Like the shock that Lina’s fate caused in the region, the Latest news from Alsacethe regional newspaper that closely followed the adventures of this long investigation “outside the norm”published on its front page on Thursday morning, October 17, a close-up photograph of the teenager’s smiling face under a more imposing title than usual: “Lina, the terrible ending”.
The day before, the press release from the Strasbourg prosecutor had brought a tragic end to more than a year of anguish and wait by announcing the discovery of the body of the 15-year-old teenager, partially submerged in a watercourse, in a wooded and isolated area. Nièvre area. Emergency DNA analyzes confirmed that it was indeed the young woman.
Disappeared on September 23, 2023, a Saturday morning, along the path of a few kilometers that she usually traveled between her home in Plaine (Bas-Rhin) and the Saint-Blaise-la-Roche station, the teenager remained impossible to find despite numerous. field investigations: hunts with the participation of volunteers, studies of neighboring lakes and ponds, dog tracking, etc.
The investigation, entrusted to two investigating judges from the Strasbourg prosecutor’s office, seemed to stall for months. If each search in the different houses in the quiet towns of the Bruche valley was closely followed by the media, no testimony or any other element made it possible to trace the few minutes in which Lina seemed to have escaped between her boyfriend’s last call. . and stop dialing your phone along the D350.
During these months of fruitless investigation, Lina’s mother, Fanny Groll, had organized with her lawyer several press conferences as well as calls to television programs to try to obtain information and report the attacks and harassment of which she or her daughter were victims. victims on social networks. networks.
The suspect commits suicide
It was in the summer when the investigation took a turn with the identification of a suspect. Surveillance cameras had captured images of hundreds of vehicles. Among them, a Ford Puma stolen by Samuel Gonin, 43, and found in the south of France. When the search for the teenager resumed on July 30, following the traces of the vehicle’s reconstructed route, the man was dead. He committed suicide at the beginning of the month when he was going to be tried a few days later for the violent theft of a 90-year-old woman’s purse. At his home in Besançon, where her body was found, he left a note that did not mention Lina but said: “I lost my honor, my dignity, my humanity. I have to go. I don’t know how to control myself. » According to the details then reconstructed by the local press, the separated man and father of two children lived an erratic and violent path in recent times, and until his death.
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