No confessions or bodies. It was enough for Frédéric Mellet to be nicknamed the “Cédric Jubillar of Yonne”. This goat breeder in Joigny, a few kilometers from Auxerre, is suspected of having killed his wife, Chantal. Aged 54, she was working with him on the farm when she disappeared almost four years ago. Since then, radio silence. She no longer gave the slightest sign of life. Implicated almost twenty-two months after his disappearance, the man who has always proclaimed his innocence was heard again this Friday by the investigating judge.
Chantal Mellet’s trace was lost on July 2, 2020. That morning, like every day, the couple got up at dawn to milk the goats. Around 8:30 a.m., the farmer records the quantity of milk collected in a notebook. The graphological analysis is formal: it is indeed his handwriting. But what happened next? The fifty-year-old disappeared without taking her phone, her credit card or the slightest thing. Despite intense searches – particularly in the area but also in the surrounding woods and ponds – his body was never found.
Judicial information reclassified as “murder”
“She was in her laboratory making her cheeses,” Frédéric Mellet confided shortly after her disappearance to France Bleu Auxerre. I was milking goats. I bothered her for two minutes, I told her: “When you’re finished, we’ll have to talk about a personal subject.” When I looked for it around 9 a.m., there was no one there. » At the end of the morning, however, the man goes to a DIY store. His checkout is recorded at 11:10 a.m. It is this period of time that interests investigators. First opened for “disturbing disappearance”, the judicial investigation was finally reclassified as “murder” in October 2021.
As in the Jubillar affair, investigators note that the family climate is far from good. The couple have been married since 1999 but several witnesses – starting with the couple’s daughters – attest that they were struggling. Chantal Mellet had a lover – it was he who reported her disappearance – which her husband knew. He assures that he wanted to have a discussion on the subject with her on the day of her disappearance. “I wanted to ask him to stop this relationship on the day of the incident. Let’s get back to our lives. Like many couples, there are ups and downs. Even if it’s complicated, we stay united, we have children together,” he told Republican Yonne in January 2022.
Cell phone off or in airplane mode
At the time of these statements, Frédéric Mellet was not implicated. It will be five months later, in May 2022, or twenty-two months after the disappearance of Chantal Mellet. A determining element will weaken his alibi: the change in the version of the couple’s youngest daughter. According to this information revealed by The Parisian, the latter had first claimed to have seen her father on the farm, when he woke up, around 10 a.m. A determining element since it coincides with the disappearance of his mother. But placed in police custody, the young woman changed her version and indicated that she got up around 9 a.m. and saw neither her father nor his truck.
The assessments carried out on Frédéric Mellet’s phone also reveal that the device was in airplane mode or turned off between 6:28 a.m. and 10:20 a.m. An “unusual element according to the examination of his telephony”, specifies a judgment of the investigating chamber.
But is it enough? The defendant’s lawyers, Me Yasmina Belmokhtar and Frank Berton, have constantly denounced the fragility of the case. On ten occasions, they made requests for release. Ten times they were rejected. The accused’s daughters never stopped supporting him. Contacted Me Florian Lastelle, who represents two of them, did not wish to speak. According to The Parisianthe instruction would be about to end.