Twist in the case of little Mathis missing since 2011: his father; Sylvain Jouanneau, sentenced in 2015 to twenty years in prison for kidnapping and kidnapping, was indicted for murder, in particular due to the discovery of the boy’s DNA in his car. “Mathis’s father was indicted for the murder of his son on April 19, 2024,” a judicial source told Agence France-Presse (AFP), confirming information from France 3 Normandie.

This former divorced executive turned mason had never brought Mathis back to his mother on September 4, 2011, in Caen, as he should have done under the terms of his weekend care. He had claimed during his trial to have entrusted him to third parties abroad after spending “a month” with him, without ever saying to whom he had handed his child over, wishing to “protect” them.

“In 2015, at the assizes, he claimed that when he turned 18, so three years ago, Mathis would have reappeared and said that he was doing well, that his father had made a good decision… But we don’t never heard from him,” Me Aline Lebret, lawyer for the young boy’s mother, told AFP.

Second element explaining the indictment for murder, according to the lawyer, the discovery of “the presence of Mathis’ DNA on the trunk mat” in the accused’s 206 found in 2011 in Lahonce in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques . “I have always refused to allow this case to end [in 2015 after the trial at the assizes] and I have, from 2016, made requests for significant investigative acts which were carried out. The DNA analyzes arrived a year and a half ago, and then by the time we compared them to the IRCGN [Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie]…” she added, saying she had not “no doubt” about the guilt of Sylvain Jouanneau. Contacted by AFP, his lawyer, Mr. Félix Gluckstein, did not immediately wish to comment.

An investigation into homicide, separate from the kidnapping and kidnapping case, was opened in parallel to shed light on the disappearance of the minor and so that the investigation could continue after the judgment at the assizes.

“Problems of inconsistency”

“There are issues of inconsistency, the fact that it was the last to have seen him alive, the fact that several people saw him alone after having kidnapped him or even that we found the The child’s DNA on the trunk floor mat of the car he used. This suggests that a body was lying in it,” said this source, adding that this DNA analysis “had not been carried out” before.

On Tuesday, the investigating chamber of the Caen Court of Appeal, seized by the accused, who contested his pre-trial detention, confirmed his placement in detention in this aspect of the case, according to the same source.

In 2015, the police unsuccessfully launched a call for witnesses with a portrait of the aged child. Mathis’ mother, Nathalie Barré, had written a book He took my son from me.