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“A part was torn from me for good the day the door of the morgue opened and it wasn’t my brother,” Herran’s sister Sophie Giampetruzzi told this masthead last year.
“Everything stopped for me.”
Herran had been booked on a flight back to France the day he disappeared.
Investigators later confirmed he had checked in at Sydney Airport before catching the train to Watsons Bay, where the payphone was located.
Former NSW Police detective Michael Gerondis led the original investigation.
Now a private investigator, he remained convinced Herran faked his death to stay in Australia and was living under a new identity.
“There’s no way he jumped,” the former detective said last year.
“All his stuff was with his backpack except his passport. I think he kept that just in case.”
Michael Gerondis“He was so calm on the phone ... All his stuff was with his backpack except his passport. I think he kept that just in case.
“He’d been to an immigration place just beforehand to ask, ‘How do I get to stay in Australia?’ And they told him, ‘No chance, mate’.”
Gerondis believed Herran was probably in north Queensland. At 182 centimetres tall, with brown hair and blue eyes, he was possibly passing himself off as Italian, he said.
“That was his second time to Australia and he loved it. He loved Queensland and went on a helicopter tour out there.
Parents of missing French tourist Antoine Herran, Francoise and Jean-Francois, in Sydney.
“It’s because he lived in northern France, where it’s cold and raining all the time.
“He said to his parents that’s ideal Australia, that’s what his notion of Australia was and he loved it there near Cairns … that’s where I think he is.”
Giampetruzzi and Gerondis have reconnected recently.
Last year this masthead reported they had agreed to conduct DNA testing, in the hope of tracking down any children Herran might have had in Australia.
However, the former policeman revealed this week a French law preventing direct-to-consumer genetic testing had slowed the process.
“They won’t send the kit to France,” he said.
“I don’t know why, but it has to be done through Australia … we’re just getting it all together. It’s just the logistics of it.
“We’ll get that sorted out and hopefully we’ll find a relative in Australia.”
Childhood photos of Antoine Herran with sister Sophie, provided by Sophie. Credit: Sophie Giampetruzzi
He said he’s “still absolutely sure” Herran did not take his own life.
“I’m convinced he’s here somewhere and living his life, which we don’t want to interfere with – we just want him to let his family know.”
This masthead understands tips received in the past year could not be verified.
“I made this decision simply to find out if my brother is still alive,” Giampetruzzi said of the DNA testing plan last year.
“I think it would be another possibility to find a trace of him somewhere. I know it’s been 26 years already, but there isn’t a single moment in my life when I don’t hope to see him again.
“I am now 50 years old, I remarried in 2022 and I have no children. This is surely linked to my brother unconsciously.
“Really, I am still angry at his gesture of having disappeared of his own volition. There is surely a reason for him that he considers valid.
“But for me, it changed my whole life, all my personal projects.”
The mystery had put huge strain on her family, she said.
“In reality, I think that wanting to find a missing person is purely selfish but also an act full of love.
“Selfish because I would like to know if he is alive so that I can see him at least once and know that despite all these years, he is happy to have made this terrible choice.
“People can think what they want, it’s normal. They say to themselves, if he disappeared of his own volition, it is because he had his reasons and so let him live quietly.
“These people do not know the suffering of waiting to know the truth about the disappearance, the tearing apart between family members, friends or others.”
