Nearly seven years after his disappearance, Tiphaine Véron was not found, despite the various business surveys and the multiple family trips on site. Let’s go back to this case, to the facts, the hypotheses and what was done.
The facts
On July 27, 2018, Tiphaine Véron landed at Narita International Airport in Japan. She is about to spend three weeks in the country, a carefully prepared trip, as evidenced by her handwritten notes detailing each step. After a first night in Tokyo, she took a train for Nikkō, a tourist town nestled in the heart of the mountains, then joined her hotel on foot, the Turtle Inn, a journey confirmed by video surveillance images. She gets there between 4 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. In the process, she shares several photos with her family, evokes in her messages a warm welcome at the reception, and qualifies the establishment of “cute”. The end of the day being too advanced to explore the surrounding sites, it remains at the hotel, quiet.
The next morning, Tiphaine is seen having breakfast. The innkeeper believes that she would have been present in the common room between 8:30 am and 9:30 am, information confirmed by the photo taken by another customer. It is from this moment that the stories begin to diverge. According to the innkeeper, Tiphaine has left the establishment around 9:53 am. However, the later analysis of her phone indicates an extended activity far beyond this hour, showing that she was still in her room, connected to her device. On July 30, at 10:30 am, the hotelier finally contacted the police. The reservation of Tiphaine having expired, he worries about his absence and especially the presence of all his personal belongings in the room.
The tracks
Among the hypotheses studied, that of the intervention of a third party remains credible, with regard to the disturbing context in which the disappearance of Tiphaine Véron occurred. The Nikkō region, usually peaceful and popular with tourists, was shaken by a series of violent various facts that occurred in the months that followed. In August 2018, a few weeks after the disappearance of Tiphaine, a human skull was found on a lawn, near the railway. Shortly after, two women were discovered slaughtered in a city parking lot. On October 9 of the same year, an unidentifiable body was drafted on a Daiya-Gawa shore. Then, between December 2018 and January 2019, human bones were found in a neighboring forest. On January 19, 2022, it was a dismembered corpse, locked in a suitcase, which was discovered in Nikkō. According to a private investigator mandated by the Véron family, a total of fifteen bodies were found between 2018 and 2022 in the prefecture of Tochigi, and thirty-three people who would have been victims of sexual assault over the same period.
Another disturbing element: in 2019, a panel was installed in front of the Takinoo sanctuary, close to the Shirais Falls that Tiphaine intended to visit, warning passers -by of the presence of an individual posing as a guide, accused of having physically assaulted several people. The private investigator has also found testimonies of Japanese travelers evoking on Instagram a “chikan”, a touter, raging precisely in this sector. If the police recognized that this man was known to his services, she simply said that he had not been seen in the surroundings since January 2018, without mentioning if he was monitored.
The possible presence of a false guide, already reported by other women, thus feeds a scenario in which Tiphaine would have been trapped or followed. This could explain the sudden stop of his phone, his disappearance without a witness, and the absence of immediate alert. However, despite these elements, no suspect has been officially identified to date. The family actively continues their research, hoping that new testimonies will emerge.
Among the people interviewed, the manager of the hotel where Tiphaine stayed also drew attention. He remains the last person to have seen him alive, and his declarations concerning the departure time of the young woman include several contradictions. Even more worrying: suspicious traces, possibly splashes of blood, were detected in the luminol on a wall in his room. However, no analysis was communicated by the Japanese authorities.
In the absence of a claim, a request for ransom or decisive material element, the thesis of the intervention of a third party, armed or not, nevertheless remains one of the most seriously envisaged tracks.
