FRENCH police arrested a British man they suspect of accidentally killing his wife, burning her body and burying it in cement at the chateau where the couple lived.
“There was a drunken argument with his wife during which she fell,” on Friday night at their home in France’s northwestern Brittany region, Catherine Denis, an official in the state prosecutor’s office in nearby Rennes, said.
“It seems the death was accidental,” she added later at a news conference, saying that the man told police he “had wanted to build a sort of mausoleum with cement to honour a pact he had made with his wife”.
She did not name the man but said he was a 55-year-old former builder from Manchester in northwestern England, and lived in a chateau northeast of Rennes, with his 49-year-old wife.
They had a “violent argument while both of them were drunk,” Robert said.
The couple lived for about 12 years in the big house “which they were restoring to install holiday homes and maybe a golf course” and “seemed to have been having financial problems for some time,” she added.
The prosecutor’s office said the suspect’s adult children called police after he telephoned to tell them of his wife’s death, and the man cooperated with investigators.
He admitted burning his wife’s remains outside the house and burying the ashes in the cement.
Police found “remains which could be human” at the property but had not yet identified them and were still searching the home, Ms Denis said.
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