French judicial authorities are preparing to revisit the unexplained disappearance of two young Belgian women in 1984.
A source told Le Soir that now a specialist French judicial unit, created in 2022 and dedicated to unresolved serial crimes and cold cases, has taken a fresh look at the file.
Disappearance in France
On 22 August 1984, Françoise Bruyère and Marie-Agnès Cordonnier from Liège went hitchhiking between Mâcon in the French region of Burgundy and Aix-les-Bains in Savoie.
That day, friends dropped off the 22-year old cousins so they could continue their journey towards Aix-les-Bains. A photograph taken shortly before shows the two young women smiling as they write their destination on a piece of cardboard.
It would be the last time their friends saw Marie-Agnès, a law student, and Françoise, a newly qualified physiotherapist. They were last seen alive the following day, but their bodies were never found.
The last photograph of Marie-Agnès Cordonnier and Françoise Bruyère was taken in Mâcon on the Esplanade Lamartine. Credit : JOURNAL SAONE ET LOIRE (JSL)
The investigation was revived in 1993 by a new examining magistrate who went on national television and appealed for witnesses.
Following the appeal, new testimony established that the cousins camped near Mâcon on 22 August before being driven the next day by two motorists to Savoie and then Chambéry, where they contacted a third man, later identified as Serge Coquerelle.
Coquerelle is said to have had a history of committing violent offences. On the evening of 23 August 1984, he reportedly arrived at a bar-hotel in Aix-les-Bains, where he lived, with the two missing Belgians.
At 19.30, he left the premises with the two young women and another man. They were never seen again.
When asked the next day whether he had found them somewhere to stay, witnesses told investigators that Coquerelle replied: "No, and it didn't go well."
Arrested and charged – then 'inexplicably released'
In May 1996, Coquerelle was arrested and charged, and investigators believed the case was close to resolution.
As detailed by Le Soir, police discovered that he had borrowed a Jeep on the night the women disappeared. The vehicle was later found to have been damaged in an accident and cleaned with acid.
Investigators were working on two main hypotheses: a fatal accident followed by a cover-up, or a sexual assault that escalated into double murder.
However, Coquerelle was unexpectedly released after just 10 days in custody. The investigation effectively stopped, the examining judge soon left his post, and his successor issued a dismissal of the case.
Jean-Yves Michellier, the police officer who led the 1996 inquiry, told Le Soir that the decision to release the suspect was "technically inexplicable".
As Le Soir reports, investigators later learned that Coquerelle had been provided with legal assistance by a prominent Paris lawyer, allegedly through the intervention of his aunt, the well-known French singer Isabelle Aubret.
Contacted by Le Soir, Aubret confirmed that she had helped find a lawyer for her nephew but said she remembered the matter only as a fight between young people and had no recollection of the disappearance of the two young Belgians. Coquerelle died in 2020 without ever being convicted in the case.
"We worked for months and were convinced we had solved it," Michellier told Le Soir. "We wanted justice for the families. This case deeply affected us."
To him, the case remains unresolved, and as French authorities consider reopening the investigation, the families of the two young women may finally see long-awaited answers emerge.
