An appeal for witnesses with a photo of the man “suspected of being the perpetrator” was broadcast by the French gendarmerie on Friday following the murder of two teachers in the Hautes-Pyrénées (south-western France).
Cédric Tauleygne, 34, is suspected of killing Gabriel Fourmigué and Aurélie Pardon, whose husband he is, on Monday in Pouyastruc near Tarbes, around a hundred kilometers from the Spanish border.
French investigators have set up a phone line to collect testimonies “24 hours a day, 7 days a week”.
The man, described as of European type, athletic, with glasses and shaved hair, 1.75m tall, is a fugitive and is still actively wanted in France and Spain.
This worker at a factory in the southwest that makes helicopter engines was wearing blue jeans and a dark leather jacket at the time of the events, French gendarmes said in their appeal for witnesses.
His motorcycle was found on Wednesday in Jaca, Aragon, on the Spanish side of the border, Tarbes prosecutor Pierre Aurignac specified, adding the suspect was a “former reservist, sports shooter”.
On Friday, Spanish police, interviewed by AFP, said they had “nothing new”. Research surrounding Jaca continues, “the device remains active,” according to the same source, with no further details.
“Nothing in the state allows to favor the hypothesis that the person is still alive or dead,” specified Cécile Gensac, Pau’s public prosecutor, in a press release given the file.
Gendarmes also roam the country in a large area, around Barbazan-Dessus, the town where the couple who were in the process of divorce lived, as well as in the neighboring departments.
“We still have 80 gendarmes from the Hautes-Pyrénées group and mobile gendarmes as reinforcements who are in the area and there is an intense search on the other side of the border,” he told AFP on Friday. Colonel Laurent Lachâtre, commander of the Toulouse SR.
“We’re looking for it on both sides,” he said.
Gabriel Fourmigué, 55, and Aurélie Pardon, 32, were physical education and French teachers respectively at Desaix College in Tarbes city centre.
The two teachers who were shot dead on Monday “had come together emotionally during a school trip in the past few weeks,” Tarbes prosecutors said at a press conference on Tuesday.
A judicial inquiry, which maintained the classification as ‘murder’, was opened and the file was handed over to the Pau Public Prosecutor’s Office.