The 50-year-old had reported the disappearance of his wife on July 2, 2020. The searches had not made it possible to find the farmer.
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A 50-year-old was placed in police custody and indicted for murder, almost two years after the disappearance of his wife in Joigny (Yonne), the Auxerre prosecution announced on Tuesday May 24.
On July 2, 2020, Frédéric Mellet, 53, declared the disappearance of his wife, Chantal, 54, with whom he managed a goat farm. Chantal allegedly disappeared leaving her cell phone and credit card at home. The excavations carried out in the garden of the marital home and in the surrounding countryside did not make it possible to find any trace of the fifties.
In October 2021, a judicial investigation against X was opened for murder. A few months later, in January 2022, Frédéric Mellet told the newspaper Republican Yonne that he had learned that his wife was having an affair. On the day of the disappearance, he wanted to ask her to put an end to it.
The public prosecutor of Auxerre, Hugues de Phily, did not confirm this connection, contenting himself with mentioning “a complex file for which there are still multiple possibilities of investigation”. The investigation was entrusted to the research section of the Dijon gendarmerie (Côte d’Or).