“Considerable” means to try to find a body 33 years after a feminicide

Excavations are being carried out on Wednesday and Thursday in Orne to try to find the body of Marlaine Marquis, a woman her husband says she killed in 1989, the gendarmerie announced at a press conference. “50 gendarmerie and army soldiers” from different departments “have been deployed for 48 hours since this morning,” Colonel Pierre-Olivier Benech, commander of the Orne gendarmerie group, told reporters on Wednesday. .

The gendarme mentions “considerable and extraordinary means in view of the age of the facts”, with the mobilization of drones, an anthropologist, divers, a georadar and a metal detector. “Two phases of research” had already been carried out in June, without success, recalled Mr. Benech.

Operation “in a gallery”

This new operation takes place “in a horizontal gallery a few meters below the ground where the suspect says he hid his companion under sheet metal”, hence the presence of an engineer regiment equipped with a “detector of ferrous materials”, said the soldier.

This equipment was not present at La Chapelle-Souëf, about fifty kilometers east of Alençon, during the June excavations, explained Bruno Langlois, commander of the Caen research section.

“Have a place to gather”

Marlaine Marquis disappeared in 1989. At the time, her companion had reassured those around her by explaining that his wife had left him for another man. Now 62 years old, the man confessed a few months ago to having strangled the young woman. The investigation did not start until 2021, following a report of the couple’s two children, now adults.

The head of the communication cabinet of the Normandy gendarmerie, Julie Bergey, confirmed the placement under judicial supervision of the suspect and his indictment for kidnapping and kidnapping. The Alençon prosecutor’s office did not wish to communicate on Wednesday. In June, the prosecutor had indicated that the prescription of the crimes was 10 years at the time of the facts.

Questioned during the first excavations in June by the site actu.fr, the daughter of the alleged victim had declared that she and her brother wanted “just the body of our mother in order to have a place to collect”.

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