Your favourite unsolved mystery?

dubstarr wrote: »

Pauline Picard.Was a 2 year old child that went missing in France in 1922.

https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjRjuTh8r3XAhVEIcAKHSQACtAQFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.historicmysteries.com%2Fpauline-picard-disappearance-story%2F&usg=AOvVaw2FNIn31omMP0A8cTnQDWcS

Such a weird case.

"From New York Times, May 27 1922:

Paris, May 26. - A baffling mystery is exciting the inhabitants of the small Brittany village of Goas Al Ludu, near Chautelin, in the Brest district. Early in April a little girl, Pauline Picard, disappeared from her parent's farm, not the slightest clue existing as to what had become of the child ans all searches proving fruitless. Finally, it was thought she must have been carried of by gipsies, although none had been observed in the neighborhood at the time of her disappearance.

Just when the parents had given up hope of finding their daughter, it was reported from Cherbourg that a small girl had been found wandering there, whose age and and appearance corresponded to that of the missing Pauline. The Picards immediately hurried to Cherbourg and declared the child theirs. A curious fact, however, was that the child did not seem to recognize the parents ans remained mute when addressed in Breton, although Pauline had been used to speak that language.Taken home, the child was recognized by neighbors, and the police officer who accompanied her from Cherbourg was satisfied that she really was Pauline Picard, although there was no indication as to how she had reached Cherbourg.

The adventure thus appeared to have reached a happy ending, until yesterday a startling discovery was made which makes the whole affair more mysterious than ever. A farmer crossing a field about a mile from Goas Al Ludu discovered the horribly mutilated body of a small girl, entirely naked and the head cut off. Close by, carefully folded, lay the clothes. The farmer hurried to the village ans returned with gendarmes, followed by the inhabitants, among them the Picards, who recognized the clothes as those worn by Pauline the day she disappeared. The body could not be identified, the face having been partly devoured by foxes.

Although it would seem almost incredible that the parents should make a mistake, the Picards are now uncertain whether the child they have been nursing for more than a month is really their own, and the police are faced with by a three-fold task - to discover the murderer, identify the murdered child, and, if she is proved to be Pauline Picard, discover the identity of the little girl from Cherbourg.

Then, another article on May 27:

[...]Now a closer investigation of the circumstances under which the body was found and the medical examination have added still further to the detectives' difficulties. So careful was the search made at the time of Pauline's disappearance that the body would have been discovered had it been lying where it was found. Everything now points to the theory that it was placed there, together with the neatly folded clothes, quite recently. The most startling discovery of all, however, is that the unrecognizable head found close to the child's body is not the skull of a small child but of a grown man, thus introducing a second victim of an unknown murderer.
One slight clue is reported as to the possible identity of the murderer. A few days ago a middle-aged farmer, Yves Martin, visited the Picards and said he understood their daughter had been found. When told that she had, he asked, "Are you sure it's Pauline?" Then he added, "God forgive me. I am guilty." Then in wild laughter he rushed from the farm and the following day was taken to a lunatic asylum raving mad. It is thought possible that he killed Pauline - if the dead child was Pauline.

This case was discussed here about a year ago, when /u/No_Stairway_Denied asked for help remembering some details. I had heard about the case through the 1932 book 'Wild Talents' by Charles Fort, although his version omits the highly strange factor that there were actually two little girls involved (he also got the age wrong) and that a skull from another victim was found. It had me wonder if the NYT article had gotten their hands on a sensationalized version of a less complex story.
A few days ago, I started thinking about the case and tried to look for additional details online and found that they were very few - the handful of mentions I found seemed to have used the NYT articles as sources. So I went to digitized French newspaper archives and started digging. My French is abysmal but I got quite a few hits spanning from early May to early August of 1922 - the only problem being that I could hardly understand anything other than a few words here and there. Some (tedious) Google translating made me confident that NYT had gotten most of the details right but It's quite impossible to translate (and understand) all of the information from the French articles that way.

Sooo I'm basically hoping for some kind of crowd sourced reading and translation of the French articles by you, /r/unrsolvedmysteries subscribers. I don't expect anyone to translate the articles verbatim, word for word, but if someone could perhaps offer a tl;dr version, I'd be very happy.

Edit: u/nursejessika did a fabulous job summarizing the articles from Le Petit Parisien here:. They didn't mention the adult skull being found, but Le Matin seems to, but someone with a better grasp on the language needs to go through those articles

So, without knowing much more than what the NYT articles already said, my questions go along these lines:
1) was the girl found dead the real Pauline Picard?
2) if so: who was the girl the Picards picked up in Cherbourg?
3) Who killed the girl in the field? (Yves Martin seems like the prime candidate, I must admit. I hope some of the articles can shed some additional light on this. Even if he was really 'raving mad', I guess the police would've been very interested anyway).
4) That still leaves us with the skull allegedly belonging to an adult male. Who was he and how did he end up there? Had the skull been there for as long as the body of the girl?"

smelly sock wrote: »

Fianna Fail, Garda corruption/imcompetence and good auld catholic Ireland. Thats seems to be the over riding feeling.

smelly sock wrote: »

Fianna Fail, Garda corruption/imcompetence and good auld catholic Ireland. Thats seems to be the over riding feeling.

smelly sock wrote: »

FF i though had involvement too. My bad maybe.

irishproduce wrote: »

What is the tldr on Mary Boyle.
A lot seem to state it really isn't a mystery

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

The Malaysian aircraft disappearance.

Frightened the bejayzis out of me since I never thought a plane could ever disappear like that. Weird.

Canard wrote: »

It would be plausible, except the investigations concluded that the veering off course was deliberate. Communications with the ground were severed in an apparent attempt to hide the plane's location and destination, and they even found routes mapped to isolated islands in the Indian Ocean on the pilot's flight simulator. Really, really eerie case with so many unanswered questions.

Out of all the theories, I think the pilot murder-suicide is the only one that makes any sense. The family insist he would never have done it, but for the plane to go so hopelessly missing for no reason and for there to be such clear efforts to hide the route means, to me, something sinister had to be afoot.

Also if I'm not mistaken (I am really interested in this particular mystery :P), when they examined the flaperons (the only piece of the plane recovered), they determined that the plane had been 'landed' in the water. Though I may indeed be mistaken on that, so I'm going to double check.

Edit: Didn't find whatever original report I'd read, but this one is so unsettling. :eek: