The suspect was having an affair with his secretary. He had recently separated from his girlfriend, with whom he had a five-year-old child.
A 38-year-old man, Jonathan C., was wanted after the discovery of his wife, his secretary and his five-year-old daughter, stabbed to death, in Saône-et-Loire: his body was found on Monday 9 May in Haute-Savoie.
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On Sunday, help is called after the discovery of a woman in her thirties with her throat slit, who is bleeding to death in the parking lot of a commercial area in Saint-Rémy, a town bordering Chalon-sur-Saône. She dies shortly after. In her thirties according to France 3 Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, she was a secretary in a driving school in Chalon-sur-Saône.
After the discovery of the victim, the investigators go to the home of his boss, in Gergy, about fifteen kilometers from Chalon. In the middle of the night, they discover the bodies of his wife, also in their thirties, and his five-year-old daughter. Both were stabbed.
A secret affair
The Chalon prosecutor’s office then confirms that there is “presumably» a link between the two discoveries, the alleged author having a «Family linkwith mother and child, but also aprofessional linkwith the first victim, found in the parking lot. A search is then launched to find the suspect. Sources close to the file, it is specified that the latter was having an affair with his secretary, that he had separated from his wife in February and that the couple was to divorce soon – the second after a first marriage -. Together they had a little girl, then aged five.
The connection is then quickly established by the investigators with a vehicle found Sunday evening in the parking lot of the Pont de la Caille, in Haute-Savoie. Nicknamed the “suicide bridge», this suspended building almost 150 meters high is located between Allonzier-la-Caille and Cruseilles. An excavation is then launched in the gorges below, in which plunge about fifteen suicides per year. Monday morning, “the body of an individual likely to be that of the perpetrator is discovered below this bridge“, told AFP the public prosecutor of Thonon-les-Bains, Bruno Badré. “Investigations and verifications are underway in order to be able to formally identify it.“, he added.
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The research section of the Dijon gendarmerie is in charge of the investigation. Autopsies of the four bodies are to take place on Tuesday. During a press conference this Tuesday morning, the public prosecutor of Chalon, Patrice Guigon, said that the man already had a criminal record: last March, his partner had filed a complaint for a “identity document theft“. In October, he had also been the subject of proceedings for domestic violence, but had benefited from an alternative measure to prosecution, namely a citizenship course, his companion not wishing to file a complaint. “We want to provide as many answers as possible to the families of the victims, since Jonathan C. will not be able to answer in court for these three homicides.“, concluded the magistrate at the end of his speech.
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