THE LAËTITIA DELECLUSE CASE: A BLOW TO THE HEART | Enquêtes criminelles | W9

It’s Tuesday 4 September 2014 and Carine and Aurélie Mayer, care assistants at the Ramonchamp retirement home in the Vosges, are anxious. They have no news of one of their colleagues, Laëtitia Delecluse, a 38-year-old mother.

The gendarmes are alerted and very soon the husband of the missing woman is questioned. Daniel Rudenko explains that Laëtitia deliberately walked out of the family home the day before. He had just filed a complaint against her for ill treatment of their two daughters. The young woman appears to have taken fright and simply ran away. As proof, Daniel Rudenko shows the gendarmes the SMS messages his partner sent to him: “I have to leave. Sort yourself out with the girls! I don’t want to go to jail! Tell them that I love them so much in spite of what I did to them!” Did Laëtitia Delecluse disappear voluntarily? All those close to her are stunned. The story her husband tells doesn’t make any sense. Such a caring mother would never have harmed her children and she would never have left without her daughters, whom she loved more than anything else. So, Laëtitia’s family and friends go into action and try to find her, whatever the cost. Searches are conducted throughout the village, but in vain. Laëtitia Delecluse cannot be found. Carine and Aurélie, Laëtitia’s two friends, have a nasty feeling because she had confided in them: she was getting a divorce and, even though they still lived under the same roof, her relationship with her partner was extremely tense. And so the husband falls within the sights of the gendarmes. Only, however much they search the couple’s little blue house, they can find nothing unusual. As for the suspect: he proclaims with disarming sincerity to whoever will listen, and even in the press, that he has no reason to feel guilty. But one little detail will turn the investigation upside down and trap the husband.