L’AFFAIRE Petit Gregory is still haunting France such a long time after it took place. This week it was the top story once again in the media as more ghastly details were being revealed.

What happened 33 years ago was something like this:

The professional successes of Jean-Marie Villemin, a youthful and talented technician working in Epanges-sur-Vologne not far from the German and Swiss borders north-east of France, were eyed with a certain amount of jealousy by his colleagues that included one of his own cousins.

When Villemin and his wife Christine moved to a new house high up in the mountains, designed and built following their own taste and resources, a number of intimidating telephone calls were received; they were ignored by the young couple as jokes.

But when they started getting threatening letters signed by a certain ‘Crow’, it was no longer possible to take matters lightly.

In the afternoon of Oct 16, 1984 their four-year-old son, Gregory, suddenly disappeared. The parents learned of the abduction by another letter from the ‘Crow’ slipped under their door. It said: “I have taken my revenge. It’s not with your high salary that you’ll get back your son, you fool!”

Police were informed and a wide-range search immediately went into action.

Later in the night little Gregory’s body was found, hands and feet tied with a rope and drowned in the Vologne.

The tragedy shocked the village and the entire population, about 700 people, attended the funeral ceremony.

As authorities continued the investigation and interrogated many people close to the family, Muriel Bolle, a niece of Little Gregory’s father and 15 year old at the time, admitted to the police that she was with Bernard Laroche, the jealous cousin of Jean-Marie Villemin, when he kidnapped the boy.

For all apparent reasons Laroche was the ‘Crow’ but the authorities, for a logic of their own, hesitated. One explanation could be that Muriel Bolle soon after retracted her earlier statement. She said she was harassed by the investigators and had wrongly accused Laroche. He was released on condition that he would be available for further questioning.

Both the cousins, Bernard Laroche and Jean-Marie Villemin, used to work for Tissage Ancel, a wool-weaving enterprise; they were considered professional rivals.

Following Laroche’s release, Villemin waited impatiently as the case dragged on and the suspect was questioned time and again though without being formally charged with murder. Then, on March 29, 1985, convinced that the authorities were being unusually lackadaisical, Villemin decided to take matters into his own hand. He pulled out his hunting gun and shot Bernard Laroche dead.

Villemin was arrested, tried and sentenced to five years in prison. He would later be released for good behaviour and under the now widely accepted hypothesis that Bernard Laroche could really have been the ‘Crow’.

But surprises were not yet over. Soon after, Christine Villemin herself was arrested as Laroche’s family reported to the police that she could have murdered her own son. She was later released after spending 11 days in prison and was declared innocent.

Another 15 years would pass before the affair once again came under the media’s focus when in 2004 the judges decided that the parents of Little Gregory had been badly treated. They were awarded 35,000 euros each as compensation for the wrong done to them.

Since the middle of last month Little Gregory’s ghost is haunting the media again as new evidence has emerged; not only Laroche but many members of his family, some dead by now, could have been involved in the ghastly crime.

As you are reading these lines, Muriel Bolle, now 48, is once again under detention for having concealed the truth. Jean-Marie and Christine Villemin are in their late 50s and parents of three other children.

The writer is a journalist based in Paris ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 9th, 2017