The Horrifying & Tragic Historical True Crime Case of Pauline Picard | The Replaced Child

Step into one of the most disturbing and unresolved cases in **French historical true crime**. This documentary examines **The Disappearance of Pauline Picard**, a two-year-old child who vanished from her family’s farm in **Goas-al-Ludu, Brittany**, on **April 6, 1922**. What followed was a haunting investigation involving rural village searches, suspected predators, a mysterious child found hundreds of miles away in **Cherbourg**, and the later discovery of a mutilated body that authorities hastily declared to be Pauline’s.

Set against the bleak backdrop of early **20th-century France**, this film explores a case that exposes the limits of early forensic science, the dangers of assumption in missing-child investigations, and the psychological toll on a family forced to accept uncertainty as truth. Was Pauline Picard murdered near her home, or was she the silent child found in a distant port city—only to die later under another name? And if so, whose body lies in her grave?

Through period detail, archival reporting, and careful analysis, this *Victorian-era true crime–style historical murder case* reveals why the mystery of Pauline Picard still unsettles investigators and historians more than a century later.

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*Sources:* Contemporary reporting from Le Matin and Le Petit Parisien (1922 French newspaper archives)