The Méchinaud Case. Part 3: Theories and Rumours

In the first two parts I touched on some of the theories surrounding the disappearance of the Méchinaud family as they drove from Cognac to their home in the village of Boutiers-Saint-Trojan in the early hours of Christmas morning in 1972 and followed the events of the initial 1973 inquiry and the new searches in 2011. In this last part I will look more closely at some of the competing theories and the rumours which have surrounded the case in the past 46 years.


Accident

An obvious initial contender given the weather conditions on the night of the disappearance. A freezing fog blanketed the town of Cognac and would have been at its thickest as the family crossed the two bridges over the Charente. But, as a result Jacques would have been obliged to drive slowly on the homeward journey and, short of going off one of the bridges into the river (with consequent obvious damage to the parapet) it's unlikely that the car could have remained hidden for 46 years and following at least two intensive searches along the length of the route in 1973 and 2011.


Collective suicide (or murder-suicide)

In the wake of claims that Pierrette had a lover and based on Jacques' alleged comment in May 1972 that he would "make everyone disappear," this became the favoured hypothesis of the first inquiry. It was said that Jacques Méchinaud knew the various quarries and caves of the region well - not least the abandoned underground quarry workings at St-Même-les-Carrières, his wife's former home town. But opinions vary - some say that it would have been impossible to drive a small Simca 1100 into a quarry, others claim that had Jacques managed it, especially in the serpentine St-Même caverns, there would have been little chance of finding or recovering the vehicle or its occupants.

And that is assuming that all in the car went willingly to their deaths. The thick fog would have made for slow driving, giving Pierrette at least some chance to escape the vehicle if she realised she was being driven into danger. In respect of this, there were some suggestions that Jacques had deliberately delayed the family's departure from the Fontanillas' house and had spent an unusually long time warming up the car - possibly in the hope of encouraging his passengers to fall asleep quickly. To what extent this might be true is unknown - the Fontanillas are on record saying that the Méchinauds left at 1am, not an unusually late time following a midnight 'reveillon' meal, though several press reports state that the departure was as late as 2.30am

Perhaps worth noting that in all of the variations of the suicide and flight theories (below) it was generally assumed that the family never returned to their house in Boutiers after leaving the Fontanillas in Cognac, based on the discovery of food in the fridge and presents still wrapped under the Christmas tree. Denise Grall however, in addition to stating that she considered Jacques to have a jealous personality and claiming tensions between him and Pierrette's family, went as far as to suggest that the scene discovered by gendarmes when they entered the house may have been carefully staged at some point after the supposed disappearance.


Flight to a new life - Australia, Spain, the Vendée?

According to Ismaël Karroum writing in 2010 for the Charente Libre newspaper the Méchinaud bank account had been emptied of everything except enough to cover the rent on the house (for how long he doesn't say). Additionally Karroum cites relatives as saying that Jacques had close to 50,000 Francs, the proceeds of his cash-in-hand car repair work. None of this money has ever been traced. If the claim regarding the bank account is true (and it should be noted that Karroum appears to be alone in reporting this) then clearly there is a suggestion of premeditation and planning.

So did the whole family simply take off for a new life elsewhere, using the advantage of the Christmas break from school and work to get a head-start on anyone looking for them? Pierrette's alleged lover Maurice Blanchon variously suggested that they had fled to Australia or Chalon-sur-Saône. According to a relative of Pierrette, in the 1980s a baptism certificate was requested for one of the boys from an address in Pouzauges in the Vendée region - another area mentioned by Blanchon as a place visited by Jacques only days before the family's disappearance. 

Others suggested Spain and some even claimed that the family had not gone far at all; their car apparently being seen between Angoulême and Cognac in the year after the disappearance and Jacques' wallet found in the village square in Boutiers. Sufficient to say, none of this was ever confirmed and even if the bank account was emptied, it does not necessarily indicate that the whole family was party to any escape plan.


Crime (third party)

While the criminal theories in this case tend to centre on Jacques Méchinaud as a potential perpetrator, other possibilities have been considered in varying degrees. An unfortunate encounter on the road between Cognac and Boutiers? A settling of accounts, possibly in relation to his car repair work? Was he fixing up and/or 'ringing' stolen cars? No evidence was found, though such a possibility does bring the 'wrong' Simca 1100 found near the Pont de Basseau to mind.

In Boutiers Maurice Blanchon was questioned by the gendarmes. According to him "they questioned me, but they weren't too bothered. As they said to me at the time, if they suspected everyone who was in and out of the neighbours..." Certainly it seems that little effort was made to verify Blanchon's various claims about the family and events prior to their disappearance.

In April 2003, in the wake of a TV documentary on the case an anonymous letter writer contacted the then mayor of Boutiers, who had appeared in the film. In two letters, the author described a murder, stating "it happened at 3am ... it's time the little ones were laid to rest properly." The author wrote of an altercation and gave the names of those allegedly involved, though the details were hazy. But in addition he or she also named an address and a specific location within the property where the bodies of the family were hidden. This may have been the abandoned house and grounds on Rue de Port Boutiers searched intensively in 2011, though the basement of one other property is believed to have also been scanned with ground penetrating radar at around the same time, with no result reported at either location.


Resources

For those wanting to know more, a few of the resources used in compiling these blog posts:

From Philippe Dumas' Boutiers-St-Trojan blog, a fairly comprehensive compilation of press articles from 1972-2014:

http://philippe.dumas.pagesperso-orange.fr/actua2.htm

Ismaël Karroum's 2010 piece for Charente Libre, listing many of the additional claims and rumours detailed in part 3 in particular:

http://relaischux.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net/PagesCL/pdf/disparusboutiers.pdf

Jean Berthelot de la Glétais' 2017 investigation for 'Sang-Froid' magazine, including a rare interview with Maurice Blanchon:

https://jeanberthelot.com/2017/06/01/disparus-de-boutiers-le-deuil-impossible

Jacques Pradel's "L'Heure du Crime" on RTL radio:

https://www.rtl.fr/actu/debats-societe/l-affaire-des-disparus-de-boutiers-7782803802

https://www.rtl.fr/actu/debats-societe/les-disparus-de-boutiers-7789076944

A very atmospheric news report from April 1973, featuring scenes of Boutiers house and interviews with the Fontanillas and gendarmes in charge of the case at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=706hhM7PY7M

The route from the Fontanilla's house in Rue de la Plante to the Méchinaud house 14 Rue St Trojan, Boutiers:

As seen on Google Maps

And as ever a Google search will bring up plenty more articles:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Mechinaud+Boutiers+disparus+Noel&oq=Mechinaud+Boutiers+disparus+Noel

The Méchinaud Case. Part 2: A New Inquiry

Fast forward to 2011: Jean-Paul Méchinaud contacts the chief prosecutor in Angouleme to inform him of a problem. The family want to sell a piece of inherited land, but with Jacques still missing and never having been officially declared dead the sale cannot proceed. Jean-Paul is surprised by the response he receives - in addition to allowing the sale to proceed, prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet also proposes re-opening the inquiry into the 1972 disappearance, including new searches using the latest technologies available to the gendarmerie.

Search at 45 Rue de Port Boutiers in 2011

And so, in November 2011 the river beds and ponds were again swept, this time by sonar and underwater metal detectors. An abandoned property on the north bank of the Charente in Port Boutiers was also searched and ground penetrating radar used to scan for any sign of human remains - with the new searches coming only months after France was gripped by the Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès case, the possibility that Jacques had murdered his family before fleeing was prominent in the public imagination, though this location may also have been suggested by an anonymous letter sent to the mayor of Boutiers in 2003.

Abandoned and partially flooded underground quarry workings in the nearby town of St-Même-les-Carrières, where Pierrette Méchinaud grew up were also searched by divers, but to no avail. Some cars and large boats were recovered from the river - notably a local man was reunited with his stolen Porsche, but otherwise the searches new revealed nothing. 

Sonar scan of the Charente in 2011

Inevitably, as in 1973 after some time search activity decreased. But the 2011 operation was not entirely without success, albeit indirectly; as a result of renewed media interest in the case a new witness appeared. Denise Grall, a resident of La Couronne near Angoulême contacted Jean-Paul Méchinaud offering to pass on photos of Jacques and Pierrette taken when they holidayed together at a leisure resort in Brillac, near Confolens. After first meeting there in 1966 as a result of their children playing together, the couples regularly met up again in the years up to 1972. 

According to Denise, the last contact she had with Jacques and Pierrette was a card from them shortly before Christmas 1972, inviting her and her husband to visit Boutiers to swap holiday photos. But in the 39 years since their disappearance she had not come forward nor, surprisingly, had she apparently been sought out by the inquiry. And it is through Denise Grall that we come to a curious development which at the time appeared to promise a breakthrough.

Pierrette Méchinaud, Denise Grall and Jacques Méchinaud

After the 2011 searches were concluded, there continued to be occasional flurries of activity relating to chance discoveries: in 2012 human bones of what appeared to be a man and a child were found in woods 20km north of Boutiers by a mushroom hunter - but DNA tests showed no match to Jacques Mechinaud's siblings. In 2014 several skeletons were unearthed in a garden in Cognac; tests showed them to date from at least ninety years earlier.

But in October 2013 a maroon Simca 1100 matching that in which the Méchinauds disappeared was pulled out of the Charente near the Pont de Basseau to the west of Angoulême - 50km from the Méchinaud house in Boutiers, but less than 2km from where the Grall family were living in Saint Michel in 1972. Had Jacques Méchinaud, or perhaps the whole family been sheltered by the Gralls, dumping the car in the river before fleeing onward? Such questions were short-lived - when the registration and chassis number of the recovered Simca were checked, they were found not to match the Méchinauds' car. Another dead end.

Pont de Basseau, Angoulême

And this remains the situation after nearly 46 years. Officially the inquiry remains open under the name 'Operation Bruneri' (a contraction of the names of the two boys) and an email address is maintained in the hope that members of the public might still provide some new information. It is said that debate is still ongoing locally as to whether the family died on the night they went missing or fled to a new life abroad, but there is also a sense that possible indicators either way were not followed up by the initial inquiry: Denise Grall was not sought out; Maurice Blanchon claimed that Jacques was obsessed with Australia and pestered a colleague who had lived there with questions about the country - the colleague was never identified. Similarly, Blanchon claimed that Jacques made a trip to visit a friend in the Vendée on 18th December 1972, days before the family's disappearance. Again it appears that this was not followed up.

And so the mystery remains intact. At this stage it would seem that any breakthrough is most likely to come through a new chance discovery: human remains or the maroon Simca 1100 (reg 544 JV 16) found rusting under a dustsheet in a barn. But that said, as has been seen already in this case and others, it's not entirely unknown for new witnesses to come forward after decades of silence. If by any chance you are that witness, you can still contact the inquiry by email at bta.cognac@gendarmerie.interieur.gouv.fr including the term "Bruneri 47" in the subject line.

In part 3, a closer look at some of the theories and the rumours which surround the case.

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.