Monday 10 January 2011

Eight years after Estelle's disappearance, her father recounts his struggle

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Estelle Mouzin: left at age 9 when she disappeared and right in an age-advanced image, released in January 2010

MEAUX - Eight years after Estelle Mouzin's disappearance in Germantes in Seine-et-Marne, her father, Eric Mouzin, launches an "appeal to the abductors," in a book to appear on Wednesday (January 5th) with the hope "that the investigation is successful," at last.

"Retrouver Estelle," starts with this sentence: "I am not the one who abducted Estelle." Eric Mouzin explains wanting to, "clear up that phase when the investigators were suspicious," and "the idiotic comments that followed the distribution of the E-Fit sketch," which resembled him.

The little girl disappeared on the way home from school. She was nine years old. "Very soon, Estelle will have been missing for longer than she was alive," her father states bitterly in an interview with AFP.

"With this book, I want to make people aware of the difficulties faced by families of missing children," so that "the lessons learned may be useful to the greatest number of people," explains Eric Mouzin.

With this book, Eric Mouzin considers "having come to the final stage," "because we are certainly reaching the stage where we will know if the investigation is going to succeed or not," he continues.

This 54 year old family man, who says, "he has struggled for 8 years for the search for the truth to continue," also hopes that, "this investigation serves to improve the strategies," of the search.

"It's good that the Abduction Alert exists but it needs to be improved," and, "I call for the creation of a plan that is better known to the general public than that which currently exists," states Mr Mouzin.

At the end of the book "as an appendix," Eric Mouzin launches an "appeal to the abductor." "I am trying to use all means for the investigation to succeed," and, "if this books brings us leads, then the objective will be doubly accomplished," assures Mr Mouzin.

Last May, Estelle's family's lawyer asked the police to have three samples analysed, pieces of white laces and black gloves, provided by the Belgian authorities after the arrest of Michel Fourniret, who was sentenced to life in prison in May 2008 for the murders of seven young girls between 1987 and 2001.

On the day of her disappearance, on January 9th 2003, Estelle Mouzin was wearing white boots with long white laces, and black gloves were mentioned in the missing poster for the little girl. Interrogated after his arrest in June 2003, following an attempted abduction, Michel Fourniret had insisted that he was in Belgium on the day of Estelle's disappearance.

"For the moment, we don't have a timetable for the elements that have been requested," "We can't go on wasting time like this because every month that passes complicates the usefulness of the elements that could be examined in more detail," Mr Mouzin complains. At the same time, he explains that he doesn't want to be "preaching," and he's "not in the business of settling a score," with this book.

In January 2010, the police had launched a new appeal for witnesses attached to a photo of the little girl age-advanced as a teenager. That did not result in any useful leads.

As every year, in memory of the missing child, a public meeting , organised by L'Association Estelle, followed by a march will take place on Saturday (8th January) in Germantes (Seine-et-Marne), starting at 2pm in Marcel-Proust Place.

Google News item (AFP)




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