Marion’s face on milk cartons, everywhere in France. The memory is still vivid. It was at the time a general mobilization to find the trace of the 10-year-old child, who disappeared in Agen, in Lot-et-Garonne. Today, his parents are coming out of the silence. The lawyer Georges Catala, always at their side, also wants to know. He castigates the mistakes of the judicial inquiry. An exceptional documentary to discover this Thursday at 10:45 p.m. on France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
The Interceltic Festival of Lorient 2022
They didn’t want to talk for years. The parents of Marion Wagon come out of their silence, 25 years after the disappearance of their child. A mystery.
It was November 14, 1996 in Agen. Marion leaves school to go to lunch with the family. She never arrived at the family home. Michel Wagon and Françoise his wife stay with their question “What could have happened? he testifies with a sad look.
It’s terrible, it’s like a cancer that slowly matures, progresses. What we hope is to leave knowing.
Michel Wagon, father of Marion Wagon who disappeared in 1996Documentary “Marion and me”
In the documentary “Marion et Moi”, the lawyer Georges Catala takes us on the trail of a disappearance that moved the whole of France. It’s the loyal lawyer, tenor of the Toulouse bar, who has always accompanied the Wagon family since the first days.
Twenty-five years later, Master Catala continues to be haunted by this affair.
Some cases even shake a man of experience like me. What happened to Marion? His familiar face has haunted me for 25 years. I am a fighter, I will do everything to know before my last breath.
Maître Georges Catala – lawyer for the parents of Marion WagonSource: Documentary “Marion and Me”
Master Catala still points out the errors of the investigation today. He shares the parents’ bitterness.
Above all, Michel Wagon expresses this first error of justice: “Me, what I have had in my throat from the start, it is especially the first Prosecutor who because Marion is scolded the day before, she does not come home at noon, he decides not to put all the means into square. ”
“He considers it to be the runaway.” translates Georges Catala.
For me, the first responsible is him.
Michel Wagon – father of Marion Wagon
Documentary “Marion and me”
“It’s not human justice.” “Fortunately there is our pillar” confides Michel Wagon. The pillar is their lawyer.
The police officer in charge of the investigation still lives today with the unsolved disappearance of Marion in mind. He worked fourteen months on the case. The dates are still completely precise in his memory. “I can’t wait to find out though.” he repeats.
“I would still like, before I disappear, to know what happened anyway, that’s the great mystery of my life, and of the lives of many people”.
It’s an injury.
Roland Courdesses – police officer in charge of the investigation for 14 monthsDocumentary “Marion and me”
A child’s face on cartons of milk. This is also what this documentary “Marion and I” reminds us of. The mobilization of many in the country to help find Marion, or at least collect clues, testimonies around her disappearance.
An association “The seagull” is created and is inspired by this idea tested in the United States to find missing children: use milk cartons as a support to communicate about the disappearance. Ten million bricks of milk will thus be printed, heading for the supermarkets, in search of a testimony that can give clues to help the investigation progress. A first in France.
A symbol also of prevention for children around the breakfast tables, such is also the will of Annie Gourgues, president of the association “La mouette”, mobilized very quickly with Marion’s parents. She recalls that this terrible disappearance, the wave of emotion provoked, changed many things. Annie Gourgues repeated it to Michel Wagon. “The disappearance of your daughter, nothing will be like before for other children.”
During the summer of 2022, a new legal episode emerged. The very voluminous legal file left the Agen prosecutor’s office, heading for the “cold cases” judicial center based in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), created on 1er last March. Thousands of documents, legal acts have joined this specialized service which reopens the unresolved, old and complex cases. Investigators may also examine whether there is reason to make a connection between several cases.
But the lawyer for the Georges Catala family points out a major error which will not facilitate the work: “25 years to realize that they do not even have Marion’s DNA”.
The unpublished documentary “Marion et moi” gives rise to a special evening as part of the Débadoc magazine. Every year in France, more than 40,000 people disappeared (source: Ministry of the Interior). Over 30,000shave found but there are still about 10,000 unsolved disappearances, of which almost a tenth (about 800 concern minors). At the end of its broadcast, a debate will follow with guests on set.
Guests Debadoc Marion and me
- Georges Catala, lawyer for Marion Wagon’s family
- Guillaume Maury, co-director of “Marion and me”
- Annie Gourgues, president of the association La Mouette
- Jean-Pierre Bouchard, criminological psychologist
- Editor-in-chief, publication director La République des Pyrénées/L’Eclair (Skype)
- Commissioner Pierre Pacaud, spokesman for the national scientific police service (duplex from Lyon)
