Double murder in the Cévennes: after 72 hours of tracking, the authorities have "absolutely no trace" of Valentin Marcone

Can Valentin Marcone still be arrested alive, after a third night spent in the dense forest of the Cévennes? "This is truly our hope and this is why this device is still so important, (...) the objective is to achieve its most peaceful surrender possible", Eric Maurel replied this Friday morning, the public prosecutor of Nîmes, at the microphone of France Info. This young father has been tracked down by the gendarmes for three days and three nights. He is suspected of having killed his boss, as well as a colleague from the sawmill who employed him in Plantiers, in the Gard, before going to hiding in the Cévennes.

"We have absolutely no trace of him, we hope that this message will reach him," also commented the magistrate, about the moving call to surrender, made Thursday by the father of the suspect.

While nearly 350 gendarmes and helicopters are deployed to get their hands on this armed man, who has "demonstrated his dangerousness", after the double murder at his place of work, he recognizes that the search area of ​​15 km2 very steep and crisscrossed by the military for three days, could be widened.

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“He's a man who knows the terrain perfectly, he's a hunter, he would practice shooting in the woods.

He knows all the paths, […] He was able to escape the extremely tight network of the gendarmerie […] This is the reason why we launched a call for witnesses, very moving from his father, but also a wanted notice national ”, underlines the prosecutor.

Towards a "dramatic outcome, by interposed gendarme"?

“He may have set up a combat post, he has a lot of sandbags at his home, his behavior is extremely worrying.

It may be that his die-hardism has made him choose a dramatic outcome or perhaps he seeks to have this dramatic outcome, through an interposed gendarme, ”also anticipates General Philippe Ott, interviewed on France Info.

The profile of Valentin Marcone indeed suggests a bloody outcome to this manhunt.

“Investigators are working on understanding his background and his personality,” reports the Nîmes prosecutor this Friday morning, adding that they are looking in particular at his accounts on social networks.

“What we know is that he is a very isolated individual, who does not have a friendly relationship, who has a social life very focused on his family and who had experienced difficulties in his professional life, so much in his previous job than in the job he currently held, for reasons which fall within the normal life of a company, namely working hours, whether or not to pay overtime.

"

On France Info, he describes this young father of a family as "a man who has weapons, knows how to use them, and one of the weapons which would be in his possession is a particularly dangerous weapon, with a firing capacity of several tens of meters. ".

"A switch-over about 15 days, three weeks ago"

However, the fugitive is not considered by investigators as belonging to the survivalist movement.

If he "was interested", "on the occasion of hikes, he happened to get lost in the woods", according to Eric Maurel, who concludes that "he is not cataloged by the gendarmes as Phone ".

The magistrate adds that “tension had arisen between him and his employer in recent weeks.

What we found out was that in the last few days he came to work with his bulletproof vest.

"He thus evokes" a changeover about 15 days, three weeks ago, the exact reason for this change in behavior, we do not know it for the moment ".

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In order to protect them, four inhabitants of the area were subject to exfiltration "for security", he also recalls.

"We know that he had expressed grievances against certain people, without being able to speak of a target," explains Eric Morel, who indicates that "there is no plan to move to act ”but“ tensions ”.

In addition, the suspect “had been the subject of a complaint for acts of slanderous denunciation. The prosecution decided to initiate proceedings against him and this case should be judged in some time, ”he reveals, while a fourth day of research began this Friday morning in the Cévennes.