Grisly Murder Near Montbéliard: Drug Trafficking Suspected as Two Arrested in Disfigured Body Case

The body of the victim, of Moroccan origin, was discovered last Wednesday, lying in a pool of blood in the garden of an unoccupied house in Audincourt, near Montbéliard (Doubs), said Paul-Edouard Lallois, the Montbéliard prosecutor, at a press conference on Monday. According to the autopsy, the man was shot in the head, adds the prosecutor, who favors the trail of a crime related to drug trafficking.

The judicial investigation opened by the public prosecutor’s office for "murder, criminal conspiracy and possession of category B weapons" led to the arrest, on Thursday, of two suspects aged 18 and 40. The accused "formally deny" the facts. The 40-year-old suspect, from Mulhouse, is known to the justice system for drug trafficking offenses, according to Le Figaro. During his custody, he admitted to having transported the victim from Mulhouse to Audincourt.

The prosecutor stresses that the explanations of the quadragenarian "have evolved several times during his custody", noting that "everything is still nebulous" in this case. As for the 18-year-old suspect, he lives on the same street where the victim was found. During his interrogation, the young man, who has no criminal record, told the investigators of the Division of Organized and Specialized Crime (DCOS) that he did not know either the first suspect or the victim.

The searches carried out at his home led to the seizure of a bulletproof vest, cartridges of different calibers, ammunition packaging and prepaid SIM cards, specifies the prosecutor, who informs that the victim, convicted several times, "was involved for quite some time in drug trafficking" and had finished serving a prison sentence in June 2023.