A 50-year-old man was taken into police custody on Tuesday in Paris, suspected of having murdered his ex-companion Catherine D. who died poisoned on Thursday January 19, AFP learned on Wednesday from judicial sources and close to the case.
The police custody was still in progress Wednesday evening in the premises of the Parisian PJ criminal brigade, indicates the judicial source, confirming information from the Parisian. According to the daily, the motive for this possible femicide would be the man’s refusal to break up the couple.
Severe headaches
Catherine D., a 46-year-old entrepreneur living in the north of the capital, reportedly began to complain of severe headaches and overwhelming fatigue in the fall, before being hospitalized in mid-October, according to the newspaper.
While the doctors saw his condition deteriorate, the Pitié-Salpétrière hospital would have received many messages from his ex-companion suggesting that they study the trail of mercury poisoning. This poisoning would have finally been corroborated by a toxicological analysis, which dated it several months earlier.
122 feminicides in 2021
The report of the doctors to justice triggered the opening by the Paris prosecutor’s office of a judicial investigation on January 18 for “premeditated poisoning”. A crime is punishable by life.
Always according to Parisian, the search of the suspect’s home, in which his ex-partner and their two young children lived before their separation, would have revealed empty bottles of a toxic mercury-based product. In 2021, 122 women were killed in France under the blows of their spouse or ex-spouse, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior.