A 69-year-old pensioner, soon to be tried for having killed his partner, was returned on March 18 to an assize court in Versailles (Yvelines) for murder of a spouse and attack on the integrity of a corpse.

The victim's body was found dismembered and charred in a wood in Vernouillet in 2017.

The date of the trial is not yet known.

According to Me Anne Bouillon, lawyer for the victim's son, this case is "emblematic" of feminicides, "that is to say that women die in silence", she declared.

Simulated evidence of life

On August 31, 2017, pieces of burned bodies were found on a pedestrian path in Vernouillet.

It took two years for investigators to identify the victim: a sexagenarian reported missing by her companion on October 16, 2017. Her DNA, found at the companion's home in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), on a hairbrush, allows reconciliation.

The identification was all the more complicated as the companion would have simulated proof of life: SMS, bank withdrawals… For a year and four months, more than 28,000 euros were debited from the account of the deceased.

The man made his first confession before his indictment and his placement in pre-trial detention on October 17, 2019.

Several tools used, including a chainsaw

He said he strangled his companion at home, claiming that she was violent and jealous and had also tried to strangle him.

He then gave slightly different versions during the investigation.

He also admitted to using a knife and handsaw to dismember the body.

Probably also other tools, such as a mechanical saw, according to the investigators.

The accused then transported the dismembered body in the night in bags of rubble to Vernouillet where he burned it.

The couple had been together since 2016. He does not present any particular pathology according to an expert.

She, described by the expert as having a “depressive” and “impulsive” personality, had shown a tendency to “devalue” herself during stays in a psychiatric hospital.

In Guadeloupe, a man indicted for the murder of his ex-partner

Suspected of having stabbed his partner, a Monegasque arrested in France

  • Versailles

  • Ile-de-France

  • Paris

  • Miscellaneous Paris

  • Miscellaneous facts

  • Murder

  • Femicide

  • Justice