"Any act of anthropophagy is excluded" in the case of the teenager found beheaded and mutilated Sunday evening in Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône), announced the prosecution Thursday, confirming that the victim was indeed a young neighbor of 13 years old, named Romain and wanted by his mother.
Arthur, the 32-year-old suspected of committing this sordid act, was shot dead overnight by police.
He had just come out of a mental hospital.
"The genetic expertises concluded in the absence of DNA of the victim in the gastric bowl of the presumed author" of the murder, killed by a police officer approximately three hours after the discovery of the tragedy, thus make it possible to exclude any act of anthropophagy ”, insisted the prosecutor of the Republic of Tarascon, in reference to this“ thesis conveyed by certain media ”.
Significant damage to the integrity of the corpse
At the same time, these genetic expertises confirmed that the victim was indeed the 13-year-old teenager whose disappearance had been reported by his mother in Tarascon. This one had presented to the police station of the city Sunday evening, accompanied by a young man who had explained "to have carried out housework at a man and to have seen the shape of a body in a bag-trash, in the bathroom ”, had explained the parquet floor in a previous press release Tuesday.
The analyzes carried out by the forensic hematology laboratory in Bordeaux have also made it possible to observe "significant damage to the integrity of the corpse", added Laurent Gumbau on Thursday, without giving details: but the investigations "do not allow us to retain the hypothesis of a consensual or imposed sexual relation between the victim and the presumed perpetrator of the facts in the times close to the homicide, whether before or after ”, he insisted.
Read also Tarascon: the body of a 13-year-old minor discovered in a bag, the suspect shot dead by the police
"DNA analyzes have, however, made it possible to strengthen the link between the corpse and the alleged perpetrator," added Laurent Gumbau, proof of "contact" having been established.
At the scene, Sunday around 11:30 pm, the police had discovered a "decapitated body having undergone post-mortem mutilation".
The state of the body, already in rotting, the death having taken place on Friday, had not allowed a certain visual identification.
At the end of the two autopsies on Friday, the Tarascon prosecutor's office will relinquish jurisdiction in favor of that of Aix-en-Provence, which should open a judicial investigation for intentional homicide.
The investigation into the death of the teenager was entrusted to the judicial police, that of the death of his presumed murderer is carried out by the IGPN, the police force.