A passerby heard banging coming from behind a storage door, on a downtown avenue within the southern French city of Bourg-lès-Valence and was in a position to free two ladies. On Friday, February 6, after an ordeal that lasted greater than 24 hours, the victims, a 35-year-old girl and her 66-year-old mother, had been present in a state of shock, having been “tied up and gagged,” in keeping with a police supply on the scene. Emergency companies transported them to the city’s hospital heart, and their “lives are usually not thought-about to be at risk at this stage,” the identical supply mentioned.
The story was first reported by Le Dauphiné Libéré, although the information had already been leaked on the morning of February 5. The leak associated to criminals abducting and detaining two folks, doubtless in reference to a ransom demand. Strict directions got to deal with the matter with excessive warning, in keeping with a judicial supply who spoke on Thursday night, because of “a excessive danger of great hurt to the bodily integrity of the kidnapped individuals.”
At round 3 am on Thursday, an unknown variety of people broke into one of many victims’ properties in a small city situated 90 kilometers from Bourg-lès-Valence and compelled the 2 ladies into a Mercedes-Benz automobile earlier than fleeing.
An alert was instantly issued, and investigators discovered that the entrance door of the residence had been compelled open and found bloodstains on the scene. The investigation shortly intensified the stress on the case, as one of many two kidnapped ladies was discovered to be a judge who was lately promoted to the appeals court docket within the Alpine metropolis of Grenoble, and the opposite was her mother.
Whereas these preliminary parts raised considerations that the criminals had focused the judge due to her career, one other clue led the judicial police investigators to a very completely different line of inquiry: The judge’s companion is an entrepreneur who has been lively within the cryptocurrency sector for the reason that late 2010s. The companion is the co-founder of a consulting startup that in 2024 was acquired by a main North American platform.
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