BBC visits hamlet in France where British couple died

For the last 15 km (9.3 miles) travel from Toulouse to the farm of the Peuz Forest Forest you are traveling on the narrow winding roads along the hilly, thick woodlands. Without a reliable GPS system you can get lost very quickly, especially at night.

I expected the house of Andrew and Sirle, British couple found dead earlier this monthto be remote. This is an offer from the photos of the crime scene I saw. But I was surprised when I arrived to find it within the screaming of several houses.

This is an important detail because the partially naked bodies of Dawn was discovered near the front of the house on Thursday morning last week. The prosecutor who oversee the case, Nicholas Riga-Maler, said she had serious head wounds caused by a dull weapon. Any screams would be very clearly heard by neighbors.

The husband’s body was found to hang in the back of the house. The prosecutor says No weapons foundthat there is no obvious signs of theft, no evidence that Andrew had entered a fight or a sex offense.

The girlfriend discovered the body of dawn when she came to the house with her dog. The couple had two big dogs, and they often went with a friend or a few other dog owners I talked to in a quiet farm.

One woman, Benedict, said the couple was “absolutely charming, we often met as it just walks our dogs in the village.”

“Of course, we are very shocked,” she said.

Master Lidia sells his products in local markets with her husband. Their property goes to the house of Sirle, just falls on the field.

“They were a great couple who smiled a lot, and as I lived in England once, I managed to talk to them in English,” she told me. “They were well integrated and every year they invited everyone to the party.”

But not all I addressed to, they wanted to talk. Their appearance gives out that this is a very difficult moment for this rural community in the glitter of a criminal investigation.

The railway crossing near the village has no security barriers, but only a stop sign that tells you how little traffic is usually here. You can now feel the presence of a gender, a branch of the French military, which is investigating.

While I provided live lighting for BBC Scotland, a large car with tinted windows passed me slowly, inside four rocky officers from the Toulouse and organized crime department.

There are no questions that the locals are afraid. Several Gendarmerie officers took pictures of our car and asked to see our certificates and urged us to be restrained. They said that the residents were scared and that their presence would partially calm them.

There is a vividly -yellow GENDARMERIe tape tied to the front gate of the Sirl House. The dogs are gone and their pool has on this cover. Two large candles were illuminated on the roadway, and the leaf recorded to the gate has a phone number for those who feel that they need psychological counseling or moral support provided by local social services. The same leaf was recorded on the board of society in the center of the farm.

The Searle couple resigned to the region five years ago, and other mailboxes in the farm show that they are not the only expatriates in the region. This is not surprising: there is no official statistics, but at the time when I was in Toulouse, Foreign Affairs staff told me at different times that about 30,000 Britons live full -time in the southwest, making it the largest British The population of emigrants in France outside Paris.

In addition to the fact that tens of thousands still have recreation houses in the region, called Occitanie, which is one of the fastest growing areas of France, which attract people not only from the UK but also Belgium, the Netherlands and Paris.

What attracts them here is the quality of life, wide open spaces, a relatively cheap property and a timedly beautiful countryside and architecture.

In the nearby town of Wilfrons de Ruerg there is one of the most beautiful medieval stone arcade central squares in the region with them. In the summer, the open -air market on the square is filled with festive manufacturers, including many Britons who transport woven baskets filled with local products.

Different conspiracy theories spread about how the couple died – I was asked about their countless French national television and radio products. But all we know for sure is that the prosecutor and his team are still trying to determine when he repeated me on Wednesday night, “whether the tragedy was the result of an internal crime, after which suicide or participated in the third side.”

From the death I talked to the prosecutor, who was being dealt with at the end of this week, he transferred an investigation to a senior judge into Montpellier with more affordable resources.

I asked him if he was inclined to the idea that Sirle’s couple was killed.

He replied that he did not rule out anything. He added that if they were killed and it goes to court, he will persecute.

D -Rmy Sevin, a psychologist who responds to the hot line of counseling from leaflets, told me that about a dozen people had been calling him for some support. They were all local, he said, and everyone knew a couple personally.

They were all scared or shocked, he said.