After Mathis’ disappearance in 2011, Sylvain Jouanneau was indicted for the murder of his son. Investigators found the boy’s DNA in his car.
Thirteen years later, the Mathis Jouanneau affair has reached a new turning point. This little boy, then aged 8, was kidnapped by his father Sylvain in September 2011, on the eve of the start of the school year. If the father was sentenced in 2015 to twenty years of criminal imprisonment for this kidnapping, the trial did not reveal what he had done with the little boy. In his defense, he will never stop saying that he entrusted the child to a third party. During the trial, Sylvain Jouanneau’s mother encouraged her son to speak to help Mathis be found. Sylvain Jouanneau was indicted, this time for the murder of his child, by the Caen Court of Appeal on April 24.
An indictment for homicide following the discovery of new elements and additional investigations. Traces of the little boy’s DNA were revealed in the trunk of Sylvain Jouanneau’s car, the car he used to travel to Lahonce in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, in September 2011, shortly after the kidnapping . Investigators also noted inconsistencies in Sylvain Jouanneau’s schedule at the time of the boy’s disappearance.
A new hearing
“I have always refused to let this matter stop and I have, since 2016, made requests for significant investigative acts which have been carried out. The DNA analyzes arrived a year and a half ago, and then the time we compare them to the IRCGN (Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie)…”, told AFP Me Aline Lebret, lawyer for the young boy’s mother.
Placed in pre-trial detention after this indictment, Sylvain Jouanneau appealed this decision. This Tuesday, May 7, the investigating chamber of the Caen Court of Appeal decided to keep him in detention. The investigation will now continue. Sylvain Jouanneau, currently incarcerated in Dordogne, should be interviewed again by investigators.