A6 disappearances

The A6 disappearances (French: disparues de l'A6, literally the "[female] disappeared of the A6") is the name given to a number of mysterious disappearances or other crimes involving women and girls, occurring in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s along a 200-kilometre (120-mile) stretch of the A6 motorway around Mâcon, Chalon-sur-Saône and Montceau-les-Mines, France. The area has been informally referred to as the "triangle of fear" (French: triangle de la peur).

The crimes considered to be part of the case took place between 22 August 1984 and 2 April 2005. The police have solved some of the murders, but with others, they are hesitant as to whether they are coincidences or the work of one or more serial killers.

All the victims were females aged between 13 and 37 who disappeared suddenly in the département of Saône-et-Loire in east-central France, along a 200 km stretch of the A6 in a "triangle of fear" between Mâcon, Chalon-sur-Saône and Montceau-les-Mines.

Christelle Maillery, who was murdered in December 1986, was the fourth woman to disappear. In 1990, the examining magistrate ruled that her case would be closed. According to French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, evidence such as "the victim's clothes and jewellery, and a knife found 200 metres from the crime scene" were destroyed by the forensics unit of the tribunal de grande instance (roughly equivalent to a Crown Court) in Chalon-sur-Saône. No progress was made in the case until 2003, when a private detective working for the Association Christelle obtained the witness testimony of Christelle's ex-boyfriend, reinvigorating the case. The boyfriend stated that after the murder, a man named Jean-Pierre Mura offered him 300 euros in "compensation" for the death of his girlfriend. The boyfriend found this unbelievable and so never reported it. Following the murder of Christelle Maillery in 1986, the support group Association Christelle was formed, and now consists of 11 "member families". Its stated aim is to provide support to the families of victims of criminal violence.

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