Unidentified Bone Remains Found in New Search in the Jubillar Case

Villeneuve-sur-Vere – 17 July 2026: On the edge of a closed-off road in the Tarn department, gendarmes discovered bone remains during renewed search operations. The site is near Cagnac-les-Mines, the town where Delphine Aussaguel disappeared on the night of 16 December 2020. According to the judiciary, it must first be determined whether the remains are in fact human.

The search resumed on Thursday, 16 July. It follows new statements by Cédric Jubillar, the missing woman’s husband. Nicolas Jacquet, the prosecutor general at the Toulouse Court of Appeal, said that the remains were found at a location Jubillar had identified as the place where the body was disposed of. The gendarmerie secured the area extensively.

For the relatives of Delphine Aussaguel, the discovery above all means renewed and painful uncertainty. For more than five and a half years, there has been no confirmed trace of the then 33-year-old nurse and mother of two. The investigation had repeatedly led to large-scale searches of fields, forests and buildings in the surrounding area, but without the decisive discovery.

The bones now found are to undergo forensic examination. Only DNA analyses and forensic medical assessments can determine whether the remains can be attributed to Delphine Aussaguel. It is also unclear whether they may provide information about the cause of death or the precise course of the crime. Until those results are available, the identity of the remains remains unknown.

Cédric Jubillar was sentenced in October 2025 to 30 years in prison for the murder of his wife. An appeal is pending against the verdict. In early July 2026, according to his lawyers, he stated for the first time that he was responsible for his wife’s death and offered to cooperate with the judiciary in the search. The current measures are linked to those statements.

The fact that the judiciary acted on the renewed questioning and search operation is also procedurally significant: On 15 July, the presiding judge of the Haute-Garonne Assize Court ordered Jubillar to be brought before and questioned at the Toulouse Court of Appeal. This was based on a provision allowing additional investigations when they appear necessary for pending proceedings.

The discovery does not close the case, but it changes its circumstances. After years without a body and without a final answer to the question of Delphine Aussaguel’s whereabouts, expectations are now focused on the laboratory. For the family and investigators, only one sober certainty matters for the moment: Who was found there – and what can reliably be concluded from it?