Husband detained over murdered jogger
- By AFP -
- Jan 30, 2018
GRAY: French police on Monday detained an IT worker whose wife was murdered while out jogging in a grisly case that shocked the country.
The charred body of Alexia Daval, a 29-year-old bank employee, was found in a wood in October in Esmoulins in eastern France.
She had been beaten and probably strangled, prosecutors said, before her killer set fire to her body and hid it under tree branches a few kilometres (miles) from her usual jogging route.
Her husband Jonathann, 34, said at the time that his wife had gone out running and never came back.
The case shocked the sleepy bucolic community where the couple live, with nearly 10,000 people turning out in their town of Gray for a silent march in her memory in November.
Hundreds of people organised group running excursions across the country in tribute to the murdered young woman.
Local prosecutor Edwige Roux-Morizot told AFP that police had detained Jonathann Daval at his home in Gray on Monday morning and taken him into custody.
Daval, initially questioned as a witness, had told police he argued with his wife on the day before her disappearance, which he said explained why she had scratches and bite marks on her hands.