The baffling case of an elderly woman’s sudden disappearance came to a shocking conclusion two years later with the help of Google Maps.
Marcel Taret was the devoted carer for his 83-year-old wife, Paulette Landrieux, who battled Alzheimer’s disease.
The couple’s ordinary life was captured by podcaster Mr Ballen, who narrated how caregiving had become Marcel’s full-time occupation: “Paulette needed help remembering to eat or to take her medications on time,” he detailed. “Sometimes she would just wander off without telling Marcel and he would have to go and corral her and bring her back home.”
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Tragedy struck on November 2, 2020, when, after a momentary lapse in supervision while attending to laundry, Marcel returned to find Paulette missing.
Before he stepped out, he’d prepared her lunch and placed it in front of the TV, expecting her to be engrossed in her favourite programme upon his return. His assumption was met with emptiness as he discovered she wasn’t where he left her.
Desperation ensued as Marcel checked every corner of their home in Andenne, Belgium, only to be greeted by silence. Mr Ballen recounted Marcel’s growing panic: “He went outside,” adding, “He searched the outside of the house but she wasn’t there. He even knocked on some neighbours’ doors but they hadn’t seen her.”, reports the Mirror.
The police were notified quickly, and soon a search and rescue helicopter loomed overhead, offering a glimmer of hope to the distressed husband.
It was a mystery that Marcel believed would be solved swiftly.
As night fell, there was no sign of Paulette. “Over the next few days and weeks Paulette didn’t turn up,” Mr Ballen explained.
“Nobody had any idea where she was, and weeks turned into months and then months turned into two full years that nobody had seen Paulette.”
Marcel had resigned himself to the fact that he very likely would die without ever figuring out what happened to his wife. However, an incredible coincidence helped solve the mystery of Paulette’s sudden disappearance.
The day that she vanished coincided with the day that Google’s Streetview camera car visited Andenne. In 2022, one of Marcel’s neighbours made the connection and examined photos of the street where the couple lived.
In the pictures, Paulette can be seen walking across the street away from her home while Marcel can just be glimpsed in the background, as he hangs up the laundry. Investigators traced the route that Paulette appeared to be taking, and finally discovered her fate.
Mr Ballen explained: “Across the street was a steep hill that led down to a thick bramble bush.”
Inside that bramble bush they found Paulette’s body. “When that huge search for her was going on, very likely she was just trapped down there,” Mr Ballen said.
“She didn’t understand what was going on couldn’t necessarily yell up to communicate with anybody and so she stayed down there and died.”
(Image: Chilling Scares/YouTube)
(Image: Google Maps)
(Image: Google Maps)