The prosecutor's office of Lorient has opened a judicial investigation following the recent discovery of the lifeless body of a newborn at the home of a couple in Vannes (Morbihan), said Wednesday the prosecutor of the Republic of Lorient.
A miscarriage?
Last Saturday, the 41-year-old husband discovered a bag in the family garage. His wife, 39, "confided to him his version of events", namely that she "had a miscarriage three years ago and that she had kept the body of the baby in their garage", said the prosecutor of Lorient Stéphane Kellenberger in a statement. The latter, "apparently panicked", alerted the next day a friend of the couple, who warned the authorities. Arriving at their home, the officers "found the man digging a hole in the garden." They then went inside the pavilion, where they discovered in the garage "a backpack, itself containing a closed plastic bag, containing a cloth and the remains of a small body".
Placed in police custody - as well as her husband - "the mother claimed that in 2019, it was her 5th pregnancy, which she had not followed medically. It evoked a desired child, but a complicated marital context, "continues the prosecutor. According to the thirty-year-old, the little boy would have arrived "suddenly" as a result of "violent abdominal pain" and then would have been stillborn.
A couple living "in isolation"
The father, a truck driver, said for his part "to have been informed of this pregnancy", his wife having then told him that he had been "victim of a miscarriage". The autopsy determined that "this baby had, at the time of death, 40 weeks of gestational development" and "had no malformations, bone pathology or visible trauma". "He could therefore have been viable," adds the prosecutor, but no element "at this stage" allowed to say whether he was born alive or not. "At the cervical level, was found a kind of garment cord, with double buckle," it is also indicated.
Neighbors tell our colleagues from Ouest-France that it was a "couple who argued quite loudly and quite regularly" and who " lived a little in isolation". A judicial investigation was opened on charges of intentional homicide of a minor (against the mother) and concealment of a corpse (against the father). The wife was placed on Tuesday under the regime of assisted witness and left free. Both were previously unknown to the justice system.