After the discovery last week of two bodies, which everything seems to indicate that they are the couple of French tourists who disappeared almost a month ago in Madeira, investigators are favoring the accident trail, said Wednesday the Portuguese police. The accident
“is our most probable hypothesis”
, especially
“after the discovery on Tuesday of a shoe and a backpack with documents belonging to the couple”
, Commissioner Joao Gois told AFP.
“Everything indicates that the couple fell several meters
,” said Joao Gois, who had already participated in the operations that made it possible to recover two bodies spotted on Friday in a very slippery ravine, and
“finding themselves in an advanced state of decomposition.”
. Alerted by a stranger, the rescuers first spotted a first body late Thursday afternoon, then the next morning, another corpse a few meters away.
“The judicial police went there to try to identify the bodies using fingerprints
,” explained Joao Gois.
“But once we find bodies, the file is automatically transmitted to the courts”
which takes over the investigation, he added.
The information was also confirmed by the French authorities who announced the opening of an investigation into the worrying disappearance of a French couple from Beaumont-de-Lomagne (Tarn-et-Garonne), in the south of France.
“Investigations are currently underway to formally identify these people and it is therefore impossible to indicate with certainty that it is the couple
,” Bruno Sauvage, the Montauban prosecutor, indicated on Friday. The two missing tourists, aged 58 and 56, owners of a bakery, were on vacation on the Portuguese island, according to the French press.
They had not given any sign of life after leaving for a hike on March 16 in Sao Vicente. It was their 27-year-old daughter who, not seeing them return even though they had only left with two bottles of water, had raised the alarm. Nicknamed the
“island of flowers”
or the
“pearl of the Atlantic”
, and located 500 km from the Moroccan coast, Madeira welcomes thousands of tourists each year attracted by its volcanic landscapes and its mild climate.