A man was taken into custody after the discovery of the lifeless body, covered with bruises, of a 35-year-old woman who could be his companion, on the night of Saturday to Sunday in Haute-Saône.
The man, aged about sixty, was taken into custody for “homicide”, said the public prosecutor in Vesoul, Emmanuel Dupic.
"All investigations are underway to lift the hypothesis of a criminal act" or to confirm it, he added.
Help was called around 2 a.m. by the suspect, who was spending the evening with the victim in the village of Faverney.
The woman, "who would perhaps be in a relationship" with the sixty-year-old, "had bruises on many parts of the body," added the magistrate.
An autopsy will be performed on Monday “to understand the causes of death,” he said.
Massive alcoholism
According to the first elements of the investigation, the victim was spending the evening at home with the man, who lives in another town in the department, and other people who did not stay.
At the time of the facts, "the man was alone with this woman (in) a context of heavy alcoholism: the defendant was highly alcoholic and a lot of corpses of bottles were discovered at home", according to the prosecutor.
The suspect was taken to the hospital and examined before being heard.
The investigation was entrusted to the Vesoul gendarmerie.
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Since the start of the year, at least 47 feminicides have occurred, according to a count conducted by AFP.
In 2019, 146 women were killed by their spouse or ex-partner, 25 more than the previous year, according to the latest official figures.