Podcast. Crime and justice: the massacre masons of Aude and the double murder of Argeliers

Fouad Sellam and Jean-Barthelemy Rathqueber during their appeal trial in 2013 in Perpignan. FREE NOON – François Barrère

In April 2008, a retired couple, Jocelyne and Jean-Claude Saint-Aubert, disappeared in Argeliers, a small village in Minervois where they had just bought a house for their retirement years. The investigation carried out by the gendarmes will lead to the arrest of two craftsmen who had intervened in their home, with very dark intentions.

"We are taken hostage and we have been robbed by Modeste and his friend Foued. They want to put us in the field of Modeste in Cruzy." When in April 2008 they discovered these few lines hastily written in a notebook hidden in the bathroom of this pavilion in Argeliers, in Aude, the gendarmes understood that the worst undoubtedly happened for the Saint-Aubert couple.

An automatic pistol bullet in the chamber

Both have been missing for several days, and the only clues are worrying: this letter in the form of a cry for help, an automatic pistol bullet in the chamber, remnants of adhesive tape on the floor. So many clues that lead investigators to the trail of kidnapping.  The discovery, a few days later, of the body of a woman, handcuffed and practically decapitated, on the side of the road, only confirmed their suspicions.

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And the subsequent arrest of the two suspects, craftsmen who had intervened in the couple's home, will take the investigators to the heart of the horror, with two men ready to the unthinkable to grab a few thousand euros. Two masons of massacre, two masons of horror.

This podcast is a new episode of the series "Crime and justice, the legal saga", written and narrated by François Barrère.  Judicial cases that have marked our region , forgotten crimes, famous trials:  Midi Libre takes you every Friday into the dark but exciting world of the greats news items, through these new podcasts.