A 50-year-old was placed in police custody and indicted for murder, almost two years after the mysterious disappearance of his wife in Joigny (Yonne), the Auxerre prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday May 24.
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Frédéric Mellet, 53, had declared the disappearance of his wife, Chantal, 54, on July 2, 2020. Since then, and despite numerous searches in the surrounding countryside and the garden of the marital home, no trace has been found. of the farmer, who managed a goat farm with her husband. The latter would have disappeared leaving her cell phone and credit card at home. In October 2021, a judicial investigation against X was finally opened for murder.
In January 2022, Frédéric Mellet confessed in the newspaper L’Yonne Républicaine that he had learned that his wife was having an extramarital affair. On the day of the disappearance, he wanted to ask her to put an end to it. The public prosecutor of Auxerre, Hugues de Phily, did not confirm this connection, contenting himself with mentioning “a complex file for which there are still multiple possibilities of investigation“. The investigation was entrusted to the research section of the Dijon gendarmerie.
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