The dismembered body that was discovered behind an old supermarket in Mont-Saint-Martin has been identified to have been a 40-year-old mother from Diekirch. The case has now become Luxembourgish with the Diekirch proescutor's office in charge of the investigation.

On Monday 19 September, a teenager discovered a dismembered body behind an old supermarket in Mont-Saint-Martin, a town not far from the Luxembourg border.

At the start of the investigation, only seventeen days ago, the prosecutor of Nancy, Frannçois Pérain, warned this investigation would take quite some time.

However, the two tattoos discovered on the lower back and in the right groin of the body enabled the Luxembourgish judicial authorities to identify the victim via a press release from the Nancy prosecutor's office. It was a Portuguese national living in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, revealed François Pérain on Monday. A DNA comparison formally confirmed this identification.

RTL

C'est à l'arrière de cet ancien supermarché désaffecté de Mont-Saint-Martin (Meurthe-et-Moselle) qu'a été découvert le tronc de la jeune femme d'origine portugaise et domiciliée au Luxembourg. / © Domingos Oliveira / RTL

The investigation has now confirmed that the victim was a 40-year-old Portuguese woman, originally from Porto, who has been living in Diekirch for several years. She was the mother of a 22-year-old boy and worked in the restaurant business as a cook's assistant and waitress. She loved karaoke and had an extraordinary voice, the victim's father revealed.

Since the end of last week, the public prosector's office in Nancy has made an official denunciation to the Luxembourgish judicial authorities at the request of the Diekirch prosecutor's office. Henri Eippers, spokesman for the judicial administration in Luxembourg, stated that 'this has become a Luxembourgish case'.

A judicial investigation was opened on Friday by the Diekirch public prosecutor's office, to which all the elements of the investigation carried out so far in France, including the autopsy report, were transmitted.

Was it a femicide? This is one of the theories put forward by the prosecutor's office of Nancy. Who is the murderer, and what was their motive? Why did they dismember the victim? Where did the limbs go? These are all questions that the judicial police will try to answer.