Laure Zacchello, mother of three children aged three, six and nine, has not given any sign of life since June 21, in Urrugne (Pyrénées-Atlantiques).
If “many uncertainties” still hover, “serious and consistent clues lead us to believe that she is probably dead, possibly the victim of intentional homicide by a spouse”, assured Jérôme Bourrier, public prosecutor in Bayonne.
Since February, she has been going through a divorce. A separation “obviously badly experienced” by the husband, a 43-year-old teacher, former reserve officer of the gendarmerie practicing sports shooting and hunting, presented as a survivalist.
It was the sister of the accused who alerted the police after discovering, on June 21, the body of her brother unconscious in the garden of the family home, a wound on the head, a concrete block next to him. On his body, “bruises and scratches”. In the house, “no traces of a struggle” but the personal effects of Laure Zacchello.
A “possible staging” according to the prosecution, in view of the testimonies of relatives and writings of the mother, who seemed “terrorized” by the ex-spouse, to the point of sleeping on the sofa with her children “and place objects around her to hear her approach.
An automatic pistol and a submachine gun, kept in strong cabinets in the master bedroom, “open but not forced”, have disappeared, underlined Jérôme Bourrier.
In police custody, the suspect, “with a cold and mute personality” according to the prosecution, claimed to remember nothing. Searches continue to find the forty-year-old and a call for witnesses has been launched. Investigators are seeking in particular to trace the movements of the suspect’s vehicle, a bright red 4×4 with blue stripes on the sides, on June 20 and 21.
“He is a survivalist, sportsman and hunter who knows the backcountry perfectly well, we are interested in any testimony,” declared Karim Fillali, head of the interdepartmental judicial police service.
