In 1999, an error in the procedure derailed the investigation into the disappearance of the Godard family. In the third episode of the documentary Doctor Godard – The Man Who Wanted to Quit Everything, broadcast this Sunday March 19 on TF1, the actors of the investigation return to this surreal episode.
There are those mysteries that remain in the memories, and the disappearance of the Godard family is one of them. On September 2, 1999, Doctor Yves Godard and his children, Camille, 6 years oldand Marius, 4, disappeared at sea after boarding a sailboat at the marina of Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine). The thesis of the shipwreck was first considered, but the discovery of blood belonging to Marie-France Godard, the wife of the missing doctor, at the family home, transformed the latter into the main suspect. At the end of 1999, a real manhunt was orchestrated in the Channel, but the investigators never found the trace of Godard and his children…
It must be said that the investigation experienced failures. In the third episode of the documentary Doctor Godard – The Man Who Wanted to Leave Everything, broadcast this Sunday, March 19 on TF1, the main protagonists of the case say they found themselves at the heart of a diplomatic incident that started from a tiny procedural defect. In October 1999, after following the indications of an initial letter claiming that Godard was on the Isle of Mann, England, with his children, the gendarmes of the Falaise police received a second missive from the crow. “Doctor Godard Yves is in the area of the Hebrides Islands, more precisely Lewis. Save Marius and Camille”, indicated the letter.
A surreal diplomatic incident
Without waiting, French investigators rushed to the Scottish island, where they discovered that a man matching Godard’s description had bought a round-trip ferry ticket to Ullapool on the main island. “He was leaving Lewis, but he had a return ticket, so he was scheduled to come back, explains Jean-Paul Aubrey, of the research section of Rennes. We were told ‘It’s okay, you’ll get it back from the boat’.” Unfortunately, the investigation fell through. “Another policeman from Edinburgh arrived explaining that we did not have all the authorizations, that it is not very legal, that we had to temper, Aubrey continues. They came to pick us up in the lodging where we were to take us back to a prison hotel 50 meters from the police station. We were no longer allowed to go out.”
It turned out that the investigating judge, Gerard Zaug, had failed to contact the Crown office, the Scottish Ministry of Justice responsible for all investigations in the country. “Constables arrived at Stornoway without consulting the Crown Office first, explains George Murray, police inspector on Lewis Island, who was collaborating with the French at the time. We asked them nicely but quite firmly not to do any more investigations at Stornoway.”
“It was a terrible moment”
A real fiasco ensued. Locked up in a hotel, the police were unable to pick up Godard when he got off the ferry, even though he could see the latter from the window of their hotel. “Our prison hotel was right in front of the ferry terminal. We saw the boat coming back from Ulapool. It must have been on it since it was the last boat coming in, remembers Jean-Paul Aubrey. We say to ourselves “But it’s not possible”. On the Isle of Mann, we arrive a little late, there he is present and we are blocked for a signature or whatever.” “It was a terrible moment because afterwards, we learned that Yves Godard was there, with the children, in the town”, continues Thierry Lezeau, director of the investigation at the time.
We do not know to this day if Yves Godard and his children were really on this famous ferry. Unfortunately, this missed opportunity is the last that we had the investigators. A few months later, the skull of little Camille was fished out by a trawler on the bay of Saint-Brieuc. Yves Godard’s tibia and femur were also destroyed six years later, at the bottom of the Helmets pit. The bodies of Marie-France Godard and little Marius have never been found.