EShe has been missing for a week. In the Basque Country, Laure Zacchello, a 43-year-old mother, has not given any sign of life since June 21. Searches are underway to find the forty-year-old and a call for witnesses has been launched. Her husband was indicted for intentional homicide and imprisoned. Here is what we know about this affair.
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Missing since June 21
Laure Zacchello, mother of three children aged 3, 6 and 9, has been missing since the morning of Friday June 21. The 43-year-old woman was last seen in the village of Urrugne located in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. A call for witnesses has been launched by the national police.
The Bayonne prosecutor’s office does not exclude any hypothesis, but heavy suspicions weigh on the companion of the forty-year-old. Indeed, 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 during a press conference this Thursday, June 27.
The trail of a staging
It was Laure’s husband’s sister who alerted the police, reports La Dépêche du Midi. On June 21, she tried to contact her brother by telephone. Without a response, she finally goes to his home.
Arriving there, she discovered 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, which seems to rule out the burglary trail, indicates the Bayonne public prosecutor.
According to the local daily, the husband, a 43-year-old teacher and former gendarmerie reserve officer practicing sports shooting and hunting, was transported to Saint-Jean-de-Luz hospital.
READ ALSO Excavator, discreet reconstruction and confidences: the last secrets of the Jubillar affairThe investigators do not rule out a “possible staging” 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 to place objects around her to hear her approach.”
An automatic pistol and a submachine gun, kept in safes in the master bedroom, “opened but not forced”, have disappeared, Jérôme Bourrier stressed.
A “cold and mute” suspect
Since February, Laure had been in the process of getting a divorce. A separation “clearly badly experienced” by the husband, presented as a survivalist. According to La Dépêche du Midishe had reported a violent argument to the authorities last February. According to the newspaper, Laure claimed that her handbag had been forcibly snatched by her husband while her email had been hacked and the keys to her therapist’s office stolen.
In police custody, the suspect, “with a cold and mute personality” according to the prosecution, claimed to remember nothing. “He is a survivalist, sportsman and hunter who knows the hinterland perfectly well, we welcome any testimony,” declared Karim Fillali, head of the interdepartmental judicial police service.
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.
