Lina's disappearance: search resumes, new lead explored

After initial unsuccessful searches in Haute-Saône to find the body of Lina, who disappeared After almost a year, the search resumed on Tuesday, August 6.

Searches resumed in an attempt to find young Lina on Tuesday, August 6, in the Grand-Est region, according to information from Est républicain confirmed by BFMTV. Similar searches had been carried out last week, for four days, but had remained unsuccessful. These new investigations are taking place in Haute-Saône, north of Vesoul, in the Saulx forest. The system deployed remains the same: investigators from the Criminal Research Institute of the Gendarmerie (IRCGN), as well as canine brigades and dogs specialized in searching for human bodies. Nearly 90 gendarmes are also on site to limit access to the forest.

Last week, searches were carried out in the communal forest of Anoudl, about a hundred kilometers from the new search area. It was the geolocation history of the car in which traces of Lina's DNA were found that led investigators to continue the searches in this area.

This car and its driver were in the investigators' sights since the start of the investigations and the hearings of several witnesses. Analysis of video surveillance and telephone footage had established that the man was “not far from where Lina disappeared last September”, the Strasbourg prosecutor's office said.

The main suspect committed suicide

The kidnapping theory, quickly favored by the justice system and the police, according to Le Parisien, describes the driver, Samuel G., as a “local thug” who allegedly kidnapped Lina when he came across her on his way, without knowing her. This main suspect then allegedly killed the teenager. And the car's analysis went in the direction of the police who suspected the criminal theory, an important step forward as the investigation has been stalling since the beginning.

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However, investigators were unable to hear the driver who committed suicide shortly after the vehicle was seized, fueling suspicions about his guilt. He had not been heard by the police even though he had been identified as the individual driving when the car passed through the area where the teenager disappeared. Since the end of January, the gendarmes of the investigation unit had been interested in a man who was driving around the town where Lina lived. He had allegedly approached young girls in the weeks around her disappearance. After the man's death, investigators were only able to look at his telephone data and his car journeys. They still managed to &establish a search perimeter, which they combed for four days.

At the same time as these searches were taking place, the suspect's profile was able to be refined. Samuel Gonin was a 43-year-old father, he taught cabinetmaking in a vocational high school before leaving his job in 2023. The same year, he committed two violent robberies for which he would have had to appear in July 2024. On June 12, 2024, he was arrested once again for a case of kidnapping before being cleared of any wrongdoing. Before the appearance scheduled for July 22, 2024, he had been diagnosed with a “borderline” personality disorder. by a psychiatric expert who also noted her “dangerousness”, as well as severe depressive symptoms.

An investigation that has been floundering for several months

As a reminder, Lina disappeared on September 23, 2023, late in the morning after leaving her home in Plaine, to take a train, at Saint-Blaise-la-Roche station and meet her boyfriend in Strasbourg. Not seeing her arrive, the young man alerted Lina's mother. Several witnesses, including the village mayor, said they saw the young woman heading towards the station between 11:15 and 11:30. And the investigation revealed that her phone had stopped transmitting at 11:22.

At the start of the investigation, suspicions focused on Lina's boyfriend, but the police quickly cleared him. Last March, three men were taken into custody before being released due to lack of “incriminating evidence”. And in May, a new lead was being investigated after a local business manager explained that one of his employees had disappeared in September, around the same time as Lina. The man in question had vanished overnight, even though he had been working for the company on a permanent contract for twelve years. The company manager had added that his employee lived “very close” to Lina's house.