Clues That Create More Mysteries

Eleven days after The Askara discovered the dinghy containing Dr. Godard's check book, a group of pleasure cruisers in the English Channel pulled a life jacket from the water. It was from Nick. On September 23, 1999, an inflatable life raft from Nick was discovered, washed up on a beach near Dorset in the south of England. Unusually, the canopy roof had been removed, perhaps intentionally cut off.

The problem with these discoveries was, quite simply, that they made no sense. According to expert analysis, ocean currents alone would be insufficient to sweep the jacket and raft to the co-ordinates where they were found. They had to have been placed? But by whom? And for what purpose? Nick was still missing, along with her three known passengers.

Four months later, matters became even stranger.

In January 2000, a fisherman pulled a duffle bag out of the water near where Dr. Godard and his children were last seen. Inside were many personal effects that had belonged to the family: clothes, licences, documents, binoculars, a hammer, and the entire contents of Marie-France's purse.

In June of 2000, a dredger brought up skull fragments from the ocean floor, which subsequent analysis confirmed to be the remains of Camille Godard. This led investigators to conclude that Nick had sunk somewhere off the cost of Brittany on or around September 5, 1999. But despite the best efforts of the French Navy to find the sunken yacht, it remains undiscovered. Assuming the boat did in fact sink.

Throughout 2001, hikers on a beach near Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer kept finding cards belonging to Yves Godard: a business card, five credit cards, bank cards. But a forensic examination of the beach revealed no trace of Dr. Godard, his children, or Nick.

Police therefore assumed Godard had discarded the contents of his wallet on the beach at some point. But that theory is belied by experts who studied the cards and concluded they hadn't been in the water for long before their discovery. So who put them there and why?

Finally, in 2006, tibia and femur bones were found in the Channel, about 43 miles north of the French coast. Forensics confirmed they were the remains of Dr. Godard. For many, that was the end of the story -- even though the bodies of Marius and Marie-France have never been recovered.

And even though we're still left with an inordinate number of questions.

Image by The coast of Brittany, France.

What Really Happened Here?

The most popular theory is as follows. Yves Godard killed his wife, then took his children on a sailing trip as an alibi. It's also possible he brought Marie-France's remains on Nick with his children and disposed of her body in the English Channel. That would explain the traces of blood found in the VW camper. At some point during this voyage, the yacht sank, drowning the doctor and his children.

It's possible that Dr. Godard scuppered his own ship in order to drown all his worries. But it's also possible he meant to escape France and go on the run with his children. Although he arranged to rent Nick at least two weeks before departing, he failed to clear his office schedule for the dates of September 1-5 when he was at sea with his children. That's odd; if Dr. Godard wanted to disappear without attracting attention, he should have booked the whole week off.

And then there's the wrinkle of Dr. Godard's credit cards, washed up on a beach a year or more after his disappearance, but bearing no signs of having been in the water for long. And there's all the detritus that washed up in locations that don't fit with the tidal patterns. Was this the work of Dr. Godard, trying to cover his escape by faking his own death -- only to find himself shipwrecked? Or was it the work of some accomplice?

Apparently, surviving members of Marie-France Godard's family and their counsel suspect someone else placed all this incongruent evidence. More far-fetched theories paint Yves Godard as the victim of a mafia set-up.

In the end, we're probably looking at a list of questions that will never be answered. Twenty years later the mystery remains, and no explanation is wholly satisfactory.