The Méchinaud Case. Part 1: Disappearance

On the afternoon of Sunday 24th December 1972 Jacques Méchinaud aged 31, his 29 year-old wife Pierrette and their two young sons Eric (7) and Bruno (4) drove the short distance from their home in the village of Boutiers-Saint-Trojan to the town of Cognac, where they spent the afternoon and evening with friends preparing for a 'reveillon' - a midnight meal to celebrate the start of Christmas. The previous day they had been out shopping for toys and food with the two boys; an apparently normal family enjoying their Christmas holiday.

Pierrette and Jacques Méchinaud with their sons Eric and Bruno

At the time, the Méchinaud family had lived in the village of Boutiers for around two and a half years. Jacques grew up in Bourg-Charente, his wife Pierrette (née Esnard) was originally from Saint-Même-les-Carrières. Described at the time as a hard worker, Jacques was employed by the large Saint Gobain glass factory in Chateaubernard, on the outskirts of Cognac. In addition to his shifts there, he was also known to do some part-time work locally repairing cars. Pierrette looked after the house and children.

According to their friends in Cognac, the Fontanillas, it was a relaxed evening with little out of the ordinary. At around 1am Jacques warmed up the family's maroon Simca 1100 ready for the short journey home - less than 4km door to door. Normally this would have been a ten minute drive through Cognac, over the Charente and into the village of Boutiers, just to the north of the river. But this was not a normal night; a thick fog had settled over the town, with visibility reported at the time as being 3-5 metres at best. Once ready, Pierrette and the two boys climbed aboard and the car disappeared into the night. Neither it, nor the family were ever seen again.

The Fontanillas in 1973

There's some confusion over who exactly first alerted the local gendarmerie to the family's disappearance - some say that it was Pierrette's father on 6th January, others that Jacques' parents, who had expected the family for a Christmas meal, reported it before that but were obliged to wait before any investigation could start, on the basis that adults had a right to disappear. Either way, it was not until a week into the new year that the gendarmes finally entered the Méchinaud house at 14 Rue St Trojan in Boutiers. When they did, they discovered the children's presents still wrapped under the Christmas tree, a turkey and oysters in the fridge and no obvious sign of any missing clothing or documents which might suggest the family had returned to the house after leaving Cognac in the early hours of 25th December.

From January 10th the search for the family was stepped up - a helicopter was deployed for aerial searches and divers combed the beds of the Charente and surrounding ponds and creeks. But in the cold and murky water it was slow going. The banks of the river were checked on foot for any sign of a vehicle or tyre tracks which could indicate that a car had gone into the water, but nothing was found. As time passed the search was scaled back and, as the gendarmes withdrew, the dowsers and mediums moved in with (unsurprisingly) an equal lack of success.

The Méchinaud house - Rue St Trojan in Boutiers

But while nothing was found to indicate the whereabouts of the family, new claims began to emerge about the background to their disappearance - specifically that Pierrette, apparently bored with domestic rural life had taken a lover in the village of Boutiers and that Jacques had recently found out. How recently is, again, a matter of confusion. 

According to some sources he had told his brother Jean Paul and a work colleague as far back as May 1972 that things were not going well with his wife and that if she left him he would "make everyone disappear." But it's difficult to know whether this apparent threat was actually made by Jacques, or whether it's something that has grown in the telling; interviewed in 2011 Jean-Paul quoted his brother only as saying "if it doesn't work out I will leave and you will never find me." 

Other sources indicate that while Jacques may have had suspicions about his wife for some time, he only found out for certain about the alleged affair two days before the family's disappearance, having been tipped off by a neighbour of her supposed lover. The man in question has claimed that Pierrette visited him on the 22nd December, bearing marks of strangulation and a black eye - injuries which he says she told him were the result of being attacked by Jacques. He further claimed that she told him at the time of her intention to leave Jacques for him immediately after Christmas.

Maroon Simca 1100 of the type owned by the Méchinauds

In the light of these claims, perception of the circumstances surrounding the family's disappearance began to shift away from an accident or an unlucky encounter on the road that night, towards theories of murder/suicide or, more charitably, a flight by the family to start a new life in some far-off town. But it is hard to see how these claims of imminent separation and violent rage tally with reports that the family had happily shopped together on the 23rd December. Also the Fontanillas reported that, if Jacques may have seemed a little more stressed than usual on the 24th the evening was otherwise relaxed and unremarkable. Neither did they mention that Pierrette appeared to bear any visible injury.

And that remains pretty much all that is known of events at the time in a case that is both unremarkable; thousands disappear every year with no trace, but at the same time unusual in that an entire family vanished together leaving not a single piece of evidence or suggestion as to what might have happened to them. Additionally, the few 'known' facts of the case are based almost entirely on the uncorroborated accounts of a few witnesses - the Fontanillas, Jacques' brother Jean-Paul and Pierrette's supposed lover Maurice Blanchon. 

Suicide? Murder? Escape to a new life? In part 2, a look at the events around the re-opening of the inquiry in 2011 and subsequent discoveries.