The first suspect in the Leslie and Kevin case, Tom T., was indicted on Thursday for kidnapping and forcible confinement and remanded in custody. The investigations focus on possible drug trafficking, but the sentimental track is also studied.
[Updated March 3, 2023 at 1:43 p.m.] Three months after the disappearance of Leslie and Kevin in Deux-Sèvres, on the night of November 25 to 26, 2022, investigations have accelerated in recent days. As part of the investigation opened for “arrest, kidnapping, detention or kidnapping”, Tom T., a friend of the couple who was to accommodate them at his home in Prahecq (Deux-Sèvres) the night of their disappearance, was arrested at Vendée home of his father and placed in police custody on Tuesday. At the end of this police custody, he was presented to the investigating judge who indicted him for “kidnapping and forcible confinement not followed by voluntary release”. Tom T. was then remanded in custody by the liberty and detention judge, according to information from Le Parisien.
During his hearing, Tom T. denied any involvement in the Leslie and Kevin affair, but would have provided new information to the investigators. According to him, the disappearance of the lovers would be linked to a “litigation around narcotics”. As Le Parisien recalls, the statements made by Tom T. during his police custody allowed the investigators to carry out two new police custody, since a new suspect was arrested on Wednesday and then a second Thursday. Despite these two new arrests, Tom T. remains the main suspect in this case. The different versions of the course of his evening that he delivered in turn in the media and in front of the investigators placed him in the crosshairs of the gendarmes. The suspicions of the investigators now relate to a possible drug trafficking, even if the track of a sentimental crime is also studied.
During the first months of the investigation, Tom T. kept a version of the facts in which he claimed not to have seen Leslie and Kevin on the evening of November 25. He explained in Le Parisien on January 5, during a citizen fight and about the evening of the tragedy: “We met at 5:30 p.m. to prepare their clothes, it was agreed like that. We discussed between friends, as usual.” A brief interview after which he confided that he had taken the direction of a “techno evening under a bridge”, which was held the same evening around La Crèche (Deux-Sèvres), around 6:30 p.m. Tom T. claimed to have “spent the night there”. What about the rest of his schedule? Still at Le Parisien, he confided that “the next day, [he was] in Parthenay (Deux-Sèvres) for another techno evening”. And to add: “I went home on Sunday to go to the hospital. I had a blood clot in the leg, it went up to the heart, it made a phlebitis.”
A first version of the facts which subsequently evolved in the same media. He thus specified that he first went to his brother’s house, just after leaving Kevin and Leslie. Then went to a “apéro-sound” organized in a small committee, reports Le Parisien. After which, he would have made a “lightning stopover” at a certain… Nicolas R., the same one with whom Leslie and Kevin were spending the evening, in the middle of the evening around 10:30 p.m. It was only after that he would have joined his techno party from which he would not have moved, having consumed a “cardboard of LSD” on the spot. “I stayed sleeping in a friend’s truck, it was more careful,” he assured the Ile-de-France daily in early February.
Throughout the evening of November 25-26, Tom T. regularly exchanged text messages with Leslie. Around 2:30 a.m., he notably asked the young woman if the couple was still at the party, which was the case. “I wanted to spend some time with them that night”, he justified himself to the daily, specifying that it was the last time that Kevin and Leslie were to sleep at his house, the couple then having to put down his suitcases permanently in Niort, with Kevin’s father.
According to Le Parisien, one of the last text messages received by. Tom T. from Leslie would have reached him around 2:53 a.m. A disturbing message. “I just threw up my guts, full of blood. As soon as I get home, I ask myself, I’m not very well there”, she declared there, while she was still at Nicolas R.. Tom T., sent between 3 and 4 a.m. to Leslie, went unheeded.
Did Tom T. say everything about the text messages exchanged with Leslie before the disappearance of the couple? The young woman’s parents are not sure and fear that in addition to taking time to reveal the content of the messages, the man concealed others or provided truncated versions of the discussions. “He ended up sending us the texts he had exchanged with Leslie the night of his disappearance, but some were truncated. We were never able to get the rest. […] We are sure that he has things to say, and that he hides them. It is still him who hosted our children, “said Leslie’s father and mother-in-law in Le Parisien.
Tom T. would have sold narcotics, more precisely cocaine and ketamine, during “teufs” in the surroundings, that is to say improvised techno evenings, according to information from the Parisian. For his part, Kevin would have been involved in a larger traffic, selling drugs in an area ranging from Niort (Deux-Sèvres) to La Rochelle (Charente-Maritime), writes the Ile-de-France daily. The missing young man could have dealt during the evening during which he and his girlfriend Leslie disappeared, according to a hypothesis by the investigators.
As BFMTV recalls, Karine Prat, Kevin’s mother-in-law, said that Leslie’s companion was in possession of “10,000 euros” in cash on the evening of the couple’s disappearance. She also indicated that she brought him money in Prahecq, for what she thought was a vehicle purchase. Karine Prat said that Kevin had an appointment in the evening on the village square of Prahecq. The mother-in-law said she found him disturbed when he returned from the meeting, and that he told her that he had met “shady guys in a car”.
“We had our little story, but we preferred not to go any further to preserve our friendship.” These are the words of Tom T. to the Parisian who asked him about his relationship with Leslie, whom he had known for many years. Was he jealous of her relationship with Kevin, who had introduced the two lovebirds to each other? “Some people may think I was jealous,” he admitted, before saying, “But not at all, I was very happy for them.”
But since this brief love affair in 2021, the behavior of the young man vis-à-vis Leslie would have changed according to a relative of the disappeared with the Parisian. “Tom developed a very strong feeling of love for Leslie, but it was not reciprocated. For Leslie, Tom was a good friend, a boy she could count on, but that’s all”, explains this friend who continues, “[Leslie] was telling us he was getting more and more oppressive and she couldn’t take it anymore. I think it got worse after meeting Kevin.” Still according to her, the suspect would have “denigrated” Kevin in front of Leslie and would have tended to hide the truth to avoid “taking responsibility for his actions”.
