“Four decades before removing a trace (DNA), that may seem like a lot. But that’s not always enough, ”says Michel Faury.
The boss of the criminal brigade, Michel Faury, pleads to keep the unknown DNA fingerprints longer in the files, until the date of prescription of the crimes, in an interview with the JDD. For the most serious crimes, fingerprints are kept for 25 years in the Automated Fingerprint File (Faed) and 40 years in the National Automated DNA File (Fnaeg).
“Four decades before removing a trace, that may sound like a lot. But that’s not always enough. Hence our proposal to fix the withdrawal of all traces, in an unresolved case, on the prescription date, “said Michel Faury, adding that” in this way, the Fnaeg would be consistent with the prescription rules of the ‘police investigation “. A proposal that appears in an administrative report, according to the weekly.
Mysterious crimes
According to him, “this reform would be useful not for the mass of cases, but for the small number of mysterious crimes on which we have no elements of investigation”, that is to say about thirty crimes. “In general, there remain one to two cases per year, cold cases, which join the sixty cases handled in particular by the Criminal and Behavioral Analysis Unit of Complex Cases (UAC3)”, he said. for follow-up.
To support his argument, the boss of the criminal brigade takes the example of François Vérove, a former police officer and gendarme, identified as the “Hail”, a killer and serial rapist wanted since the 1980s and suspected of five crimes committed between 1986 and 1994. “The DNA trace found at crime scenes in 1986 was not integrated into the Fnaeg until 2000, two years after the creation of this file. It could not therefore be deleted before 2040, which gave us room. But if the file had existed since 1986 and if it had been integrated immediately, as is the case today, the deadline would have been 2026 ”, commented the head of the criminal brigade.