The accident “is our most probable hypothesis”, especially “after the discovery on Tuesday of a shoe and a backpack with documents belonging to the couple”, declared Commissioner Joao Gois on Wednesday about the couple of tourists French people who disappeared almost a month ago in Madeira, Portugal.
“Everything indicates that the couple fell several meters,” said Joao Gois, who had already participated in the operations which made it possible to recover two bodies on Friday spotted in a very slippery ravine, and “being in an advanced state of decomposition “.
Identification of bodies in progress
Alerted by a stranger, the rescuers first spotted a first body late Thursday afternoon, then the next morning another corpse a few meters away. “The judicial police went to the site to try to identify the bodies using fingerprints,” explained the commissioner. “But once we find bodies, the file is automatically transmitted to the courts” which takes over the investigation, he added.
The information was also confirmed by the French authorities, who announced the opening of an investigation into the worrying disappearance of a French couple from Beaumont-de-Lomagne (Tarn-et-Garonne), in the south from France.
“Investigations are underway to formally identify these people and it is therefore impossible to indicate with certainty that it is the couple,” Bruno Sauvage, the Montauban prosecutor, indicated on Friday.
The two missing tourists, aged 58 and 56, owners of a bakery, were on vacation on the Portuguese island, according to the French press. They had not given any sign of life after leaving for a hike on March 16 in Sao Vicente. It was their 27-year-old daughter who, not seeing them return even though they had only left with two bottles of water, had raised the alarm.