Again and again, the first call went to the gendarmerie. These local police took statements, visited sites and gathered samples in French cases. Petite-Île, 1975. A mother alerted them, and Sgt P.'s brigade interviewed her son's employer, fiancée and family. At Trans-en-Provence in 1981, gendarmes photographed the landing site and recorded two concentric circles marked with black streaks, before the case passed to GEPAN. That same year at Guipavas, an air traffic controller called them about a fireball, and eight statements were collected. Near Nancy in 1982, they took samples for the Amaranth case.
Stories4
