They should have returned Sunday at Beaumont-de-Lomagne (Tarn-et-Garonne) as indicated by the message they left on Facebook and on their storefront for customers of their bakery. But Véronique and Laurent Blond, 56 and 57 years old, disappeared on Saturday March 16 in Madeira.
On this day, the fifth of their family vacation on the Portuguese island, these hiking enthusiasts leave their daughter Johanna around 2:30 p.m. The latter, tired from the previous days’ excursions on steep paths, stays at their residence in São Vicente, “near “Fajã da Areia”. She has not seen her parents since.
“They left with two bottles of water”
Johanna alerted the local authorities after dark, when she was unable to contact the hikers on their cell phones. For ten days, she has moved heaven and earth and relayed her distress call launched on Facebook to vacationers and hikers likely to be in Madeira or to know the place well.
“They left with two bottles of water, just a little bit of money on them. Normally, they were with the aim of not coming home too late,” Johanna confided this Monday to TF1, while she returned to Beaumont-de-Lomagne to follow the research remotely. “Even if it’s to find them dead, we need that precisely to move on,” she adds, sobbing in her voice.
Intense on-site research
On site, the island’s authorities mobilized firefighters, police, gendarmerie and judicial police to conduct pedestrian and drone searches on the excursion trails. A maritime authority ship even searched a vast coastal area, without finding the slightest trace of the hikers. Interrupted for a while by the weather, the search resumed Monday morning. According to El Diário de Notícias da Madeira the area of Fajã da Areia had to be “combed” again even though no trace of the French couple had yet been found.
An investigation into “disturbing disappearance” opened
In France, Bruno Sauvage, the public prosecutor of Montauban, confirmed this Tuesday having opened an investigation on March 20 “for worrying disappearance”, after having been informed of the situation by “the magistrate of the crisis and support center of the ministry Foreign Affairs “. The gendarmes from the Castelsarrasin research brigade carried out “a home visit” to the Blond couple in Beaumont-de-Lomagne. No clue, no message suggesting that the couple could have disappeared voluntarily has been discovered. This hypothesis also seems to leave the inhabitants of the town perplexed, whose messages of support on social networks evoke smiling and appreciated traders.
“The various telephone requisitions carried out immediately” did not make it possible “to locate their mobile phone”, adds Bruno Sauvage who remains in “close and regular” contact with the Portuguese investigators via “the Portuguese internal security attaché”.
Did Véronique and Laurent fall accidentally? Did they have a bad encounter? For the moment, the mystery remains unsolved and no avenue has been excluded.