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April 1, 2002
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Monday
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Muharram 17, 1423
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Missing N-scientist puzzles French cops
By Our Correspondent
PARIS, March 31: When she disappeared last December, Laurence Alavoine was written off as another middle-aged executive who, it was thought at the time, had simply gone off on one of her regular jaunts into the rugged Alpine regions north of Grenoble, where she lived with her husband Olivier.
At the time, police located her car, the door on the driver’s side left opened, not far away in the Grande Chartreuse part of the barren reaches of the Vercors, the site of an important resistance operation against France’s German occupiers back in the summer of 1944.
Police told Olivier not to worry, that they would surely find her trace, and, in any case, that she would soon be returning home, especially as the Christmas holidays were fast approaching.
One hundred days later, though, no trace of Laurence has ever been found, and police continue, armed with special dogs, to make their way over and about the 150,000 acres of arid terrain located more than two kilometres above sea-level.
“She was a fighter and knew how to resist the cold,” says a friend. “She must be somewhere out there. We are sure she’ll be back sooner or later.”
Still, police have their doubts not only regarding the likelihood of the return to civilization of Laurence Alavoine, but also what were the true reasons behind her disappearance.
Laurence, who was a specialist in nuclear physics, had been investigating the illegal traffic in nuclear fuels that have come to light in France in recent months, a traffic dominated by the mafia, says one police investigator close to the matter, who notes that Laurence Alavoine had become a specialist of sorts in the transfer of nuclear fuels, notably plutonium, between the ex-Soviet Union, especially the Ukraine, and the Middle East.
Olivier, her
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