Leslie Hoorelbeke, 22, and Kevin Trompat, 21, have not given any sign of life since the night of November 25 to 26 in Prahecq, a town of 2,000 inhabitants near Niort. A dog belonging to the young woman also vanished.
A man has been indicted for “kidnapping and forcible confinement not followed by voluntary release” and placed in pre-trial detention, the Poitiers prosecutor’s office announced Thursday evening in a press release, without mentioning a possible motive.
This man in his twenties was arrested Tuesday in Vendée at his father’s home, which was searched like that of his mother in Deux-Sèvres. Friend of the disappeared, he was to lodge them in a house in Prahecq the night of their disappearance.
According to the public prosecutor in Poitiers, Cyril Lacombe, who had opened a judicial investigation of a criminal nature at the end of December, two other men are currently heard in Niort by the gendarmes in charge of the investigation.
From a source close to the investigation, the disappearance of the couple could be partly linked to drug trafficking involving some of the protagonists of the case.
Telephone records
On January 5, the suspect indicted had participated in a beat organized in Prahecq by the family of Kevin Trompat and had mentioned the evening of the disappearance in front of journalists.
“Kevin still had the keys to my house. Me, I lived more at home, I live in a truck. They came around 5:30 p.m., we saw each other. They had the potato, we had a good laugh together. Then I went to my brother and to a techno party, ”he said at the time, adding that he did not believe in the voluntary disappearance of the couple.
His mother had subsequently assured of his innocence in the press, assuring that on Friday evening, his son “was taking part in a rave party at La Crèche”, about fifteen kilometers to the north, and that he had not returned. in Prahecq before Sunday.
Problem: the record of the young man’s telephone communications showed that he had returned to see his friends in the village during the evening and that he had exchanged messages with Leslie Hoorelbeke until late at night.
“They were my son’s friends. He sometimes spoke to me about Leslie, whom he considered his little sister, but it stops there, ”explained the father of the suspect this week, while the track of a romantic revenge was also mentioned in the press.
10.000 euros
A second man, arrested on Wednesday during the custody of the first suspect, is from Puyravault, in Charente-Maritime.
It was in this village, on December 8, that belongings belonging to the missing couple, in particular a hairbrush from the young woman and a road safety certificate from her companion, were found in a container for recycling clothes.
According to Le Courrier de l’Ouest, his phone and that of the indicted “limited” to the same places and at the same times the night of the disappearance.
His police custody was extended by 24 hours, the prosecution said.
A third person, aged 23 and “in connection” with the indicted, has also been placed in police custody since Thursday morning, according to the prosecutor, who did not reveal the place of his arrest.
During the January 5 search in Prahecq, Kevin Trompat’s mother-in-law told reporters that he “had almost 10,000 euros on him” on the evening of his disappearance, a sum she had brought to him in Prahecq, according to her “to buy a car”.
She too had ruled out the idea of a voluntary disappearance of the couple. Those close to Leslie Hoorelbeke never believed it either: “Abduction and kidnapping have been our convictions since the start,” they told AFP in January.
