Their disappearance only lasted a few days. But the mystery that surrounds it remains unresolved. Why did Yvon and Jennifer Exbrayat vanish six days apart in mid-November, leaving their 13-year-old daughter alone? Residing in Ségur-les-Villas, a small village of 200 souls nestled in Cantal, this 51-year-old man and his 35-year-old wife were found accidentally on Saturday morning. But they have since “refused to be heard by investigators,” said 20 minutes the public prosecutor, Paolo Giambiasi. Their motivations remain, at this stage of the investigations, an enigma that the gendarmes are trying to solve.
Saturday morning, neighbors alerted the gendarmerie after noting movement in the couple’s chalet. In the garage, the soldiers noticed the absence of a snowmobile belonging to them. The tracks left by the machine lead them to Vernols, where they discover Yvon and Jennifer in the truck used by the logger during his disappearance. Both were in good health. Why did they decide to flee together without telling anyone and leaving their daughter alone? The teenager was placed in a children’s home and has been followed by social services since the disappearance of her parents.
Several avenues studied
Yvon is the first to have strangely disappeared. On November 17, after an argument with his wife, the father leaves their home behind the wheel of his truck and does not reappear. Three days later, Jennifer decides to warn the gendarmes of this worrying absence. An investigation is opened and investigations carried out in order to locate him. But on November 23, the wife in turn passed out in the wild. It was the couple’s 13-year-old daughter who sounded the alarm when she came home from school, after seeing her mother’s absence, who left her cell phone. The day before, Jennifer had modified her Facebook photo indicating that she “return[a] heaven and earth to find ”her husband.
Walled in silence, Yvon and Jennifer are the only ones to know the truth about this run which lasted nearly a month. Investigators from the Saint-Flour research brigade are studying several leads. Has Yvon considered ending his life? The father of the family had in fact, “in the context of another case, been the subject of a psychiatric expertise which in particular revealed a suicidal tendency”, underlines Paolo Giambiasi.
“The file is far from being closed”
Another unanswered question: Why did the couple go back to get a snowmobile in this wooden chalet that Yvon built with his own hands on the heights of the village? Did they plan to cut themselves off from society and their families?
In the village, the couple has a bad reputation, as recently confided to the Parisian the mayor of the town, Gilles Amat. He is suspected in particular of having abandoned another child who was placed several months ago by decision of the children’s judge. “The case is far from being closed, we will have to hear them well because we have not yet shed all the light on this case”, tells us a source close to the case.