Delphine was packing for the family’s weekend camping trip when she decided to take a short nap after lunch. She expected her daughter Lola to walk through the door from school around 2:40 p. m. , as she always did.
But Lola never came home. When Delphine woke up and realized Lola wasn’t there, panic set in. She told her husband Yohann, “This isn’t normal. This is strange.
It’s not like her not to let us know. ”
At 3:00 p. m. , Yohann called the school and was told Lola had already left and had been seen heading home.
From that first moment, Delphine felt something terrible in her gut. “From the moment I didn’t hear back, I said to myself it’s not good. There was something,” she later recounted. She grabbed a photo of her daughter and rushed to the nearest police station to report Lola missing.
The officers there brushed off the disappearance of the 12-year-old, suggesting she was probably out with some boyfriend and would come back later. But her parents knew better. Lola had never shown any interest in boys; she was always open with her mother. If she had a boyfriend, Delphine would have known.
Yohann took matters into his own hands. As the property manager of their 12-story apartment building in Paris’s 19th district, he had access to the security cameras. The footage showed Lola entering the building at 2:40 p. m.
, walking beside a woman in a gray jacket and light-colored pants. The woman seemed vaguely familiar, though neither parent could place her. Moments later, the woman pushed Lola into the elevator. The camera tracked them to the sixth floor, where the woman forced Lola into an apartment.
Horrified, Yohann grabbed the video and rushed it to the police, who immediately opened an active investigation. Delphine posted to Facebook, describing her daughter’s last known moments and the unknown woman in the building. Officers searched the entire apartment complex from top to bottom. They found no sign of Lola, but they did find a box cutter and a roll of tape in the basement, along with signs of a struggle.
The details were never publicly shared. Everyone still hoped to find Lola alive. That hope shattered around 11:00 p. m.
when a man entered the courtyard of a nearby building, noticed two suitcases and a large trunk left out in the open, and opened the trunk hoping to find something valuable. Instead, he discovered the dead body of a young girl buried under a pile of linen. The body was almost immediately identified as Lola. She was found without clothes, her hands and feet bound, her head covered with duct tape, and cuts and bruises over her entire body.
Some reports claimed her throat was deeply cut; others said her head had been completely severed. On the soles of her feet, the numbers zero and one were found inked in red nail polish, though some reports suggested the marks had been etched into her skin like a tattoo. The autopsy determined that Lola died from asphyxiation caused by the tape covering her face. All other injuries were inflicted after her death.
The sheer brutality of the crime pointed to a perpetrator with a deep personal grudge. By 2:00 a. m. the next day, Lola’s parents were told their daughter was dead.
Delphine immediately blamed herself. “I tell myself that maybe I shouldn’t have taken that nap because I usually go out at that time when she comes home, so I would definitely come across her. ”
Surveillance footage from throughout the 19th district showed the same young woman seen with Lola, dragging a large trunk and two suitcases at around 5:00 p. m.
on the day of the murder. Investigators quickly identified her as 24-year-old Dhabia B. , the younger sister of 26-year-old Friha B. , who lived on the sixth floor of the very building where Lola had been forced into the elevator.
Friha was brought in for questioning and confirmed the woman in the footage was her sister. Dhabia was then arrested in a suburb of Paris. As investigators looked into her background, they discovered that Dhabia was an Algerian national who had come to France in May 2016 on a student visa. Her visa had long since expired.
She’d enrolled in a French culinary program but never finished, and one of her former teachers described her as a pathological liar who skipped nearly all of her classes. Friha said the family had struggled after arriving in France and that their mother died of cancer. Dhabia had applied for asylum multiple times starting in 2017, and every request was rejected. That resulted in two expulsion orders — one in 2019, then another on August 21, 2022, after she was detained at Orly Airport without valid identification or a plane ticket.
She was questioned, but since she had no criminal record, she was released and ordered to leave France within 30 days. She never left. Friha described her sister as the bad seed of the family, saying Dhabia had always caused problems, relied heavily on drugs, and couldn’t hold a normal conversation. She told investigators that when she came home on October 14th, her apartment was in disarray, and she suspected Dhabia had been there.
At around 10:30 p. m. , Dhabia arrived carrying a trunk and two suitcases, appearing panicked, and asked for help disposing of them. Friha repeatedly asked what was inside the trunk, but Dhabia refused to say.
The sisters dumped the items in the courtyard of another apartment building. At the time, Friha thought her sister had killed a boyfriend. She assumed Dhabia would spend the night, but her sister left immediately afterward. This wasn’t Dhabia’s first run-in with authorities.
In 2019, she’d attacked a receptionist at a doctor’s office after being asked for payment, screaming, “I’ll come back. You don’t know what I’m capable of. ” The next day she returned with a friend, but behaved calmly and paid the fee. The two receptionists who reported the incident were fired by hospital administration for their trouble.
Investigators expected Dhabia to be a skilled liar with a cover story for everything. But during her fourth interview with police, she confessed. And she showed no remorse whatsoever. “I had my pleasure, and that was that,” she said.
She explained that she saw Lola outside the apartment complex, told the girl she lived in the same building, then dragged her into the elevator and into Friha’s apartment. Friha wasn’t home, which gave Dhabia time. Inside, Dhabia forced the 12-year-old to shower before assaulting her. Authorities never released the full details of what happened inside that apartment, but they confirmed Lola was subjected to extreme violence.
After the assault, Dhabia gagged Lola with tape. As the girl lay there struggling to breathe, Dhabia calmly made coffee, listened to music, washed her clothes in Friha’s washing machine, and rested. Then she went back to Lola and stabbed her multiple times. In her statements, she claimed she hadn’t intended to kill the girl, yet confessed that she had drunk Lola’s blood and stored some in a bottle.
That bottle was never found. She also denied responsibility for certain injuries, including the mutilation inflicted after death. When a detective showed Dhabia a photo of Lola’s dead body, she said, “This leaves me indifferent. I was SA’d, too, and I saw my parents die in front of me.
”
Throughout the interrogation, Dhabia kept taking back her confessions. She claimed she’d been lying all along or that she’d had a bad dream. She swore she could never kill a child, and blamed the crime on a stranger with a gun, and even a ghost. But she had said enough, and police had clear footage of her dragging the trunk Lola was found in through the streets.
She appeared calm in that footage, chatting with strangers, casually dropping the trunk as if it weighed nothing, stopping at a café for coffee and a croissant. Several people she approached reported that she asked for help carrying her luggage, and even asked random strangers if they knew where she could sell human organs. One local resident later recalled, “We saw her come into the building. She was all alone.
After she came out moments later, we saw her half an hour later with a suitcase. She talked to everyone a little. She looked a little crazy. She acted a little crazy.
We thought about heavy things. We never thought there was a body in it. ”
Dhabia eventually contacted a 43-year-old acquaintance named Amine, who drove her to his apartment in a Paris suburb. She stayed there for hours, but later that night she ordered an Uber and returned to Friha’s apartment.
Both Amine and the Uber driver claimed they were unaware of the trunk’s contents. Six people were brought in for questioning in total. After a thorough investigation, all evidence pointed to Dhabia as the sole perpetrator. Friha was deported in December 2022.
On October 17, 2022, Dhabia was indicted for murder and aggravated sexual assault with acts of torture and barbarity, and held in isolation at Fresnes prison. A few days after the murder, Yohann and Delphine traveled to retrieve their daughter’s remains and read her autopsy report. Yohann later shared, “I read the autopsy report. My wife did too.
I carry it in my head. It’s horrible. I wouldn’t wish what she went through on anyone. ” Delphine said the moment was unbearable.
“I felt one big stab at that moment. We really knew everything that she had done to her and it hurts. She stopped breathing all alone. ”
In the wake of the murder, residents in the neighborhood were terrified to let their children outside.
The Ministry of Education arranged support for students at Lola’s school. The 19th district mayor called it a terrible ordeal for the school community and the entire neighborhood. French President Emmanuel Macron met with Lola’s parents and described the murder as an act of extreme evil. One of Lola’s friends said, “I can’t really imagine her.
As time goes by, I’ll notice it, and I won’t be doing well at all, I think, without her being there in the mornings. For me, it’s an unreality because we were still laughing together on Friday. ”
People in the area openly blamed the government for Lola’s death, arguing that if immigration laws had been enforced, Dhabia would have been in Algeria and Lola would still be alive. Protests were organized in Lola’s name, despite her family’s explicit request that they not be held.
Lola’s parents did not want their daughter’s name used for political purposes. Deputies in the French National Assembly were split over drawing political conclusions from the tragedy. Yohann publicly pushed back on one of Dhabia’s claims. Dhabia had said she asked Delphine for a key card to the building and was refused, which was allegedly part of her motive.
Yohann denied it entirely. “There was no badge story. She is the one who swiped her badge at the entrance of the apartment building. She came in first, and my daughter arrived behind her.
There was no badge story. It’s bullshit. ”
As the case moved toward trial, Dhabia’s defense began to lean heavily on her mental health. She’d started banging her head against the walls in solitary confinement.
According to some reports, she mutilated her own fingers, shaved parts of her head, and was aggressive with staff. In February 2023 she was transferred to a psychiatric facility, where multiple medical professionals examined her. They noted that she behaved like a compulsive liar, frequently fabricating stories to evade responsibility. In a court hearing in June 2023, Dhabia offered her own version of events.
She said Lola entered the building voluntarily, but once inside, the girl got nervous. In Dhabia’s own words, “I hit her a little. I wasn’t feeling well, in fact. I did what I had to do.
I overdid it a little just to have my fun, and that’s it. ”
Ultimately, the medical experts established that Dhabia did not suffer from psychosis, mood disorders, or anxiety disorders. The motive remained unclear, though one retired magistrate speculated about a superstition known in parts of Algeria and Morocco involving “Zuri” children — children believed to be human-jinn hybrids, targeted for ritual sacrifice because of superstitions that their blood has supernatural properties. But investigators dismissed this as the motive behind Lola’s murder.
Lola’s death left deep scars in the community and particularly on her parents. Delphine said, “My life will always be complicated. She was my life, my ray of sunshine. I will always have the scar.
I feel a lot of anger towards this person. I hope the trial can help me understand the why and the how. ”
Yohann spoke openly about the toll the tragedy had taken on him. “I am surviving.
I am not well. In fact, she didn’t just destroy a child’s life. No, she destroyed an entire family. For a year I fell back into my demons even though I hadn’t drunk for more than 3 years.
What keeps me going today? I have two sons. I have a mother, and I have a wife, too. It’s my family that keeps me going.
I have to keep going for them. It’s been a year and I’m devastated. My daughter is my love. She will always remain the love of my life.
This woman who took my daughter’s life killed an entire family. ”
On February 23, 2024, Yohann died at just 49 years old. Some reports claim he died of a heart attack, others that he descended into alcoholism and died of grief. Shortly after his death, his lawyer released a statement: “Yohann had his head and his heart too close to hell since the acts committed against his daughter.
He was going downhill. His heart attack is the epilogue of his descent into hell. We lost him from day one. We did everything and tried, but there was nothing that we could do anymore.
”
Justice was finally served on October 24, 2025. Dhabia was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — the first woman in France to receive that sentence since it was introduced into French law in 1994. Lola’s brother Thibault said, “We got what we wanted. We restored my sister’s memory.
We restored the truth. Thank you to justice. We are happy with the response we got. ”
In the weeks and months that followed, the community gave Lola a proper send-off.
Neighbors laid flowers outside her apartment building. Her funeral was held on October 24, 2022, in Delphine’s hometown, open to all who wished to pay their respects, while the burial at the cemetery was conducted in strict privacy. Hundreds of people gathered inside the church at 2:30 p. m.
After Yohann’s death, he was laid to rest beside his daughter. The French Gymnastics Federation, where Lola had been registered, set up a support unit at her club. In 2023, Thibault paid tribute to his sister in a letter published by Le Figaro. He wrote, “Hi my Lola, my little sister.
I’m writing this to you to tell you how much I miss you since you went to be with the stars. I’m so bored without you. Can’t even tease you or laugh with you anymore. I also wanted to thank you for watching over us.
I’m so sorry. It’s supposed to be the other way around. A big brother’s role is to protect his little sister and then teach her things, and I didn’t even manage to do that. I hope you’ll forgive me someday.
But I promise you I’ll take care of mom and dad and make them laugh whenever things are tough and even when they’re not. It’s been a year since you left us and life is so long without you. I’m ending this message by telling you that I love you. I’m going to do everything I can to make you happy and make my family happy.
Flying kisses. ”
