French parents accused of dumping daughter's body in concrete

An eight-year-old French girl who was reported missing by her parents last week has been found encased in concrete at her father's workplace in Le Mans, northern France. The parents of the girl, who had mild Down's syndrome and has been named only as Marina, have been arrested and placed under official investigation for murder.

The father first claimed Marina had disappeared, saying he had left her for a couple of minutes asleep in his car in a McDonald's car park, and that she was no longer there on his return. He later claimed the child died of natural causes. But prosecutors allege Marina, who was slightly physically handicapped, died after being beaten and that the body was kept in the freezer before being covered in concrete in a Mafia-style attempt to hide her corpse from the police.



The couple face charges of murder, sequestration, and regular mistreatment over "numerous months", as well as "imaginary denunciation". If found guilty, they face life imprisonment. According to the prosecutor, Marina was beaten in a "violent scene" at the family's suburban house in Ecommoy, in the Sarthe region, after which her parents locked her in the cellar. She was hit "mostly by hand" but there were other unspecified "particularly brutal acts".

The mother is alleged to have later found her "inanimate" body. Panic-stricken, the father hid the dead child in the cellar freezer and told neighbours and their four other children she had "gone away to the seaside". When the couple moved house, the father put the body in a container, "filled it with several kilos of concrete", and stored it in a warehouse in a suburb of Le Mans where he worked. Prosecutors said the couple confessed to having caused her death, during questioning. When asked why they beat her, they said:"Because she was often hungry".