The man is suspected by investigators of being “the predator of the woods”. A sexagenarian was indicted and remanded in custody on Thursday, December 15, a judicial source told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Aged sixty-two, he is suspected of having kidnapped, kidnapped and raped, at gunpoint, five teenage girls aged 15 to 19 between December 4, 1998 and June 8, 2008 in Charente-Maritime. and in the Paris region. Two of them were also stolen.
The man was identified and arrested with the help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (FBI) thanks to the genetic analysis carried out from spermatozoa found on the five victims, explains, in a press release, the prosecutor of the Republic of Paris, Laure Beccuau.
The investigating judge of the Paris court, in charge of investigations since 2016, “requested on August 25, 2021 the American authorities by means of an international letter rogatory for the purposes of genetic analysis”explains the prosecutor. “On October 24, 2022, the FBI issued its report in which it managed to identify people who may be ascendants of the perpetrator”says M.me Beccuau.
It is this report “as well as the investigations carried out on the basis of the elements collected at the time of the events, in particular the description of the perpetrator and the vehicles used to transport the victims” which resulted “to the identification and arrest of a 62-year-old man in Courtry [Seine-et-Marne] »said M.me Beccuau.
Custody Tuesday
The suspect was taken into custody on Tuesday. A comparison of his DNA with the suspect’s genetic profile found on the victims concluded a match. During his police custody, the man, retired, partially admitted the facts.
These are in particular “similarities in the modus operandi [l’enlèvement dans une zone urbanisée, le transport dans une zone boisée isolée sous la menace d’une arme] and the discovery of a common DNA, extracted from the spermatozoa detected on the five victims” which justified the joining, on June 8, 2016, of several judicial inquiries opened on these facts, specifies Mme Beccuau. The Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP), in charge of investigations, launched a call for witnesses in April 2019 to find this suspect.