Six years later, the investigation has been abruptly accelerated. While Hélène Sanchez Parra, 38, disappeared in 2017 in the Pyrénées-Orientales, her husband, suspected of murder, was indicted and imprisoned, explained Monday the prosecutor of Perpignan Jean-David Cavaillé. The twist came last week when a friend of the couple confessed to gendarmes that the mother of three had been killed by her husband.
While in police custody, the 56-year-old man, who was living at the couple's home in the village of Sournia at the time of the disappearance, led the gendarmes to "an undergrowth where the search made it possible to find on the one hand pieces of a firearm, and on the other hand bones", according to a statement from the Perpignan prosecutor's office released on Thursday.
The judge issued a warrant on Thursday so that the husband, who was in Corsica at the time, could be questioned by the gendarmes of the Montpellier research section, in charge of the investigation. The results of the examination of the bones are expected on Tuesday. They will have to establish whether they match Hélène Sanchez Parra.
Her family and husband reported her disappearance on 27 June 2017. A judicial investigation was then opened by the Perpignan prosecutor's office. At the time, the husband told investigators that his wife had "voluntarily" left the house following an argument. The search was unsuccessful and the case was closed by the prosecutor's office.
Until 2022. Placed by social services, the couple's children then pointed to "the hypothesis of a tragedy of which the father could be the author", according to a source close to the case. A new investigation yielded nothing, but the prosecutor's office did not give up: a judicial investigation for murder was entrusted to an investigating judge. The following year, the body of Hélène Sanchez Parra may well have been found and the culprit identified.
