She had called for help a few minutes before the tragedy.
A 55-year-old woman was found dead Monday evening at her home in Gerstheim (Bas-Rhin).
Her partner, a man in his sixties, was indicted and placed in pre-trial detention on Wednesday evening, AFP learned from a source close to the case.
The gendarmes, warned on Monday by the wife herself of an episode of violence, intervened within a few minutes, but were only able to note the death of the victim on the spot, around 11:30 p.m.
According to the first elements of the investigation, she was strangled with a belt.
Numerous traces of blood were found in the accommodation, according to information from Latest News of Alsace (DNA).
Read alsoFemicide: the family of a victim, killed despite several alerts, files a complaint against the State
The man, born in 1960 and retired for a few months, lived with his wife in an apartment in a ten-unit building in this small rural town south of Strasbourg, located along the German border.
The couple had a 23-year-old daughter.
“No history”
“There had been no history of violence at our level, no reports,” the mayor, Julien Koegler, told AFP.
“In a rural town of 3,500 inhabitants where everyone knows each other, it creates a stir, it calls out when they are direct neighbors,” he added.
A judicial investigation was opened by the Strasbourg public prosecutor's office for murder of a spouse.
On average, a feminicide occurs every three days in France.
The Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti recently put forward the figure of 94 femicides in 2023, compared to 118 in 2022, a drop greeted with skepticism by feminist associations.