The Agen public prosecutor’s office withdrew from the Marion case at the beginning of July, in favor of the national judicial center created at the beginning of this year and devoted to these unsolved cases. All the documents have been sent to Nanterre.
Disappeared at the exit of her Sembel school in Agen, on November 14, 1996, at midday, little Marion Wagon never reappeared. This mystery has persisted for almost 26 years now, even though the school is located barely 400 m from the family apartment.
A little over a quarter of a century of a long and meticulous investigation which has received unprecedented media coverage. An equally long period of doubts and questions from his parents. Last May, they came out of the silence in which they had taken refuge for fifteen years, “convinced that someone knows”. A way also, for them, to proclaim “their new hope” with the creation of a national judicial center dedicated to “cold cases” in Nanterre. In this context, the Marion affair took a new turn at the beginning of July.
The entire file “received by Nanterre”
The Agen public prosecutor’s office has indeed divested itself in favor of this new structure. Contacted this Friday, August 19, the Agen prosecution confirms this information.
This does not surprise the lawyer of the Wagon family, Me Georges Catala. “It was expected. He did it all the more since it’s been 25 years since he’s been divested,” he says. The lawyer at the Toulouse bar criticizes certain choices made in this case. “We put in place the thesis that it was a runaway. For my part, I saw the Agen prosecutor’s office intervene twice. Nothing was done. I never saw anything”, continues -he and continues: “It is with eagerness that the Agen prosecution has discharged this task”.
The entire file left the Agen court and was sent to Hauts-de-Seine. A voluminous consignment comprising all the procedures carried out over more than a quarter of a century. “Everything has been received by Nanterre”, also confirms the Agen prosecutor’s office.
To date, the parents of little Marion have not yet been contacted by the new unit in charge of the investigation. “It will come,” says Me Georges Catala, the Toulouse lawyer for the Wagon parents.
“We are leaving with a handicap in this case”
The tenor of the bar hopes that this new specialized pole set up by the will of the Keeper of the Seals, Éric Dupont-Moretti “will have the necessary means to move forward”. “The reforms are being made, the stewardship follows afterwards”, he notes, wishing to have “an examining magistrate sufficiently muscular to finally move forward”.
But Me Catala does not hide his bitterness. He expresses his anger on a specific subject: “We leave with a handicap that I have difficulty forgiving”, he notes, referring to the absence of the DNA of little Marion in the file of investigation. “We realized that the DNA no longer existed after having maintained the opposite”, he insists, “it shows the seriousness that there was”.
Further research has been initiated. The parents, nearly 25 years later, were asked by the courts to find their daughter’s belongings to attempt a search. In vain unfortunately.
Me Catala does not veil the face on the difficulties with which the specialized pole will be confronted. “Moving forward without little Marion’s DNA is going to be extremely complex.”
However, parents want to remain hopeful. “The truth is our goal today. A fight against oblivion”, they declared on W9 last May. “We still have hopes,” concludes their lawyer.
