Three months after the disappearance of a couple in Deux-Sèvres, the investigation accelerated on Thursday March 2 with the indictment of a friend of the couple, while two other men are in custody. 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 on Tuesday in Vendée at his father’s home, which was searched, like that of his mother in Deux-Sèvres. A friend of the disappeared, he was to lodge them in a house in Prahecq on the night of their disappearance.
“He always had the keys to my house”
According to the public prosecutor in Poitiers, Cyril Lacombe, who had opened a judicial investigation of a criminal nature at the end of December 2022, two other men are heard in Niort by the gendarmes in charge of the investigation.
On January 5, the indicted suspect had participated in a beat organized in Prahecq by the family of Kevin Trompat and had spoken of 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’s house and to a techno party,” he said at the time, adding that he did not believe in the voluntary disappearance of the couple.
Subsequently, his mother had attested to his innocence in the press, assuring that, on Friday evening, his son “attended a rave party at La Crèche”, about fifteen kilometers to the north, and that he was not not returned to Prahecq before Sunday. Problem: The young man’s phone records 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.
“Almost 10,000 euros on him”
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 were “limited” to the same places and at the same times the night of the disappearance. His police custody was extended by twenty-four hours, the prosecution said.
A third person, aged 23 and “in connection” with the indicted, has also been in custody since Thursday morning, according to the prosecutor, who did not reveal the place of his arrest.
During the Jan. 5 search in Prahecq, Kevin Trompat’s mother-in-law told reporters that he “had almost 10,000 euros on him” the night he disappeared, money she 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 beliefs since the start,” they told AFP in January.