Disappearance of Marion Wagon in Agen: witness appeal launched 30 years on
The cold case unit in Nanterre has launched a witness appeal in the Marion Wagon case, who disappeared in Agen in 1996. A suspect in his sixties is being sought.
Marion Wagon case: man spotted on day of disappearance sought in Agen
Thirty years after the disappearance of Marion Wagon, aged 10, the cold case unit in Nanterre has launched a witness appeal, according to leparisien.fr. The girl disappeared on 14 November 1996, just 400 metres from her home in Agen.
Gendarmes from the investigative section in Bordeaux and the Diane cell — the division for unsolved cases — have taken up, by way of a rogatoire commission, all the original witness statements collected at the time. It is one of these statements that is attracting the attention of investigators today.
Precise portrait drawn thirty years later
A young girl, aged 13 at the time of the events, had been interviewed as early as 1996. She had just left secondary school when a man began following her through the streets of Agen. She had mentioned this episode to the gendarmes without, however, describing the individual.
Re-interviewed a month ago, she this time provided a precise description: medium height, dark complexion, between 30 and 35 years old at the time, brown eyes, thick brown hair, slight build, wearing a twisted blue jumper. She described behaviour that she considered suspicious.
To escape him, the young witness took refuge in a building at 2 bis rue de Lisbonne. This building is situated on the route that little Marion took to get to school. It also houses a technical storage room where tracking dogs had at the time detected an olfactory trace of the missing girl.
Marion Wagon's DNA finally reconstructed
Alongside this witness appeal, the investigation had already made a decisive breakthrough thanks to genetics. Marion's parents had handed over to investigators several items that belonged to her: hair bands, dolls, a hairbrush and a poetry notebook. Carefully preserved, these items were sent to the Bordeaux laboratory Doutremepuich.
The girl's DNA, previously unusable due to contamination, was successfully extracted from a section of her poetry notebook. The results were submitted to investigating judge Sabine Kheris. Justice has thus been in possession, for the past year, of a complete genetic profile — a first since Marion's disappearance in 1996.
This profile can now be compared with DNA traces found at potential crime scenes, or with remains, in order to formally identify the girl. The investigation continues under the direction of judge Kheris.
Source: Google News LU FR