Laure Zacchello, a 43-year-old mother, is still actively being sought in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques since her disappearance on June 21. Her ex-husband was charged with voluntary homicide and placed in detention on Thursday, June 27. However, he remains silent as the chances of finding the forty-year-old alive are diminishing.
The disappearance of Laure Zacchello is increasingly worrying. This 43-year-old mother has not given any sign of life for a week now. In fact, she was seen for the last time on Friday June 21 in Urrugne, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, at 8:30 a.m.
A call for witnesses was quickly shared by the judicial police, without result. According to Jérôme Bourrier, Bayonne public prosecutor interviewed on RTL, the hopes of finding Laure alive “are slim”. With the recent indictment of her ex-spouse, now the main suspect in this case, where is the investigation?
a possible staging?
On June 21, the day Laure Zacchello’s disappearance was reported, it was the suspect’s sister who alerted the police. In fact, the latter had discovered the body of her brother, alone and unconscious in the garden of the family home. He was injured in the head, a concrete block was at his side. On site, the police searched the house and found “no trace of a struggle”. In addition, the mother’s personal effects were still at the scene: her two phones, her means of payment, her purse and her car.
Investigators then quickly ruled out the hypothesis of a burglary gone wrong. According to the public prosecutor, Laure’s voluntary disappearance also seems unlikely. This is “absolutely not like her,” he noted.
The police are considering the idea of staging the ex-spouse of the missing woman. The man was, on Thursday June 27, indicted for intentional homicide and imprisoned.
A suspect affected by the divorce proceedings
Laure, a nurse by training, and her ex-husband, a 43-year-old PE teacher and former gendarmerie reserve officer, had been in the process of divorce since February. This separation was “obviously badly experienced” by the forty-year-old. The latter would be a sports shooter and hunter, with an arsenal of firearms in his possession.
The man appeared cold, silent and above all, without empathy towards the police. According to the prosecutor, Laure’s ex-spouse does not care about the future of the mother of three children, aged 3, 6 and 9 years old. “He highlighted amnesia, said he did not remember anything, postponing his hearing,” said Jérôme Bourrier.
Laure “terrorized” by her ex-spouse
According to the testimony of relatives of the missing woman and her own writings, the mother was “terrified” of her ex-partner. She slept on the sofa with her children and placed “objects around her to hear him approach.”
“The environmental investigation highlighted that Laure Zacchello had been afraid of her husband since a violent argument last February,” the public prosecutor stressed. He mentioned in particular a “context of harassment, arguments.” The former officer allegedly “made bank transfers” from the missing woman’s accounts, “hacked her email, blocked her mobile phone.” Actions that allegedly pushed the mother to buy a small portable camera.
The homicide trail
The Bayonne prosecutor’s office is not ruling out any hypothesis today. They state that “serious and consistent evidence” leads them to believe that Laure “is probably dead, possibly the victim of voluntary homicide by a spouse.”
Searches and beatings continue to find the mother of the family. The appeal for witnesses is still in force and now extends to a red 4×4 that could have been used by the accused at the time of Laure’s disappearance. The vehicle was reportedly seen in the Urrugne area on June 20.
