From 1980 to 1996, the picturesque Isère region of the French Alps was the grim setting for the disappearances and murders of 12 children, aged 5 to 15. This article explores one of these tragic cases – the disappearance of 6-year-old Ludovic Janvier.
The disappearances and murders in the Isère region, known as the “Disparus de l’Isère,” or “Disappeared of Isère” in English, briefly prompted investigators to consider a serial killer theory. However, after solving three of the cases, they ultimately ruled out that possibility.
Who Was Ludovic Janvier?
Ludovic Janvier was born in France on October 22, 1976, to Jean-Bernard and Maryline Janvier. In early 1983, Jean-Bernard and Maryline, originally from Sarthe, relocated to Saint Martin d’Hères, a commune south of Grenoble in the Isère region. They brought three of their four children – Jérôme, 7, Ludovic, 6, and Nicolas, 2 – with them, while their 5-year-old daughter Virginie remained with her grandmother near Le Mans in Sarthe. (Pueyo, 2023)
Jean-Bernard, an experienced baker and pastry chef, sought employment in Saint Martin d’Hères. Meanwhile, his son Ludovic had just begun attending school.
The family was staying with relatives in an apartment on Place de la République (Republic Square), a street surrounded by apartment blocks.
Disappearance of Ludovic Janvier
On March 17, 1983, Jérôme and Ludovic were doing their homework when their father interrupted them, asking them to purchase him some cigarettes at the tobacco shop 100 meters from the apartment.
Around 6:30 p.m., as the brothers were leaving, Nicolas eagerly stamped his little feet, insisting on joining them. The three boys then crossed the illuminated Place de la République.
The Janvier brothers came across an abandoned shopping cart and played with it. Jérôme and Ludovic placed Nicolas inside and began pushing him around.
“We accidentally scraped his fingers against a wall,” Jérôme recalled. “I vividly remember a tall man dressed entirely in black approaching us and telling us to be more careful…” (Vigoureux, 2014)
Jérôme then removed Nicolas from the cart. Years later, Jérôme wondered if the mysterious man had any connection to Ludovic’s subsequent disappearance.
The three children continued toward the tobacconist’s shop on the opposite side of Rue de la Poste.
“Another gentleman stood frozen in front of us, as if he were waiting for us. He was wearing overalls, black factory shoes with zippers, and a bowl helmet with reflective stripes on his head. He said to us: ‘I lost my wolfdog. If you help me find him, I’ll buy you some candy.'”
Jérôme later said he was not frightened of the man because the man had a reassuring voice.
The man indicated that they had to follow two different directions. Jérôme did not want to leave Nicolas alone. The man grabbed Ludovic’s hand and guided him towards the parking lot that bordered the street.
“Ludo didn’t say anything, he was a rather fearful kid. But he looked at me as he walked away. I saw the worry in his eyes… That’s when I understood that I had done something stupid. I ran home, my little brother in my hand, to warn my parents.”
Jean-Bernard ran full speed to the square, but it was already empty and Ludovic had vanished. He called the police, who arrived shortly after.
Virginie, Ludovic’s sister, was still in Sarthe.
“I remember seeing my parents, my brothers, on TV. And when I joined them, I have this memory that I always had to walk, start again, cross the square, again and again… I replaced Ludovic’s silhouette for the journalists. The investigators went to get Jérôme from school to hear him. It took me years to understand what had really happened.”
Investigation
Jérôme was able to provide a detailed description of Ludovic’s kidnapper, and police used a police artist to draw composite sketches of the suspect.
His mother gave police photographs of Ludovic. The police extensively searched for Ludovic and his abductor but never found them. They initially accused the boy’s parents of killing their missing son or selling him for money.
Isère Doe
On May 23, 1985, French authorities recovered the skeletal remains of a child in the Vercors Massif caves in Isère. The remains are long believed to belong to Ludovic.
“I went to the tobacconist’s; I saw in the newspaper that Ludovic Janvier had been found,” said Jérôme. “We’re still waiting to know what happened to this body… Why aren’t they telling us anything?”
Advances in scientific identification methods using DNA would make it possible to confirm or deny the link between these bones and the genetic trace of the Janvier family.
“In 2011, the Attorney General then in office in Isère, Martine Valdès-Boulouque, indicated by letter to Me Seban that “the important work of sorting and storing the seals […] did not allow the bones” in question to be found. Then the chancellery announced that the justice system had got its hands on it again. And that it had carried out four genetic tests, concluding that there was no connection between the bones and Ludovic Janvier.” (Vigoureux, 2015)
Is Ludovic Janvier Alive?
In April 1983, about a month after Ludovic’s disappearance, the clerk of a Grenoble investigating judge received an odd phone call. The male caller requested that the magistrate reassure the Janvier family about their missing child’s well-being. The suspect claimed Ludovic was in good health and bringing joy to a childless couple. He explained that he was prompted to call after reading about the case in the newspaper “L’Union de Reims.”
In 2010, a nurse contacted Virginie Janvier after a TV program aired covering Ludovic’s disappearance.
“She said she was convinced she had seen my brother, Ludovic, near Reims, in the hospital where she worked, “Virginie recalled. “According to her, he looked a lot like Jérôme, whom she had seen in the report.”
“Why don’t we check all this?” they asked. “Our brother is perhaps alive. Or dead without us knowing it?”
Their father “died of grief in 2007,” and their mother has never recovered from the loss of her middle son. Ludovic’s siblings continue their search for their long-lost brother, while Jérôme still vividly recalls the face of Ludovic’s kidnapper.
Other Disappearances and Murders
Between 1980 and 1996, 12 children, including Ludovic and Isère Doe, disappeared within a 70 km radius between Lyon and Grenoble, in Isère. (Davan-Soulas, 2013) Some were found deceased, and one child survived.
Philippe Pignot, 13
Philippe, born on March 8, 1966, resided in Martigues, a town near Marseille in the Bouches du Rhône region. He vanished on May 25, 1980, in the town of La Morte-sur-Isère. While Philippe’s disappearance is often overlooked, some believe his disappearance is related to the others. Unfortunately, very little information about his case is publicly available.
Grégory Dubrulle, 7
Grégory disappeared from Grenoble on July 9, 1983, after going outside to play. As he sat outside his home on Rue Adrien-Ricard, a car driven by a European man with a dark complexion pulled up and stopped. He asked Grégory where the street led, then told the boy to come with him. Ignoring his parents’ warning about talking to or going with strangers, Grégory entered the vehicle. The man made the boy sit on the passenger side floor before quickly driving away.
The next day, Grégory was found alive but with a fractured skull in a landfill in Pommiers-la-Placette. He had been sexually assaulted but could not remember the attack. Grégory described his assailant as having a tattoo of a heart with two initials on his bicep. Decades later, he believed the kidnapper had been driving a Renault Fuego, though the police had initially been searching for a Mercedes.
Anissa Quadi, 5
On June 25, 1985, Anissa vanished from Grenoble. Authorities recovered her body 13 days later in Beauvoir Dam. The poor condition of the remains prevented the medical examiner from determining if Anissa had been sexually assaulted. However, the examiner concluded that she likely died by strangulation or drowning. While investigators could not rule out an accidental drowning in the nearby Isère River, the evidence pointed more strongly to murder.
Charazed Bendouiou, 10
On July 8, 1987, Charazed went outside to play with friends near her apartment building in Bourgoin-Jallieu. She carried a bag of trash, intending to dispose of it in the basement’s garbage collection area. The trash bag was later discovered in the basement’s garbage zone, but no other signs of Charazed existed. She has not been seen since, and no one witnessed her disappearance. The courts dismissed the case in 1989.
Nathalie Boyer, 15
On August 3, 1988, two SNCF agents discovered Nathalie’s body in the Verpillière woods near Lyon, Isère. Nathalie, the eldest of four children, was described as “an ordinary schoolgirl.” She had disappeared the previous day from the family’s apartment in Villefontaine. Authorities later determined that Nathalie’s throat had been cut before her body was abandoned along a railway track in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier. (Guiho, 2022)
Fabrice Ladoux, 12
Fabrice disappeared on January 13, 1989. Early that afternoon, the young boy set out from his home in downtown Grenoble to attend school less than a kilometer away in the Eaux-Claires district on Rue de Dunkerque.
Fabrice, a 6th-grade student described as having “no problems,” never arrived home from school one afternoon. His mother reported his disappearance when he failed to return that day. Police immediately launched a search, and two days later, on January 15, a walker discovered Fabrice’s body in a ravine off a mountain road near the commune of Quaix-en-Chartreuse, about 15 kilometers from Grenoble. He had been sexually assaulted before his murder. (Belhassen, 2023)
Rachid Bouzian, 8
On August 3, 1990, Rachid disappeared in Échirolles. His body was discovered the following day. Later that month, authorities apprehended a suspect in Saint-Martin-d’Hères, Isère, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and the man was ultimately sentenced to life in prison. He is now deceased. Police never found Rachid.
Sarah Siad, 6
On April 16, 1991, Sarah vanished from a playground near her family’s home in Voreppe’s Bourg-Vieux district. Her body was discovered the following day in a wooded area approximately 300 meters away. The autopsy revealed that she had been strangled. Investigators collected a fingerprint from a tissue packet at the scene and gathered biological evidence from the victim’s clothing, but their analysis revealed nothing at the time.
Léo Balley, 6
Léo disappeared on July 19, 1996, on the Massif du Taillefer southeast of Grenoble while his father and three family friends were setting up a tent in the mountains. Extensive searches of the surrounding area, including the nearby lake and waterfalls, yielded no sign of his whereabouts. A French serial imposter, Frederic Bourdin, assumed his identity in 2006, but DNA tests proved he was not the missing boy. (Seymour, 2007)
Saïda Berch, 10
On November 24, 1996, Saïda left her Voreppe home and disappeared between her home and a local gymnasium. Several witnesses saw her in the company of a young man on a light gray mountain bicycle. (Pavan and Jolly, 2013)
Two days later, on November 26, 1996, Saïda’s body was found on the edge of an irrigation canal. She had been strangled, but there were no signs of sexual assault. The victim’s sweater, which had been tied around her neck, was kept by investigators.
Willy Van Coppernole
In 2008, the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office established a specialized investigative unit, “Mineurs 38,” comprising 12 detectives, to investigate the “Disappeared of Isère.” However, the theory of a serial killer was dismissed when one suspect was apprehended for Rachid’s kidnapping and another man in Voreppe for two of the murders. Despite that, one man remains under police radar.
Willy Van Coppernolle, who has been convicted several times in Belgium and France for kidnapping, sexual assault, and the murder of children, was interrogated by the Gendarmerie’s investigative unit as part of the inquiry into the “Disappeared of the Isère” in February 2017.
Sexually assaulted as a child, Van Coppernolle has an extensive criminal record dating back to the 1960s. He is currently serving a life sentence plus a 22-year security period for the 1993 murder of 10-year-old Abdel Dkhissi and the sexual assault of two teenage hitchhikers committed a month later.
Van Coppernolle, now 81, is the prime suspect in the disappearances of Ludovic, Phillip, Fabrice, and Léo, as well as Gregory’s sexual assault and abduction and multiple unsolved murders. He is currently incarcerated in a French prison on a life sentence.
George Pouille
DNA testing linked George Pouille, 38, to Sarah and Saïda’s killings, and he confessed after his arrest on July 25, 2013. Pouille was married, had at least one child, and suffered from Steinert’s Disease. He was a neighbor of Sarah’s and a family friend of Saïda’s. Pouille’s DNA profile had been registered in the French national DNA database (FNAEG) due to a December 2005 arrest for driving under the influence of narcotics and operating a vehicle without insurance. (Pavan and Jolly)
“He is very seriously disabled and moves very little. He killed children who were close to him and whose family he knew,” declared a local prosecutor. Therefore, authorities ruled out any connection between Gouille and other unsolved cases of child murders in Isère.
Recent Investigations
In 2011, the Grenoble authorities reopened Ludovic’s case and that of Charazed Bendouiou, who disappeared July 8, 1987, in Bourgoin-Jallieu, both part of the “Disparus de l’Isère” investigation. The authorities reclassified the disappearances as “illegal confinement.”
On Monday, November 10, 2014, the Grenoble judges dismissed Ludovic’s case, despite the latest leads, leaving his siblings bewildered.
Didier Seban and Corinne Herrmann, the family’s lawyers, appealed the decision, arguing that the police overlooked crucial witness statements. In 2015, the Grenoble Court of Appeal reopened the case and ordered additional investigations, but further information has yet to be provided.
Sources
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