In the fall of 1999, while the gendarmes were trying to locate Doctor Yves Godard and his children, a sinister anonymous letter was sent to the investigators.
It is one of the most mysterious cases of the end of the 20e century. On September 2, 1999, Doctor Yves Godard and his children, Camille, 6, and Marius, 4, disappeared at sea after boarding a sailboat at the marina of Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine). A few days later, blood belonging to the mother of the family, Marie-France Godard, was discovered in her husband’s combi and the family home. Suspecting Yves Godard of having attacked his wife, the investigators then embarked on a real manhunt across the English Channel and to the south of the Scottish Sea…
Exhausting, this hunt was notably marked by the intervention of a crow. Through several letters sent to the Falaise gendarmerie, this mysterious letter writer guided the investigators on several tracks. He also warned the investigators, in particular in a letter dated October 1999, of the great danger that the Godard children were in. “Doctor Godard Yves is in the area of the Hebrides Islands, more precisely Lewis. Save Marius and Camille”read the letter.
“It really is a cry for help”
In the third episode of the documentary Doctor Godard – The Man Who Wanted to Leave Everythingbroadcast this Sunday, March 19 on TF1, Thierry Lezeau, director of investigation, says he was particularly moved by this sinister letter. “There, on the other hand, it’s ‘Save Camille and Marius’, it’s really a cry for help. ‘Save the children’, what, confides the latter. It can be someone close, someone who knows them, someone who has seen them and who catches our attention… It’s like a cry for help.“
Unfortunately, the indications of the crow never allowed the investigators to find the trace of Yves Godard and his children, and the affair took a dramatic turn a few months later. On June 6, 2000, the skull of little Camille Godard has been fished out by a trawler in the bay of Saint-Brieuc. Yves Godard’s tibia and femur were also destroyed six years later, at the bottom of the Helmets pit. It is still unknown today what really happened to them.