What happened to Tiphaine Véron on July 29, 2018? Not a minute goes by without the family of Poitevine, who died aged 36 in Nikko, asking. “I’m sure he’s somewhere, and I hope he’s not suffering.” confides his brother Damien Véron in his small apartment in the center of Poitiers. “We continue to fight”, he said again. Because for the Véron family, “We can’t leave it until it’s all done.
So with relief learned of the Nanterre Cold Case Pole’s decision to take over the case at the last minute his sisters in January 2023 as we moved toward dismissing the case. An unthinkable outcome for this family in their search for answers. Damien Véron blurts out: “It would be an injustice, a fiasco.”
He disappeared four days after arriving in Japan
In July 2018, “Titi”, as her loved ones sometimes call her, went on a three-week trip to Japan. She, who works in two schools in Poitiers as a school assistant for children in trouble, is happy to travel the country alone. At the start of the trip, she plans a two-day stopover in Nikko, the “Pearl of Japan,” to visit temples.
We know she arrived in the town of 80,000 on Saturday, July 28. The markings on her phone show that she walked from the station to the hotel. He walks in front of Shinkyo Bridge, a monumental red bridge and tourist spot, and takes a short video. He will then return to his hotel, around 4-4.30pm, the Turtle Inn, where he will spend the night. She prepares to walk through the lush scrub vegetation of Nikko to get to the temples the next day. He goes to bed early and has breakfast the next morning in the hotel common room.
Then the versions diverge. The hotel manager says he saw Tiphaine leave around 10:30. Then he corrects himself and corrects his version: before 10:00. But the young woman’s phone says otherwise: between 10:03 and 10:21 Tiphaine is researching hotels near Fukushima. The phone doesn’t move until 11:24, then suddenly shuts down and “erraticly” shuts down.
“We think something happened at the hotel”
Did she ever leave the hotel? “We think something happened at the hotel, yes” confirms Damien Véron. “Every time we met the hotelier, he was extremely agitated, angry to see us,” confides again. And Tiphaine’s brother points out that in August 2018 he saw with his own eyes the stains in Tiphaine’s hotel room reacting to Luminol. It was blood. “All clues point us to a likely attack,” summarizes Damien Véron.
In fact, the family found themselves at the center of the investigation from the very beginning. The French judicial system, which is opening up relatively quickly, will surely help her in her fight investigation of the kidnapping and sequestration in Poitiers. But nothing will happen. And the investigation closes in July 2022.
The Japanese police are not cooperating. No research is done. “We didn’t understand each other at first. A week after Tiphain’s disappearance, we arrived in Nikko with my sister Sybille and there was no search. Surreal? “We found out that in Japan there is a phenomenon of people who have disappeared, ‘Johatsu’, which means that when people disappear, they don’t necessarily need to be found.” explains Damien Véron. In this country, 80,000 people decide to disappear into the wild every year.
Trail of a serial killer
“So my sister Sybille told us, ‘We’ll have to do the investigation ourselves'” he says again. Here they hire private detectives, experts of all kinds… The 40-year-old is here seven ways there. We have to pay the engineers who helped them trace Tiphain’s path, the Japanese and French lawyers… The bill is mounting fast. “We are at more than 140,000 euros”, sighs Damien Véron who “Fortunately” establish an association that regularly announces calls for donations, “United for Tiphaine”.
Over the years, the family gathered information. He begins to investigate several clues, including that of a serial killer lurking in Nikko. in 2022 Damien Véron met with the local police point out similarities with other criminal cases. You have truly found yourself cut up in the trunk on the golf course.
The family is trying to get answers by all means. Japanese justice is not cooperating? They notify the French ambassador in Japan. In a year and a half, The UN has joined them in their fight. And he filed an urgent action request through the Missing Persons Committee. “They demanded that Japan conduct an investigation, identify potential criminals who may have attacked Tiphaine, and release the files. Three times. “Japan didn’t do that. This highlights the fact that there is a real problem with cooperation.’