French Man Charged with Murder After Wife’s Death in House Fire

The facts date back to July 11, 2016. The firefighters had been alerted, late in the evening, for a fire in a house, in Aunay-sous-Crécy, reports L’Écho républicain. A neighbor had managed to extinguish the fire before their arrival. When they entered the apartment, they found the carbonized body of the septuagenarian’s wife. A woman suffering from multiple sclerosis and confined to a wheelchair. "It’s a gas leak," assures Driss Ben Hammadi, adding that he was doing DIY in the basement of his house when he had heard screams. "I threw a bucket of water to put it out, but I couldn’t," he confesses.

But the report provided by the gendarme of the research brigade before the jurors contradicts his version. "Mr. Ben Hammadi had explained that he had put merguez to cook. He would have asked his wife to turn them off a quarter of an hour later. However, not only did her disability prevent her from turning the stove knobs, but we did not find any merguez in the pan," the document indicates. In addition, the victim was found charred, next to the round kitchen table, and not near the stove.

Another additional proof: traces of gasoline were found on her clothes, on the wheelchair, but also on her husband’s personal effects, and in the carbonized watering can. Clues that lead the gendarme to conclude that "the criminal trail is favored". What could have pushed this Moroccan residing in France for 56 years to murder his wife? He would have a young mistress in Morocco, with whom he would have planned to start a new life.