Unforgettable for those close to the victims, Marie-José and Allison Benitez, the Francisco Benitez affair no longer made the front page but marked the first half of the 2010s. Closer looks back on this affair, from its explosion to its abortive outcome …
Over the decades, the city of Perpignan, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, has been the scene of numerous news items. Already known for the case of the disappeared from the Perpignan station, the beautiful Catalan once again found herself at the heart of a mysterious case of disappearance in the course of 2013. On July 14 of that year, Marie-José Benitez and her 19-year-old daughter, Allison Benitez, vanished into thin air. in nature never to show signs of life again. It is in this new case, also nicknamed the Francisco Benitez case, that we are interested in this article.
Shortly after the disappearance of the two women, witnesses close to the young Allison indicate that the latter had, just before disappearing, a meeting with her father. Francisco Benitez. Chief Warrant Officer in the Foreign Legion, the man is a respected soldier in the region. He indicates that his wife and daughter have gone on a trip to Toulouse, and explains the inactivity of their cell phones by difficulties that arose in his relationship with Marie-José. But after several days of radio silence, Allison’s relatives are worried and warn the police. Francisco Benitez waits several more days before doing the same. On August 2, the prosecution launched a judicial investigation for “search for the causes of a worrying disappearance”. Unfortunately, the leads followed by the investigators turn out to be unsuccessful.
Francisco Benitez, Dom Juan of modern times
But while the investigation is at a standstill, the police receive a surprising call from the family of Simone Oliveira Alves, a Nîmes of Brazilian origin who herself disappeared nine years earlier, in 2004. Relatives of the missing are worried about a link between the disappearance of Simone and that of Marie-José and Allison, by the fact that Francisco Benitez, would have had a story with their missing loved one. Immediately, the police relaunch the investigation, of which Benitez, Dom Juan of Modern times having stories with many women, becomes the main suspect.
But the latter does not give investigators the opportunity to continue their research. On August 5, the 50-year-old man was found hanged in the barracks of the Foreign Legion in Perpignan. The day before, he had gone to a meeting with the journalist from Paris Match Pauline Lallement. He then gave him a two-minute video filmed by his daughter Lydia, in which he denied all the accusations against him and expressed his difficulties in coping with the pressure. “Everything was planned: the video, our meeting his suicide …”, will then tell the journalist of Paris Match.
“The case, at the very beginning, did not receive the treatment it should have”
But if in the video, the legionary claims that“Allison, this is” to “life“, he remains the main suspect in this aborted case, especially since according to some witnesses, Marie-José, at the time of the supposed facts, had just discovered that her husband had a new extramarital affair. Traces of blood were indeed found at his home, visibly cleaned with a large dose of bleach. Samples taken in the barracks where Benitez worked also enabled investigators to identify Allison Benitez’s blood in a freezer, particularly incriminating evidence for the father.
To date, the bodies of Marie-José and Allison Benitez have not been found. According to the lawyer for two of Allison’s sisters, Me Philippe Capsie, the case was roughed up from the start. “The case, at the very beginning, did not receive the treatment it should have”, he confided in early 2021 to Planet. “The first days, essential in this affair, were lacking. The day they go to question Benitez, they find him hanged”. Unfortunately, hopes of resolving the investigation may have died out on the same day as Francisco Benitez …
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