which was “perfectly relayed by the will of the justice system and the investigation services to find the whole truth on these old cases,” he said. The prosecutor also praised the “precious experience” accumulated by the Grenoble gendarmerie in the analysis of old criminal files, in particular in connection with the Nordahl Lelandais case. This former soldier was sentenced on February 18 to life imprisonment for the murder of little Maëlys in August 2017 when he was already serving a 20-year prison sentence for the murder of a young corporal a few months earlier. .