Michel Pialle’s police custody was extended in connection with the disappearance, at the end of March in Vendée, of his wife, Karine Esquivillon. The sister of the missing woman describes on franceinfo a man “always behind her”, and with a “cold attitude” which made her “very uncomfortable”.
Adélaïde Esquivillon had already “doubts” on the “staggering side” of the husband of her sister Karine Esquivillon, who has been missing since the end of March in Vendée. The placement in police custody of Michel Pialle on Wednesday, the revelations in the press about his troubled past and the extension of the investigation to facts of “murder” only reinforced his apprehension. “I expected this police custody”concedes Adélaïde Esquivillon, this Thursday at franceinfo.
“I found that there were a lot of vague elements and not very coherent explanations on his part”she explains. “His cold attitude made me very uncomfortable. I believe less and less in the hypothesis of the bad meeting. It’s awful to imagine that Michel could have done something to my sister. I I’m scared. Whatever happened, he needs to talk to us. We need the truth.“
A distance since 2015
The truth, Adélaïde Esquivillon confesses to franceinfo to have always had trouble identifying it with her brother-in-law. “One day, my son, who had lived with them for a bit in 2015, asked me if I was aware that Michel was a secret agent. He had shown him some medals. In the summer, when we went there, he showed them to us too. I told myself that he had bought them at the flea market. I had the feeling of someone who was inventing a life for himself and, of course, nothing should be said!”
Since this year 2015, Adélaïde Esquivillon has not seen her sister Karine, being content to exchange with her by telephone while regretting “a real estrangement”, “as if they lived at the end of the world”. She describes a woman who little by little “lost independence” and who was, she thinks, under “a form of influence”. “They were together almost all the time. For years when I called her, it was Michel who picked up. He was always behind her. It was a bit of a control tower.”
Karine Esquivillon was even “distant in his last messages” before his disappearance, says his sister. “In her last message, for her birthday on March 18, when she had not yet disappeared, she replied something like ‘day in the rain but surprises, kiss’. I even wondered if she wrote it.”
A call between Michel Pialle and Adélaïde Esquivillon
“43 days after the disappearance” by Karine Esquivillon, Michel Pialle called his sister Adélaïde for the first time. “Very quickly, he started talking to me about my sister as someone who had dropped everything, who had relationships at night, completely disengaged from everyday life at home… I had a hard time to believe it.”
During this call of May 10, the day after the discovery of Karine Esquivillon’s phone in a ditch, Michel Pialle hypothesizes that his wife has “maybe installed a VPN” to prevent the traceability of its GPS coordinates. “It shocked me a lot”explains Adélaïde Esquivillon. “Above all, I found that the circumstances of his disappearance between school time and the unexpected outing of the cat were very confusing. It immediately worried me. I found him very cold and detached, like a robot. “
Michel Pialle then tried to call back “twice” Adelaide Esquivillon. He finally left her a voice message in which “he was not very friendly” and asked him to“stop saying nonsense”. “I never called him back”, assures the sister of the disappeared to franceinfo. The husband’s custody was extended on Thursday. The judicial information against X for kidnapping and forcible confinement was extended to the facts of murder on Wednesday.