Killing of Grégory Villemin

On 16 October 1984, an anonymous caller telephoned the home of the Villemin family in Lépanges-sur-Vologne, France, and told them that Grégory Villemin, aged four, had been taken. Grégory had been playing unsupervised in front of the family's house. A search was launched, and the boy's body was found bound and gagged in the Vologne River approximately 7 km (4.3 mi) away, where he had apparently been drowned. The autopsy, however, suggested the drowning had actually occurred in a different body of water, complicating the investigation from the outset.

The case, which has continued to receive extensive national media attention in France, took a series of dramatic turns. An anonymous note suggesting that its writer had killed the boy led investigators to arrest Bernard Laroche, a cousin of the Villemin family. Laroche was suspected of having written a long string of threatening anonymous letters to members of the family, who were described as socially and economically prominent in that area of the Vosges region.

Several months after Laroche's arrest, Grégory's father, Jean-Marie Villemin, shot and killed Laroche. Jean-Marie Villemin would go on to serve several years in prison as a result of that killing. Subsequently, handwriting experts linked Grégory's mother, Christine Villemin, to the threatening notes, and she was charged with the murder of her son. After seven years and two trials, she was acquitted.

The case remained active in the decades that followed. Efforts to recover DNA evidence from the principal physical evidence in the early 21st century failed to yield conclusive results. In 2017, three of Grégory's other relatives were charged in connection with the case, although police stated they did not yet know who actually killed him. The case remains unsolved as to the identity of Grégory's killer.