A 74-year-old man admitted to killing his wife, who was found strangled Monday night in a basement room in their home in Kanfen, Moselle. "The lady was found by firefighters, acting on requisition gendarmes, in the basement, around 20:30," said Julien Berger, deputy prosecutor at the prosecutor's office of Metz. The woman, born in 1953, was discovered "in a room adjoining the garage", told the AFP the gendarmerie.
According to the Republican Lorraine , it is the son of the couple who alerted the relief, worried about not having news of his mother. Her husband "was arrested near his home" in the town of Kanfen on the Luxembourg border, Monday around 23:30 and placed in police custody, according to the magistrate.
A "strangulation in the context of a divorce"
"He confessed and acknowledged a strangulation in the morning, in the context of a divorce," added Julien Berger, adding that the couple had been married since 1973. No violence or threat had been reported previously within of the couple. The detention of the suspect was to be extended Tuesday afternoon to conduct auditions, search and autopsy of the body of the victim including, according to the deputy prosecutor. The septuagenarian will be presented Wednesday afternoon to an examining magistrate. "We have not yet determined whether it was a homicide or an assassination," Julien Berger said.
In 2017, 130 women were killed by their husbands, spouses or former husbands, one every three days. And every year, in France, nearly 220,000 women suffer violence from their spouse or former spouse. According to a tweet Tuesday of the collective "We all", "60 women have died murdered by their spouse or ex since the beginning of the year".