Friday July 29, 2022, four years to the day after the disappearance of the Poitevine Tiphaine Vron during a trip to Japan, the family is launching a petition and wants to return there to conduct its own investigation.
Ten thousand kilometers separate the towns of Poitiers et Nikko (Japan). These two points on the terrestrial globe have had a common destiny for four years: the unexplained disappearance of the Poitevine Tiphaine VronJuly 29, 2018.
Tiphaine’s brother and sister want to return to Japan in October
The 36-year-old school assistant was starting a three-week tourist trip to Japan. Two days after her arrival, she disappeared. The enigma of his disappearance remains complete for his relatives, who moved heaven and earth. What do we know? What will happen in the coming months?
The accidental trail map
The trail of an accidental death, long defended by Japanese investigators, has been broken by several research campaigns led by the family on site. No personal belongings from Poitevine were found in the tourist sites and paths that Tiphaine Vron is likely to have taken. As for the fall in the Daiya river, which crosses Nikko, several tens of kilometers of banks were excavated. Without result. The excuse of a typhoon, which caused the water level to rise considerably, was also dismissed by a hydrologist’s report last summer.
The preferred criminal track
Faced with the absence of results concerning the accidental lead, the family was logically expecting advances on the criminal trail. Several elements lean in this favour: an inconsistency in the testimony of the hotelier, the sudden cut off of the Poitevine mobile phone and the presence of biological projections (blood?) on a wall of the room occupied by Tiphaine Vron in the Turtle Inn Nikko hotel. These traces had been revealed by the Japanese police, in the presence of Tiphaine’s brother, Damien Vron. But no action had been taken.
#japanlovers #travelers in #Japan if you were in #Nikko on July 29, could you please check your #pics of that day ? Tiphaine is #missingMaybe her or a piece of her t-shirt ?? anything could appear on one of it #PleaseRT ? #MissingPersonAlert @ambafrancejp pic.twitter.com/mOH2SseeWJ
— Missing Tiphaine Vron (@MissingTiphaine) September 9, 2018
The vapor syndrome
Why ? In Japan, unlike France, where a judicial inquiry has been opened into “kidnapping and forcible confinement”, the police do not investigate criminal acts if they are not proven. It is a judicial and cultural specificity of the Land of the Rising Sun where the syndrome des vapors (adults disappearing without a trace) is allowed. Several elements remain troubling, despite everything: a false guide hovering around the temples and the dismembered bodies (sometimes of women) regularly found in the tourist region of Nikko.
What’s stuck?
The distance between France and Japan does not help. Requests sent by French justice take months to come back to France, after long translations. There is also the diplomatic and cultural divide over the difference in approach of law enforcement to the search for a missing person. What is “logical” here is not there. Example: the work on telephony and demarcation, systematic in France even when nothing criminal has happened, is not carried out in Japan.
Is French justice fully mobilized?
No, according to the family. “The refusal of the travel of the investigating judge to Japan was a first shock for us, says Damien Vron. And the fact that she announces her intention to close the investigation is a second. We are annoyed.” ptition was launched in recent days by Anne Dsert, the mother of Tiphaine Vron, to “ask justice not to abandon Tiphaine”.
Will private investigator Jean-Franois Abgrall go to Japan?
Not.expert from the gendarmerie, who had agreed to accompany the family two years ago, retired. “The Covid-19 pandemic blocked all action for two years, the borders were closed, reveals Damien Vron. Jean-Franois Abgrall brought great expertise and we will now surround ourselves with investigators on the spot.
What will happen in the coming months?
Me Antoine Vey, lawyer for the Vron family, do not despair of French justice. “We must continue to establish a dialogue with the magistrates. With the investigating judge of Poitiers, it would be simpler but there are other ways. She considers that it is not useful to travel to Japan but she can change your mind while reading your journal ! I think that French justice can carry out further investigations.”
A trip of a month and a half in October?
Damien Vron is preparing with his sister, Sibylle, a new trip to Japan in October. “I hope for a month and a half. The last big step in our fight is to close all the tracks. This is our last chance to find Tiphaine, to get answers. All the suspects have been identified, we have to question them. . When all the doors are closed, when we have all the answers, we will know when to stop… Otherwise, it’s a never-ending story.”
A petition “not to abandon Tiphaine”
Anne Dsert, mother of Tiphaine Vron, launched a ptition “to ask French justice not to abandon Tiphaine”. This initiative, launched for fear of seeing the judicial information die out, totals nearly 19,000 signatories. “Why should the judge not give up?, asks Anne Dsert. The possibility of a crime terrifies me… Yet this is the thesis accredited by the majority of experts today […] What if a serial criminal ripped Nikko? Did the judge get answers to all these questions? No. Can she get it? Yes. Everything is done! For four years, the Japanese police authorities have been withholding information and refusing to open a criminal investigation, adds Anne Desert. Sign to save Tiphaine! If she is struggling with a kidnapper, to close the investigation procedure is to condemn her to death,” she said.
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