Lina's disappearance: why was the main suspect free at the time of the incident ?

Lina's search in the Vosges is progressing with difficulty without the suspect's testimony. The driver of the stolen car in which the teenager's DNA was found had not been charged following the immobilization of the vehicle and killed himself before being questioned by the police.

THE ESSENTIAL

• After the disappearance of Lina, 15, in September 2023 in the Vosges, major operations to find the teenager's body are underway. With the support of a military unit and several specialists, the gendarmes comb a perimeter defined using the telephone data of the current main suspect.
• The investigation took a new turn after the identification of a man, a certain Samuel G., aged 43. He is believed to be the main suspect in the girl's abduction. He is the driver of the vehicle that has been wanted since the start of the investigation.
• Last June, he was arrested driving a stolen car during a traffic stop and then released before investigators could establish the link between the car and Lina's disappearance.
• Already known to the police for several crimes including two violent robberies and refusals to comply, he had been diagnosed with a “borderline” personality disorder by the psychiatric expert from the Besançon public prosecutor's office who had noted the “dangerousness” of the individual.
• While he was due to be heard at this subject on July 22, he killed himself on July 10 at his home in Besançon, without the police being able to hear him. Today, some people wonder why he was not arrested immediately.

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18:01 – The suspect had called the police a few days before ending his life

Already described as “unstable” by psychiatrists, the suspect is said to have made a worrying phone call to the police a few days before ending his life. “Come and get me”, he is said to have implored his interlocutor, reports L'Est Républicain.

17:35 – Why did the suspect commit suicide? ?

The main suspect in the case of Lina's disappearance, Samuel G., the driver of the gray car discovered by the police and in which Lina's DNA was found, committed suicide at the beginning of July just after his vehicle was seized, without even being questioned. Enough to fuel the hypothesis of his guilt, even if nothing indicates that he knew that the investigators had finally made the connection between the car and Lina's disappearance.

He was also due to appear on July 22, 2024 before the Besançon Criminal Court for acts of violent robbery, committed last August. Perhaps he wanted to escape his judgment ?

Arrested on June 17 in connection with the two robberies committed in 2023, Samuel G. admitted the facts to investigators. The day after his arrest, the Briançon prosecutor's office ruled on an appearance on July 22, to give the psychiatric expert time to carry out his assessment. While waiting for his appearance, the prosecutor's office placed him under judicial supervision, but the man gave himself up death 12 days before being heard by the courts.

16:49 – Lina vanished in a few minutes

Ten months after Lina's disappearance, investigators continue their research. One element quickly intrigued them. last fall: the time between the moment when the young woman was é seen for the last time and his disappearance. In fact, several motorists who had passed on this road had assured themselves that having seen the teenager walking towards the station between 11:15 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. One of them had even confided in having seen it on the way to his home, but not having seen her again a few minutes later when he returned. in the same place. Likewise, Lina had sent one last message à 11:20 a.m. à her boyfriend whom she was supposed to join à Strasbourg, while his telephone had suddenly stopped. to issue à 11:22 a.m.

In a document submitted by the psychiatric expert of the Besançon public prosecutor's office, Samuel G. was described as “extremely depressed”. According to BFMTV, the professional had diagnosed him with a “borderline” personality disorder, that is, on the verge of a truly established psychiatric illness, and noted the “dangerousness” of the one who would later become the main suspect in the case of Lina's disappearance.

16:04 – A month before his suicide, he had confessed to having “lost his mind”

Having passed through the hands of the psychiatric expert from the Besançon public prosecutor's office, Samuel G. had declared that he had “lost his mind” since 2023, the date on which he stopped working, and had committed two violent robberies, for which he was due to be tried this year. “I'm plummeting to the lowest point,” he had added to the expert who had noted heavy consumption of alcohol, cannabis and cocaine.

15:50 – He was free despite having been arrested driving a stolen car

Samuel G. was already known to the police when he was arrested driving a stolen car earlier this year. On that occasion he was questioned by the police but was ultimately released before being questioned again in June 2024. But at At that time, investigators from the Lina cell had not yet examined the car and therefore did not know that it contained the DNA of the teenager kidnapped in September 2023.

15:32 – Why the car is only reappearing now ?

Since the beginning of the investigations, investigators have been tracking this famous car that was seen on the CCTV when Lina disappeared, but they were unable to find it. They were only able to get their hands on it because the police seized it as part of a report of a stolen car. It was only after this that they realized that the car they were unable to find find was in a pound in Languedoc. According to La Dépêche, no information has been given as to why the delay between the seizure of the vehicle and its return to the investigators of the Lina cell was so long.

15:22 – The suspect's life before Lina's disappearance

Before being the main suspect in the case of Lina's disappearance, Samuel G. was a carpenter and then a carpentry teacher in a vocational and commercial high school, reports France Info. According to the media, the father of a separated family had joint custody of his children but moved out and stopped to work in 2023. The same year, he committed two violent robberies.

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14:26 – What is the preferred lead by investigators in the Lina case ?

What happened on September 23, 2023, the day Lina disappeared ? This is what investigators have been trying to understand for almost a year now. As reported by Le Parisien, one scenario seems to be more favored by the justice system and investigators: the one according to which a man, who did not know Lina, stopped on the side of the road to offer to take her to the station, or at least give her a bit of the way, while she was walking, before finally kidnapping and killing her in circumstances that have yet to be clarified.

13:55 – The suspect had already attempted suicide

The main suspect in this case, Samuel G., who ended his life on July 10 by hanging himself at his home in Besançon, had previously attempted suicide. several stays in a psychiatric hospital, report our colleagues from L'Est républicain, who also specify that he had also already tried to end his life. 

11:45 – The suspect left a few words before killing himself

The driver of the car in which investigators found Lina's DNA committed suicide on July 10, before being interviewed by the police. It was the firefighters who, alerted, found the 43-year-old father, lifeless in his apartment in Besançon. According to Centre Presse Aveyron, before committing the act, he left a note saying: ” I have lost my honor, my dignity, my humanity, I have to go. I don't know how to control myself, “it's going too fast”.

11:34 – The search perimeter is expanding

The gendarmes and soldiers are advancing in the Anould forest but they do not have precise indications. Based on telephone data, they have established a perimeter of 26 kilometers, which they have been combing since Wednesday. Yesterday they had to stop the searches at nightfall, and this morning they started again in earnest in a perimeter that was revised upwards by the authorities. A prefectural decree was issued and roadblocks block all access to the forest.

10:47 – The suspect: a man already convicted

&Following a refusal to undergo a customs check, while he was under the influence of drugs and driving a stolen car in Aude, Samuel G., the main suspect in Lina's disappearance, was arrested, placed in police custody and then in pre-trial detention. On January 22, he was sentenced to a fine of 1,500 euros and 15 months in prison with probation suspended for two years.

10:27 – Still no trace of the young girl but the suspect's profile is becoming clearer

After two days of no results, the search continues in the Vosges to find Lina. The young girl was allegedly abducted on the way between her home in La Plaine and the Saint-Blaise-la-Roche train station, three kilometers away. After several months of investigation, her DNA profile was found in a stolen car, but its driver has since committed suicide. Described as a “local thug”, this 43-year-old father was involved in a case of violent robbery and was due to appear in court on July 22. He also allegedly held a woman captive for several days in June 2024.

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Excavations began this Tuesday, July 30 in the Grand-Est region, to find the body of Lina, this young girl who disappeared in September 2023 in Bas-Rhin in Alsace, according to information from Le Parisien. Several investigators from the Gendarmerie Criminal Research Institute (IRCGN), as well as dog brigades and dogs specializing in the search for human bodies are there to help. stranded since this morning in the Bruche valley, the area in which the teenager mysteriously disappeared on September 23. An anthropologist and a georadar are also deployed on site.

These searches follow the announcement by the Strasbourg public prosecutor's office indicating the presence of Lina's “genetic profile” in a stolen car, discovered in the south of France a few weeks earlier. This blue car and its driver had been in the investigators' sights since the start of the investigations and the interviews of several witnesses, as well as the analysis of video surveillance and telephone images had allowed them to establish that the man was “not far from where Lina disappeared last September”, the prosecutor's office indicated.

The main suspect was suicide

The kidnapping theory, quickly favored by the justice system and the police, according to Le Parisien, describes this man 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 analyses of the car went in the direction of the police who suspected the criminal trail, an important step forward while the investigation has been stalling since the beginning.

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 behind the wheel when the car passed through the area where the teenager disappeared. It is a grey Renault Clio. According to several witnesses, the teenager had indeed gotten on board. Since the end of January, the gendarmes of the investigation unit had been interested in a man who was driving a grey Renault Clio. He had apparently approached young girls, in the weeks around Lina's disappearance. After the man's death, investigators were only able to look at his phone data and his car journeys. They still managed to establish a search perimeter, on which the searches are focused, this Tuesday, July 30.

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 find her boyfriend in Strasbourg. Not seeing her arrive, the young man alerted Lina's mother. Several witnesses including the mayor of the village 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 beginning of the investigation, suspicions focused on Lina's boyfriend, but the police quickly cleared him. Last March, three men were taken into custody at seen before being released due to lack of “incriminating evidence”. And in May, a new lead was being investigated after a local business owner said 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 on a permanent contract with the company for twelve years. The company manager added that his employee lived “very close” to Lina's.