JUBILLAR. More than two years after the disappearance of the nurse in the Tarn, the Delphine Jubillar affair seems to have stalled. Cédric Jubillar, husband of the victim, is still the number one suspect. Will he stand trial?
More than two years after the disappearance of Delphine Jubillar, the investigation has still not made it possible to see clearly on this case. Investigators have never found the body of the nurse, do not have a crime scene and have obtained no confession from Cédric Jubillar, husband of the missing woman and main suspect. The investigation should however soon come to an end because the acts of investigation and the reconstruction of the events organized in Cagnac-les-Mines, a small town in the Tarn where the couple and their children lived, seem to have revealed all their secrets. However, this was not enough to prove the guilt of the missing nurse’s husband. The prosecution, which seems convinced of the responsibility of the plasterer painter, must be satisfied with a “beam of serious and concordant indications”.
But the suspicions are such that Cédric Jubillar has been in pre-trial detention since June 2021, six months after the disappearance of his wife. On seven occasions, the suspect asked for his release and seven times his lawyers were dismissed by the prosecution, the last rejection of the request dating from March 28, 2023. And the 35-year-old man could remain in prison still at least a year, because a trial before an assize court could take place in the course of the year 2024 according to the words of Me Alexandra Martin taken up in 20 Minutes in mid-March. For the time being the instruction is still not finished and Cédric Jubillar has not been officially returned to justice. But except for an exceptional reversal of the situation, the man should be accused in a trial at the assizes.
In the case of the disappearance of Delphine Jubillar, which occurred on the night of December 15 to 16, 2020 in the Tarn, the husband is the main and only suspect. Many tracks point to the role of Cédric Jubillar and especially his relationship which was floundering with the nurse. The couple had been in the process of separation for several months before the disappearance of the mother of the family and Cédric had learned that his wife had an extramarital relationship with a man before the fateful night. Various testimonies from neighbors and relatives have reported recurring disputes between Cédric and Delphine, altercations linked to the painter’s drug use but above all to financial resources – he had no fixed income and spent a lot on his consumption of narcotics – about which the nurse was worried, according to the statements of Cédric Jubillar before the investigators. The different also concerned the slowness of the work of the house according to the testimony of the mother of Cédric, Nadine Jubillar, in Parisian on April 19, 2023.
These disputes with multifactorial origins could give rise to verbal violence on the part of the husband against his wife and children according to the words of friends of Delphine Jubillar collected during the investigation. On this point, as on all the others, Cédric Jubillar admitted wrongdoing, but without ever presenting the facts as proof or motives for the possible murder of Delphine. He has always claimed his innocence in this case: “I am innocent, I have nothing to do with the disappearance of my wife, I have always told you” he said during his first hearing, a speech since repeated without respite.
If Cédric Jubillar is suspected of being responsible for the disappearance and perhaps the murder of his wife, it is also because the nurse disappeared during the night after having spent the evening at her house in the presence of the plasterer painter and his children. During the investigations, the testimonies of neighbors collected by the investigators made it possible to draw up the hypothesis that around 11 p.m. on the night of December 15 to 16, 2020 “Delphine Jubillar [was] in a situation of distress, suffocating at the outside his house, probably in the garden at the back of the house.”
This moment would have been preceded by cries heard by the neighbors and an argument reported by the eldest son of the couple, Louis, during one of his hearings. The child, who was then seven years old, had presented a version of the facts contradicting that of his father: Cédric Jubillar would not have gone to bed earlier than his wife and would have argued with her while their son had gone up to his room. Finally, if according to the suspect Delphine Jubillar would have gone for a walk before disappearing, the dogs of the canine brigades never found the smell of the nurse around the house, thus weakening the thesis of the disappearance in the middle of nature. Remarks akin to death threats made by Cédric Jubillar against his wife and reported by a friend to France Bleu Occitanie also played against the suspect: “Several times, we heard him say: ‘ Yes I’m going to kill her, I’m going to bury her, no one will find her. She wants to leave me, she wants to ask for a divorce’. He already knew he was going to lose everything”.
A few testimonies played an important role in the investigation of the Jubillar affair, in particular that of Marco, a former prisoner who shared Cédric Jubillar’s cell for a few months in the prison of Seysses, near Toulouse. Over the course of the discussions behind bars, the number one suspect in the disappearance of the Tarn nurse would have confided in the thirty-year-old prisoner with a heavy judicial past and originally from Ajaccio. The Corsican was quick to inform the investigators of the revelations of the plasterer painter. Certain elements giving indications on the location of the body of Delphine Jubillar and seeming able to advance the investigation were made public on January 10, 2021 by Le Parisien. Marco assured the gendarmes that Cédric Jubillar had confessed to him having premeditated the murder of his wife and having taken action after having surprised the nurse exchanging messages with her lover. “That’s what made him twist (…). He told me he knew where to bury him before the fact. He explained to me that he followed his wife by geolocating her, that he tried to hack into his phone without success. He knew what was going to happen. He was waiting for the right moment to get rid of it,” the inmate said in his statement.
As for the location of the body, Cédric Jubillar allegedly told Marco that he buried his wife in “a forest that had already burned” at a “shallow” level after transporting the remains in a white car because “he was not going be stupid enough to use your own car”. Le Parisien clarified that this testimony would have been “supported by details that only Cédric was able to communicate to him”.
Marco also expanded on his meetings with Séverine L., the woman who had a relationship with Cédric Jubillar between April and June 2021. The two individuals would have met and according to the former detainee, the forties would know where the body is hidden but would refuse to go there for fear of being followed. He would have added that the project to move the body would have been considered by Cédric and Séverine without being able to provide evidence. Some video recordings of exchanges between Séverine and Marco attest to their meetings. On one of the videos we can hear Cédric’s new companion questioning: “Can you see a body that has been moved? […] I don’t know how you’re going to find that, are you on edge? “
Marcon’s accusations concerning the possible complicity of Séverine L. have been denied by the main interested party. Which assured in January on BFMTV in January 2022 never to have gone to the scene of the tragedy and reported comments that Cédric would have said to him: “Marco is one of the people who b… to both of them, with false testimony that’s why you were in custody. We can not trust anyone “.
If the veracity of Marco’s testimony is also questioned, it is because the man has a heavy criminal record: he has been involved in several cases of criminal associations, fires, thefts but above all false testimony and tampering with witnesses according to RTL. A point raised by Alexandre Martin, one of Cédric Jubillar’s lawyers who maintains that “this co-detainee told nonsense and the checks that were made confirmed it”. The Corsican’s statements lost credibility when, despite the deployment of a major research system at the start of 2022, the excavations near an old burnt-out farm in Cagnac-les-Mines, the place indicated by the former detainee, gave no results.
The investigators were also interested in Séverine L. during the investigations. The forties had a short relationship with Cédric Jubillar between April and June 2021. If they had known each other for many years through Séverine’s son, it was during an organized search to find the missing nurse that they got closer. “We had dinner together and our story began. I got attached to him and he got attached to me,” she told Le Parisien. This budding relationship just four months after Delphine’s disappearance seemed suspicious and investigators focused on Séverine’s possible role in the drama. Séverine L. was also placed in police custody on suspicion of “complicity in concealment of a corpse” for a day and a half before being released.
Séverine L. has always defended Cédric Jubillar believing in his innocence. “Over time, I have never seen the features of a culprit on his face. He has always had this somewhat raw character. […] I am not trying to clear him, nor to defend him, it’s just my personal belief and that’s what I told the investigators. If it’s him, he’s very strong and if it’s not him, then he’s very resistant to withstand the isolation in prison” she had declared to La Dépêche du Midi. Yet other statements seemed to show doubts about the guilt of the plasterer painter. Séverine L. described Cédric Jubillar as “detached” from the case: “I even asked him the question directly: ‘What did you do with it?’ and he replies, ‘But I buried her at the farmhouse that burned down.’ He says it with a laugh, so I don’t think he’s being serious. In fact, I can’t really figure it out. I want to convince myself that he is innocent but I still have my doubts.” Still according to Le Parisien, the forty-year-old even confided: “I think he’s guilty. I think he really killed her. I was manipulated, I believed him, I blame myself for it. ‘have believed.’
Doubts about Séverine L.’s involvement in the Jubillar case were induced by statements by fellow inmate Marco. The two individuals also met between three and six times between September and December 2021. If the meetings are proven, Cédric Jubillar’s ex-girlfriend has denied any involvement in the disappearance and concealment of the body even if she has admitted to BFMTV in January 2022 having heard of an old burnt farm in Cagnac-les-Mines by Cédric Jubillar: “I never brought the fellow prisoner to the scene, I never went with Cédric to the scene, Cédric never told me seriously that he had killed his wife, apart from laughing when he told me about the farm.
In her defense, Séverine L. justified her exchanges with Marco on the possible place where Delphine Jubillar would be buried “to remove the doubt […] so that [Marco] goes to check if there is Delphine’s body buried” according to the comments relayed by Le Parisien. And to add in the columns of the newspaper: “I am stupid and easily influenced. I did this for love, I gave the place where Cédric was able to bury Delphine. Cédric never told me openly that he killed her”. What about the fact that she never contacted the gendarmes about where Delphine’s body might be buried? Her silence comes, according to her, from the fact that she was “afraid” of Cédric.
Placed in pre-trial detention since June 2021 for “murder of a spouse”, Cédric Jubillar has not left his prison cell since, except to be heard by investigators and investigating judges. Since his incarceration, the suspect in the Delphine Jubillar case has issued seven requests for parole and none have been successful. The last request was rejected on March 28 by the prosecution. As in previous attempts, justice opposes the same arguments to Cédric Jubillar’s release from prison: preservation of evidence, protection of witnesses and risk of disturbing public order in the event of the release of the main suspect. The magistrates also rejected the suspect’s request for house arrest with an electronic bracelet placement.
But these repeated refusals irritate Cédric Jubillar’s lawyers who denounce “a file empty of all material evidence” and the “non-respect of the presumption of innocence” of their client. “The prosecution repeats over and over again, whatever the progress of the case, the fact that it can only be Cédric Jubillar and that from then on he can only stay in prison. We have obviously case with a stubbornness of the prosecution which violates the presumption of innocence” had also annoyed Me Alexandre Martin in mid-March 2023 according to 20 Minutes.
Cédric Jubillat’s lawyers insist on the conditions of detention of their client who was placed in solitary confinement in the months following his arrival in prison. “I wonder how he didn’t go crazy, when you don’t see anyone you only talk to the walls. This man has all his sanity and I find it becomes an achievement. He has the strength of one who is innocent”, insisted Me Martin.
The disappearance of Delphine Jubillar took place on the night of December 15 to 16, 2020. This 33-year-old nurse was at her home before evaporating. All of the young woman’s belongings, except for a white down jacket and her mobile phone, were found in the house. The only version of the facts came from her husband, who claims that his wife disappeared while he was asleep, went to bed alone at 10.30 p.m., leaving his partner in front of the television.
The 30-year-old explained to the gendarmes that he had been awakened around 4 a.m. on December 16 by the crying of the couple’s youngest child, then only a few months old, and had realized at that time that Delphine had left their home in Cagnac-les-Mimes (Tarn). He then decided to contact the gendarmerie to report the disappearance of his wife. Cédric Jubillar also claimed that he thought his wife had gone to walk the dogs, having found them outside their home. The gendarmes immediately took this report very seriously and mobilized by the hundreds to find the trace of the 30-year-old. On December 23, a judicial investigation was opened for “arbitrary arrest, kidnapping, detention or sequestration”.
The investigators quickly looked into the demarcation of Delphine Jubillar’s mobile phone. This phone, also missing, stopped one last time two kilometers from the couple’s home, a few hours after the nurse’s disappearance. It was activated several times during the night before finally shutting down at 7:48 a.m. on December 16, 2020, without the investigators being able to determine whether it was Delphine herself who had used it, or someone else. other. At 10:58 p.m., Delphine would have, according to the elements of the investigation, sent a message to her lover. Later, it was her brother who would have contacted her on WhatsApp, in a message relating to Christmas gifts: the message will be read at 00:11. Finally, the phone’s camera would have been reactivated at 1:33 a.m., still in the same geographical area.
It is therefore in this area that the hopes of finding the nurse were first concentrated. The gendarmes of the Research Section probed lakes, rivers and cavities, conducted searches in the fields and woods around the village of Cagnac-les-Mines, a former mining town of 3,000 inhabitants, where the young woman lived, with her husband and two boys, Louis and Elyah. The home was also searched several times.
“The opening [of this] [judicial] information gave rise to more than 2,500 acts and minutes in six months and mobilized considerable material resources”, summed up the Tarn prosecutor on June 18, 2021. He had added: “It is a worrying disappearance, which cannot be considered voluntary. The hypothesis of an accident has been evacuated […] The notion of suicide or voluntary departure is in total contradiction with all the elements of the file. Delphine Jubillar was a mother, a nurse who loved her job. She had friends and children. She had absolutely no reason to disappear.” In addition, “she had plans, in the weeks that followed, to leave the home and settle down with another man, whom she had met the previous summer”. Regarding Cédric Jubillar, the prosecutor clarified: “Contrary to what has been said, the context of the couple’s separation was very conflictual […] Cédric Jubillar had great difficulty accepting this separation. He could be brutal and rude. He had organized a real surveillance of his wife, even trying to geolocate her. He was very intrusive.” Between Cédric’s call to the gendarmerie and today, the father’s initial version of the facts has been widely questioned.
Delphine Aussaguel (maiden name) Jubillar was a night nurse at the Claude-Bernard clinic in Albi. Born in 1987, she was 33 years old at the time of her disappearance, the night of December 15 to 16, 2020. From the age of 12, the young girl lost her father, an auto mechanic. Her mother raises her alone, she and her two little brothers, in an HLM located in Gaillac (Tarn). From 2014, Delphine saw her mother’s state of health gradually deteriorate: suffering from a neurodegenerative disease, the woman was admitted to a special center, but died in 2016, aged 60. A death that will greatly affect the Tarn nurse, according to her relatives.
Having met him in 2005 at the birthday party of a mutual friend, Delphine married Cédric Jubillar in 2013, a self-employed plasterer painter. According to information reported by Le Parisien, it was Cédric Jubillar who undertook the construction of the family home, located in Cagnac-les-Mines, in the Tarn. Together, the couple gave birth to two children: Louis, a 6-year-old boy at the time of the events, and Elyah, 18 months old when his mother disappeared. It is mentioned in several press titles that it was Delphine Jubillar’s nursing salary that provided for the needs of the couple and the household. In the summer of 2020, Delphine Jubillar had expressed her desire to divorce her husband. According to his lawyer, this divorce seemed to be carried out by mutual agreement.