Preserved during the investigation, DNA from semen traces found in the pants of the daughter, a 13-year-old teenager, allowed 28 years later to identify the father, who at the time had a solid alibi as the author of the crimes. …
The alibi presented by the father – a trip to Romania with his son during the crime – will have weaknesses, investigators concluded.
On January 7, 1993, in Sassenage, near Grenoble, the bodies of 43-year-old Michelle Chabert, wife of Marian Marinescu, and the daughter of the couple Christines, were found after several stabs in the neck. Each of them was in his own bedroom in a house on the outskirts.
For several months after the crimes were committed, the investigation did not find convincing leads, and the appeals filed against possible witnesses of the crime, including on the TV program of 1995, did not lead to any significant progress.
Since then, the police “have never stopped looking for the truth,” explained Colonel Lionel James, the head of the Grenoble paramilitary police (gendarmerie) investigation department, who had been in charge of the investigation from the outset, during the conversation. press conference.
In early 2021, after another re-reading of the archive by investigators, the laboratory of the Institute for Criminal Investigations of the National Paramilitary Police “found numerous traces of Marian Marinescu’s semen in the pants of her daughter Christina,” the prosecutor of Grenoble told the press. , Eric Weillant.
After 28 years and five different investigating judges, the investigation has not stopped, Vailant said.
“The evidence has been evaluated at least five times,” and with the advancement of laboratory methods, DNA can now be found “on much finer traces,” the prosecutor said.
On Monday, placed in police custody and confronted with “unambiguous” data, Marian Marinescu told investigators “that assuming it was him, he would not remember that he did the facts,” Valiant said.
The 72-year-old suspect was charged today with “the murder of Michele and the murder and rape of his daughter Christina” and placed in pre-trial arrest.
