French man admits burning body of wife after beating her to death, despite initially claiming she vanished while jogging
- Jonathann Daval confessed in January last year to killing his wife Alexia after first posing as a distraught husband and even organising events in her memory
A French man charged with murdering his wife on Monday admitted to partially burning her body after brutally beating her, following a meticulous police reconstruction of the events, the prosecutor said.
Jonathann Daval, 35, had in January 2018 confessed to killing his wife Alexia in October 2017 after initially posing as a distraught husband and even organising events in her memory. He initially claimed she had disappeared while jogging.
The charred body of Alexia Daval, a 29-year-old bank employee, had been found hidden under tree branches near their town of Gray-la-Ville in eastern France.
But the husband had until now not admitted to burning her body after the crime – an omission that had continued to distress Alexia’s parents – and had shown inconsistencies in other aspects of his version.