Police have found no trace of nine-year-old who disappeared from wedding reception near Chambéry in French Alps in August

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Hundreds of people have joined a silent march for a nine-year-old girl whose disappearance from a wedding reception four months ago could be linked to the mystery killing of a British couple in the French Alps.

There has been no trace of Maëlys de Araujo since August despite widespread searches and hundreds of police interviews.



At least 500 people, many in tears, turned out in the rain and wind to march in the Isère commune, where the girl went missing. The event was called to express solidarity with her parents. One banner read “truth for Maëlys”.

Nordahl Lelandais, 34, also a guest at the wedding, has been put under official investigation for kidnapping and murder in connection with the girl’s disappearance near Chambéry in the French Alps, but denies any involvement.



Lelandais, a former military dog trainer, has also been charged with the murder of Arthur Noyer, a soldier who vanished near Chambéry in April.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The owner of a bar in Le Pont-de-Beauvoisin puts up a missing poster for Maëlys. Photograph: Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images

Detectives are re-examining other unsolved disappearances and murders in the area, including the shooting of three members of the British-Iraqi al-Hilli family at a Chevaline mountain beauty spot near Annecy five years ago.



On 5 September 2012, an unknown attacker gunned down Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife, Iqbal, 47, her mother, Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, and a passing French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, 45. The al-Hillis’ two daughters, aged four and seven at the time, survived the attack.

The younger hid under the legs of her dead mother in the rear of the car for eight hours. The elder was shot and beaten, suffering injuries to the shoulder and head.



The Chambéry prosecutor, Thierry Dran, told a recent news conference: “With the police, we will obviously be looking into all of the worrying disappearances that have taken place in the region.”



French investigators have presented circumstantial evidence linking Lelandais to Maëlys’ disappearance. The girl, whose ninth birthday was in November, was attending the wedding with her parents in the village of Le Pont-de Beauvoisin in the Isère region.

A black Audi A3, reportedly belonging to the former solider, was filmed by CCTV cameras driving away from the reception in the early hours of 27 August.



The Grenoble prosecutor, Jean-Yves Coquillat, who is heading the inquiry, told journalists: “A frail, small silhouette [of someone] wearing a white dress can be seen in the front passenger seat.”

Maëlys was wearing a white dress for the wedding. The vehicle was seen returning along the same route at 3.24am, but there appeared to be no passenger.

The prosecutor said one minute after the girl was last seen at about 2.45am, Lelandais put his phone on airplane mode. The following day, he was filmed meticulously cleaning his Audi at a service station for more than two hours. Lelandais told police he was planning to sell the car.



Presented with a report that the girl’s DNA had been found in the car, Lelandais, a martial arts fan who lived with his parents, said Maëlys had asked to see his dogs that were in the vehicle on the evening of her disappearance.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The family of Arthur Noyer, who disappeared on 12 April, speak to the press in Chambéry. Photograph: Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/AFP/Getty Images

In a surprise development earlier this month, Lelandais was accused of the murder of Noyer, 23, a corporal in the elite 13th battalion Alpine infantry, whose skull was recently discovered by a hiker.



Investigators found that several mobile phone masts had picked up signals from Lelandais’s two mobile phones and Noyer’s mobile phone at exactly the same time, suggesting they were in the same vehicle before Noyer disappeared. CCTV showed an Audi in the area where Noyer was believed to have gone missing, Dran said.



Detectives who examined Lelandais’s phones discovered he had looked up “decomposition of a human body” on the internet. Lelandais has again denied any involvement.



Earlier this year, after five years of unsuccessful investigation, French police said they had “no working theory” to explain the al-Hilli murders and no suspects. They suggested the al-Hillis had been murdered after an “unfortunate encounter” with a random local person.



Officers had looked at whether the killer might be a former soldier, as the weapon used was one issued to the Swiss army and police in the 1920s and 30s.



Dran told Le Parisien newspaper: “Given this new development, we will be verifying any connections … in order to rule out or include the suspect [Lelandais]. It would be wrong not to.”

