Overview

• More than 400 gendarmes began Monday clearing and surveying activities at the wooded burial site near Rouvray with support from drone operators, subaquatic technicians and IRCGN forensic experts.
• Ground and underwater searches are scheduled to start Tuesday and last at least one week, potentially extending to three weeks according to Auxerre prosecutor Hugues de Phily.
• This operation targets a broader and different zone than the September–October 2024 digs, which uncovered only clothing fragments without human remains.
• Investigators aim to recover the five other bodies of Louis’s known victims and locate remains of Marie-Jeanne Ambroisine Coussin, whose skull was identified through DNA analysis in 2018.
• The €100,000 operation is financed by judicial authorities and follows Louis’s 2004 conviction for the murders of seven disabled girls between 1975 and 1979 and his 2013 death in prison.