The dramatic case of the couple who disappeared two months ago, without a trace

Two months ago, a young French couple disappeared one morning without a trace. Since then, nothing is known about them. Where are they, what happened? Nothing at all. The terrible case keeps France in suspense and they are wanted by the whole country. But so far there have been no positive results.

Leslie Hoorelbeke, 22, and Kevin Trompat, 21, have not shown up since the early hours of November 26 in Prahecq, a town of 2,000 inhabitants near Niort.

The couple spent the night at a friend’s house, the last to see them. They went to sleep in Prahecq, in a house lent by another friend, who doesn’t live there.

In December, the gendarmerie deployed a dog team and divers, away from the cameras, and the vehicles of the disappeared were seized. But until now there were no sure clues as to what had happened.

A self-employed house painter and animal lover, Leslie, a slender brown-eyed brunette with a tattoo on her right cheek and piercings, is “a little Zebulon, very sociable and smiling, with phenomenal energy,” describe her mother. – father-in-law, Emilie Cardré, and his father, Patrick Hoorelbeke.

Kevin, a tall, thin man with short brown hair and blue eyes, also tattooed, enjoys fishing and hunting and has worked in restaurants and markets. They had been together for three weeks and each had “plans” for the future, according to those around them.

It was not a voluntary disappearance

“They are young without problems, they have no enemies”, says Karine Prat, Kevin’s mother-in-law, whose father, Guy Trompat, is currently in prison for “deliberate violence.” According to her, they may have had “a bad encounter”, but “a voluntary departure is impossible”.

Leslie’s relatives don’t think so either. “Kidnapping has been our belief since the beginning”, they say. “There must be a purpose to that, and other than the money, we don’t really see it}2.

Karine Prat said her son-in-law had “10,000 euros” with him. She herself had brought him money – the amount varied – on the night of the events in Prahecq, according to her knowledge, to buy a car.

According to her, Kevin had a meeting in the village square in the evening. When the young man returned a few minutes later, she found him distraught and reportedly told her that he had met some suspicious boys in the car. He then accompanied the couple to dinner at a friend’s house.

The friend said they both left the house around 2:30 in the morning, after a “quiet evening” of “playing video games.”

Things found in a container

Thanks to the investigation, Leslie’s family knows that her phone was geolocated in Niort on November 26 in broad daylight and that the couple’s belongings, including Kevin’s road safety certificate, were found on December 8. in a container for recycling clothes in Puyravault (Charente-Maritime).

“It’s to confuse, they threw it away to find it quickly”, say Émilie Cardré and Patrick Hoorelbeke, who live near La Rochelle. According to them, there were also Kevin and Leslie’s clothes, the young woman’s makeup bag and a brush.

Leslie’s room was searched but “nothing was found and nothing was taken,” added the father and stepmother, who recently went to see a man to whom the missing woman fetched some things. on November 25th.

“He found Leslie very cheerful, driven,” they say. She told him she wanted a quiet night because she had to work the next day. According to people close to Kevin, the couple had planned to spend the weekend in Bordeaux.

The friend who hosted them said he saw Leslie and Kevin “at 5.30pm”: “They had a lot of energy, we laughed a lot. Then I went to my brother’s house and to a techno party,” he said during a recording.

When he got home, the couple’s belongings were gone, except for a duvet recovered by the investigators. According to Kevin’s father, they found no fingerprints.

The house with faded shutters was sealed by the gendarmerie, enclosing part of the mystery.