A mother and her two children taken into custody. The body of a man found rotting. The bond between the two is family. The death of this 38-year-old man is attributed to his partner and their two children. At the end of December, in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin), in a box, a body was found wrapped in a bag.
The three suspects were indicted and placed in pre-trial detention for murder by spouse for the woman and for murder by ascendant for the children, the Mulhouse prosecutor’s office announced in a press release this Friday.
Under what circumstances was the body found?
The victim’s body was discovered on December 24 in a bag in a box, rue Vauban in Mulhouse, “in a state of advanced putrefaction, hidden in a cupboard”, explains the prosecution. The investigators quickly made the connection with the tenant of the garage who no longer resided there but who had been the subject of a report for a worrying disappearance since October 2021.
Who are the suspects?
Very quickly, the investigations focused on the victim’s partner and children, who strangely had never reported this disappearance but had access to the garage. The wife, placed in police custody, was finally indicted on December 28.
As for the victim’s two children, they were placed in police custody on January 14, 2025. The son, a minor at the time of the events, is now 19 years old and the daughter is 21 years old. They would be known to the police.
-How do they defend themselves?
During her custody at the end of December, the partner “admitted to having harbored a criminal plan with her children, which she blamed for having killed the victim by suffocating him”, reports the prosecution. The latter explained “this gesture by the behavior of the victim” whom she assures “was alcoholic and violent”, specifies the prosecutor who notes that however, “she had never filed a complaint against him”.
The two children admitted their “active participation with their father’s partner in the facts and in the concealment of the body”, specifies the prosecution. They were finally indicted and placed in pre-trial detention on January 16, 2025.
According to a source close to the investigation, reports AFP, the motive for the murder could also be explained by sexual assault and violence committed against children who were minors at the time. For the moment “medico-legal investigations are still underway given the age of the facts, to determine the precise causes of death”, concludes the prosecution.
