But what has become of Gérald Thomassin? The hope of French cinema, which had started its career in The Little Criminal, signed Jacques Doillon (film for which he had won the César award for best male hope in 1991), has disappeared since the summer of 2019. The story begins six years earlier, in June 2013, when the actor was arrested and put in exam for "Theft with a weapon and murder of a person charged with a public service mission." Gérald Thomassin was then accused of the murder of Catherine Burgod, 41 years old, mother of two children and five and a half months pregnant, municipal employee of Montréal-la-Cluse, in Ain. A crime committed five years earlier. 28 knives were stabbed to Catherine Burgod in the post office where she worked. The individual then robbed the office before fleeing. But is Gérald Thomassin really the culprit? In any case, he always claimed his innocence. On July 13, 2013, he was arrested at his home. In June 2016, Gérald Thomassin, who had not yet been tried, was released: it was impossible to keep a person in pre-trial detention for more than three years. Other individuals are suspected. On August 29, 2019, the investigating judge attempted to organize a confrontation between the three accused in the Burgod case. A confrontation which Gérald Thomassin will never happen. However, his brother Jérôme Thomassin will assert with BFMTV that the actor was happy to come and prove his innocence. In October 2019, an investigation for “abduction” is opened by the prosecutor of La Rochelle. His track is lost after an SNCF check on a train connecting Rochefort to Nantes.
Gérald Thomassin has been dismissed but cannot be found
Almost a year later, the relatives of Gérald Thomassin, now 45, remain without news of the actor. French justice has finally dismissed Gérald Thomassin. A dismissal pronounced Friday, June 26 by the investigative chamber of the Lyon Court of Appeal, while another suspect was referred to the Assize Court, as specified Progress. "Speaking in chambers, the judges of the second degree confirmed the order made by two magistrates of Lyon, January 31, 2020", relate our colleagues. “They then decided to return to the Rhône Assize Court Mamadou Diallo, 19 years old at the time of the events (…) His DNA had been discovered in two places at the crime scene and he had been arrested in 2018. Since then, he has denied the facts, explaining that he only discovered the body and grabbed a bundle of tickets, and fled without warning the emergency services for fear of being accused of murder." The investigating chamber also confirmed the dismissal against the other accused, Anthony V. “Gérald Thomassin, has long been the main suspect in the murder”, adds the newspaper. "No material element incriminated him, but the attitude and the personality of this marginal, drug addict and former actor of cinema, certain remarks and testimonies, long constituted a beam of presumptions which had led to his imprisonment."
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