Michel Pialle has been repeating the same thing for more than two months: his wife, Karine Esquivillon, left the marital home of her own free will on Monday March 27, worn out by a couple’s life that was falling apart. “She was fed up with it here, it’s flat, it lacks culture, she was tired, he told us in mid-May. I think she went south. It has also been more than two months since Karine’s children and sister confided their surprise and their conviction: Karine would never have left so suddenly, leaving behind her children, and in particular the youngest, her son and her 12 and 14 year old daughter.
Two antagonistic versions and one observation: since Michel Pialle’s report on April 3 to the gendarmerie, Karine Esquivillon has not been found. But, after two months of discreet investigations carried out by investigators from the research section (SR) of Nantes, the hypothesis of a voluntary departure of the 54-year-old mother is crumbling.
According to our information, Michel Pialle, 52, was indeed arrested this morning at his home, in the town of Maché (Vendée) by the gendarmes on the rogatory commission of an investigating judge. Initially opened for “kidnapping and forcible confinement”, the investigation was extended, by an additional indictment from the La Roche-sur-Yon prosecutor’s office, to facts of “murder”. A search is underway at his home. Enough to revive the parallels with the Jubillar and Daval cases, with, each time, the role of the husband who gradually switches from victim to suspect. What to consider, also, the track of feminicide. His police custody can last 48 hours before a potential presentation to the magistrate. The gendarmes believe they have brought to light questions and contradictions in the story of the fifty-year-old who said he was overwhelmed by the situation.
Over the weeks, the investigators have closed several doors on the involvement of third parties, explored many hypotheses including that of voluntary departure and have come to the conclusion that Michel Pialle may hold the key to the fate of his wife. He is the last to have seen Karine on March 27 and the two spouses were then alone in the couple’s home in La Malnoue, a hamlet of Maché. According to the story of Michel Pialle, his wife had disappeared in a few minutes around 4 p.m. on Monday March 27. He was busy looking for the family cat, which had just escaped…
A separation known to no one
After having caught up with the animal, Michel Pialle would have noticed the departure of his wife, who, according to him, left with some personal belongings and the family booklet. Surprisingly, the mother of the family had not taken her car when she ran away. Michel Pialle had explained to our colleagues from “Seven to Eight” that his wife did not like to drive and had probably taken “a taxi or an Uber”. But the investigators have multiplied in recent weeks checks with the taxi company in the area without finding any trace of a professional who was able to pick up Karine. Their searches in the stations close to the home of the couple did not yield more results. Moreover, all the searches carried out by the gendarmes – who notably probed a lake or slurry pits in the region – focused on the surroundings of Maché, proof that the gendarmes have always favored the “local” track to that of a distant and enlightened departure from Karine Esquivillon.
Since the start of this investigation, the gendarmes have also been troubled by several “inconsistencies” that have surfaced in Michel Pialle’s story. According to our information, Karine’s two eldest sons – born from a first marriage – were surprised, for example, during their hearings, that Michel Pialle did not tell them the same story after their mother’s disappearance. Investigators were also surprised to find that the couple’s split – “It’s been almost four years. We continued to live under the same roof and to get along well even if we were no longer in a relationship”, Michel Pialle assured us on May 15 – was not known to anyone in Karine’s entourage, not even to his eldest sons who came regularly to visit them in Maché. Nor had anyone heard of the nocturnal discussions that Karine had, according to statements by Michel Pialle, with “one or more people (…) late at night, until 3 or 4 in the morning”.
Karine’s phone is the other determining factor that prompted the gendarmes to favor the criminal trail. From March 27 to 31, several text messages sent from this device were received by Michel Pialle and the couple’s youngest children. ” I leave. I can no longer be two but no longer as a couple ”, would have been the recipient in particular Michel Pialle, a few hours after the disappearance of his wife. In reality, the investigators doubt very much that Karine is really the author of this message on the tensions of the couple.
Especially since one of the couple’s daughters has, for her part, received photos of the Pilat dune by SMS. As if his mother had gone on vacation. The gendarmes have since established that these pictures were not taken by Karine. They are extracted from two Internet sites, accessible in open source. According to our information, these messages were also sent…. from the Maché sector.
Did Michel Pialle send messages with Karine’s phone?
It is in this same area, less than three kilometers from the couple’s home, that Karine’s famous phone will be found on April 9. It was then lit, and probably abandoned here for a short time. The investigators find it hard to believe that Karine left her home on March 27 to finally stay near Maché until April 9… They therefore wonder if Michel Pialle is not in fact the author of the messages. A doubt also fed by the past of Karine’s husband. Condemned several times for fraud, the suspect had been described, in a divorce decree pronounced in 2003, as a man with “a mythomaniacal behavior” capable of “inventing incredible scenarios”.
It remains to be seen what the motive would be. Could an argument have broken out between Michel and Karine? Was the husband worried that his wife would leave him? Unless the case takes on other dimensions, still unknown. On June 1, through his lawyer Me Antoine Ory, Michel Pialle denounced the “cyberharassment” of which he claimed to be a victim on social networks. The father of the family remains, at this stage, presumed innocent. He has always denied any involvement in Karine’s disappearance during his interviews.
