Mission Statement: to assist the integration of foreign residents living in Spain
By Johanna Gardener •
Published: 05 Nov 2024 • 18:04
• 1 minute read
New homeowners were in for a gruesome surprise when they moved into their new home only to find a skeleton on the premises.
Whilst completing renovation work on Saturday, the new tenants of the house made the shocking find in one of the outhouse buildings connected to the property in the village of Erstroff, Eastern France, close to the border with Germany. The house had been sold in 2023 and needed urgent repair work. In the attempt to attend to the source of a leaking roof, the new owners found the grizzly remains in a small nook.
Body may be of the former occupant who had disappeared years earlier
The body is believed to be of the former occupant of the house who had gone missing in 2009, according to a statement from local prosecutor, Olivier Glady. Given the nature of how the body was found, it appears that he may have taken his own life. Following the disappearance in 2009, there were various attempts to track down the man, but despite an extensive police investigation, no trace of the man was ever found. The case had been dropped in 2016 and in 2021, he was declared legally dead by the local court, as there were no further clues as to his whereabouts. His wife, who passed away in 2020, had continued to live on the premises, apparently unaware of how and where her husband had died.
Skeleton had never been found in recess that was almost invisible
According to the homeowners, the body was found in a room that was difficult to notice, immediately under the roof and barely accesible – only by a trapdoor. This is most probably the reason why the body was never found as the site was “almost invisible,” statements said.
It is almost certain that the discovery of the body links to the 2009 disappearance of the same man, 81-year-old Aloïs Iffly, who was born in 1927, had lived in the house and had never been seen again. To clarify these speculations, the remains have been sent to the Strasbourg Institute of Forensic Medicine, where an autopsy will be carried out and the identity confirmed using DNA from surviving family members.
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Written by
Johanna Gardener
Originally from Manchester, UK and with a degree in English with Modern Foreign Languages, she has been a permanent resident in Spain for the past 12 years. Many of these years, she has spent working as a secondary school teacher, as well as in journalism, editing and marketing. She currently lives in the historic centre of Malaga, where she enjoys writing, walking and animals.
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