a new track in Avignon?
More than ten years after the disappearance of Mathis Jouanneau, near Caen, three new testimonies come to relaunch the investigation in the Vaucluse, near Avignon. Three testimonies taken seriously which overlap and are being verified.
After three hundred hearings, eight calls to various witnesses, ten years of investigation and a trial at the assizes, the investigators wanted to give themselves a new chance to find Mathis Jouanneau. And there may be something new. A track taken seriously is “being verified”as we confirm the prosecutor of Caen, Amélie Cladière.
Thus last September, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice took advantage of a new program broadcast on M6, called “Call for Witnesses”. Among all the unsolved disappearances in France, they retain the story of Mathis. This was treated live on September 29, 2021.
So that was three months ago. There were no revelations that day. But an unexpected twist was announced live on the show on January 31, 2022, four months later.
During this program broadcast live and in prime time, dozens of calls reached the four gendarmes and four police officers installed on the set. A highly supervised system within the framework of a controlled partnership. Subsequently, the investigators continued to communicate on how to reach them, via social networks, as shown in the tweet below.
As a result, several dozen testimonials have proven to be “worthy of interest” for the search services. It takes time, several weeks, even several months to audition, verify, recover,
But this January 31, 2022, four months after the broadcast, M6 announced it live in its new issue of“Call for Witnesses”that a serious lead opens in the Mathis Jouanneau file.
The day after this broadcast to the general public, this February 1, 2022, the information given by M6 is therefore confirmed by the public prosecutor of Caen.
Without revealing the instruction, it confirms that there are indeed in all the testimonies received, three people who were heard officially. Witnesses who do not know each other and who claim to have seen in Avignon a young homeless man, strangely resembling Mathis, on the aged portrait made in the United States and distributed everywhere since 2015.
There are indeed three distinct testimonies that overlap. Three people who say they have met in Avignon a young homeless man resembling the portrait of aged Mathis
Amélie Cladière, public prosecutor of Caen
An unexpected twist, first for the relatives of little Mathis and in particular the mother, Nathalie Barré. She prefers not to react and keeps the necessary distance for the moment. For 10 years, she has been fighting relentlessly to find her son.
The south of France (and particularly the Vaucluse) are areas infected in the Mathis Affair. Avignon is immediately a likely avenue to consider while the father, Sylvain Jouanneau was arrested in his outer suburbs, in Villeneuve-Lès-Avignon, after three months on the run, on December 9, 2011.
Sylvain Jouanneau the day of his arrest is alone. Sentenced in 2015 to 20 years’ imprisonment for kidnapping and forcible confinement, he has always maintained that he has designated Mathis “to people of confidence”, even during his trial. He has, moreover, always denied having harmed his son, in particular in letters sent to France 3 Normandy and its journalist Franck Bodereau.
However, it should also be remembered that Sylvain Jouanneau has always been seen “without his son by his side” and in particular by the various witnesses who made it possible to find him in 2011.
There was never any trace of the child with him, after this weekend in September 2011, when he picked him up for the first time after being deprived of his visitation and accommodation rights.
The man, 37 at the time, picked up his son from school on Friday evening before visiting his parents not far from Caen and hitting the road. It is therefore, in Rosel, in Calvados that Mathis was last seen, on September 2, 2011 around 8 p.m.
In parallel with the ongoing research on these last testimonies from Avignon, a judicial investigation is still open for homicide against X. And the investigators are looking for a body. Mathis would be 18 today.