A 30-year-old man has confessed to killing his partner in late January in order to have an affair with a woman he met online – who turned out to be non-existent, a figment of the imagination of fraudsters from Ivory Coastas reported today by the judicial authorities.

On January 28, the body of the woman who was born in 1995 was found inside her home in Besan, northern France. It was her partner who alerted the authorities and initially said he found her dead on his way back from shopping at the bakery. He even claimed that it was probably a robbery attempt that went wrong because a piggy bank was missing from the house, as prosecutor Girek Le Bra said.

The police, however, from the investigation they did, excluded this version. It also found that the man was maintaining a “long-distance love relationship” with a woman, whose “real identity” he was unaware of. According to the newspaper Le Parisienwho revealed the case, this person maintained a Facebook page under the name “Beatrice Leroux, merchant (sic) in Brest”.

The “mistress” was non-existent: she had been “created” by an impostor who even succeeded in seizing her from the man the amount of 2,200 euros. According to the police investigation, this fraudster is located in Ivory Coast.

The suspect was brought before a coroner today and admitted to murdering his partner, hoping it would clear the way for him to have a relationship with the non-existent “Beatrice”.

On average, one femicide is committed in France every three days. The Ministry of Justice recorded 94 femicides in 2023.