From left to right: Pascal, Brigitte, Sebastien and Charlotte Troadec Source: Police Nationale via AP

FRENCH POLICE HAVE found a car belonging to a youth at the centre of a mystery gripping the country over his family’s disappearance two weeks ago, the prosecutor in the case said.

The Peugeot 308 belonging to 21-year-old Sebastien Troadec was discovered in the northwestern port of Saint Nazaire, according to Nantes prosecutor Pierre Sennes.

The new breakthrough in the case came the day after a jogger found items belonging to his sister Charlotte, 18, in a forested area three hours by car from where she was last seen.

Police have said that Sebastien is suspected of planning to kill his family and possibly himself.

A judicial probe into murder, abduction and illegal confinement was opened on Monday.

Police car pictured outside the Troadec household in Orvault, near Nantes Source: Laetitia Notarianni AP/Press Association Images

In searches at the parents’ home in a suburb of Nantes after the four family members went missing on 16 February, police discovered Sebastien’s cellphone and his mother Brigitte’s watch covered with blood.

Traces of blood from Sebastien and the parents, but not Charlotte, were found throughout the house, as well as signs of efforts to clean them up.

Police said in a bulletin dated 24 February that Sebastien was suspected of “putting in place a macabre plan aimed at snuffing out the members of his family and maybe himself.”

Yesterday, a jogger found a national health insurance card belonging to Charlotte in the pocket of a pair of trousers in the Brittany town of Dirinon, near Brest, some 280 kilometres away from Nantes.

A source close to the probe said Brigitte and her husband Pascal, both 49, were originally from the Brest area.

Search teams with sniffer dogs, backed by a helicopter, were deployed to the area around Dirinon.

Divers will also be called up because the zone lies between two estuaries, the investigative source said.

Investigators in white forensic suits returned to the house in search of more clues yesterday.

Neighbours and a source close to the probe said Sebastien had psychological problems and Pascal, who works for a company that makes shop signs, had suffered from depression in the past.

Sennes noted that Sebastien had been sentenced to carry out community service after being convicted in 2013, when he was a minor, for making death threats on his blog.

But classmates of Sebastien’s interviewed by French media described a quiet, friendly youth, with one saying he was “always ready to help out”.

© – AFP 2017 

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