MISSING: Allison and Marie-Josée Benitez

Mm-hmm. Otherwise I don't think you would even hear the episode. They're so long and so complicated, and lest we never.

But I.

It's a summer evening in 2013.. And Cindy Filipiak, an organizer for the regional French beauty pageant. Miss Roussillon, is a little concerned when she doesn't see 19 year old Alison Benitez among the girls filing in for the Monday prep meeting. A former winner herself, Cindy knows how committed her girls are to the contest, which is less than a month away now. And this pageant is a big deal.

The winner will compete for the title of Miss France. And Alison is one of Cindy's fiercest competitors. So Cindy can't help but notice her absence, especially since Alison had checked in the day before to confirm what time they were meeting that day. As the minutes tick by and there's still no sign of her, even the other contestants start to worry. And I mean they've all been preparing for this thing for months.

and yeah, they're competitors, but they've also become friends. Alison would not be a no-show, not to this. Even if she was just gonna be like five or ten minutes late, she would have reached out. And she easily could reach out, because she's a teenager, you know? I mean her cell phone is practically.

In fact, that's actually what her oldest daughter, Lydia, thinks is going on at this very moment. You see, she had gotten a text from her mom the evening before, and the Google translation of that quote says, I made a difficult decision, but it's better this way. I'm going to Toulouse with Alison. I love you. Call dad.

And she met her stepdad, Francisco, who had been in her life since she was like 11, like her dad. Yeah, so.

Also, they all still live together. So I get wanting.

So it makes sense that he'll be helping them out financially. But until then, another last-minute trip doesn't seem all that unexpected. And everyone knows how close Alison is with her mom, so it makes sense that they'd be together. Even.

It's a level I can only hope to attain with Josie. Like, Alison's social media pages are filled with her mom writing these wonderful things for her daughter. You know, just how much she loves her, how proud she is. And then Alison writes back saying she's proud of her mom. She even calls her Mamounette d'Amour.

And I think it roughly translates to Mommy of Love or Mommy My Love, which is now going to be the next word I teach Josie. Like,

It doesn't. So does Lydia know that they're missing all of this? I kind of feel like we have two groups of people here who are aware that they're missing, but in.

And she's not super keyed into Alison's day to day pageant schedule. The whole, like, prep meeting, no show, no call, whatever thing. I don't even think that's on her radar. So in relation to those,

Well, still not at this point. I don't think so. I.

Oh. When she confronted him, Francisco tried to reassure her that it was no big deal, but he had confided in Lydia that.

But either way, Lydia doesn't worry when she gets that text message on July 14th, because she has all this back history, and she doesn't worry on July 15th or 16th when she doesn't hear any updates. But eventually she does try to call and to text. And these new communications aren't getting any kind of response, not from her mom or her sister. And the same can be said for Lydia's other sister, Roxanne. In fact, she didn't even know they were traveling or off the radar.

But eventually both sisters check Allison's social media and they find that her pages have gone dark. And.

Is he worried?

He's not even there longer than 10 minutes. And based on what I could gather, police aren't too interested in taking a report at this time, because, I mean, both women are adults. But again, how hard did he really try if he's only there for 10 minutes max? Well,

One of those inconsistencies was about how worried Francisco was. and when. Like Francisco, tells them that he was worried right away, basically from the 15th on, says he even tried to search for them on his own, which I'm pretty sure is news to Lydia. And then Allison's best friend comes forward and tells investigators that he'd stopped by their apartment looking for Allison on either the 16th or 17th. So again, after he says he's worried and looking for them.

And when this friend stops by, Francisco had told him not to worry because they're in Toulouse, they turned off their phones, everything's.

Like not only have neither of the women used their phones since the 14th, and there's no sign of them on the internet or social media, but they also haven't.

There isn't any record of them taking any form of public transportation to Toulouse or anywhere.

I mean,

But investigators' initial hopes are dashed when they turn out to be false leads. So on August 1st, they finally turn their attention to the family apartment for a search. Forensic techs combed through the place for like five hours. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I've.

I mean, they're still open to the possibility of a voluntary disappearance, but they are still considering some form of foul play. By August 4th, Francisco seems like he is just crumbling, which becomes super clear when a video of him is posted online that day. And just an FYI, I'm a little unclear whether Francisco himself posted this video, or whether it was shared with the media outlet that then posted it, but either way, in it, he's speaking directly to the camera, openly weeping. And I'm actually gonna play a little bit of the clip for all of you, and obviously most of us won't be able to understand the words he's saying, but I want you, it's more the emotion I want you to get, because he is clearly distressed. And in the video, he is like declaring his unconditional love for his daughter, and says that he's hoping for the safe return of both his daughter and his wife.

And he also refers to all of the pressure that he's under, saying that, despite his best efforts to hold on, he's on the verge of exploding.

And with this discovery, the video from the day before starts seeming like something of a suicide note. Yeah,

Sincerely devastated about the disappearance of his wife and daughter? Or sincerely guilt-stricken by the knowledge of how they disappeared? And this is really when investigators change their tune publicly. Whatever discretion they've been exercising up to this point, regarding their suspicions of Francisco, it's pretty quickly set aside. At a press conference that same day, the deputy prosecutor acknowledges that the women probably aren't alive.

And he indicates that the chances of any sort of voluntary disappearance on their part are rapidly diminishing. And he goes even further, acknowledging that it's, quote, difficult to accuse a dead person. But he's also doing little to hide the fact that that's what he's doing. Right. Now that Francisco's gone, basically their only real possible witness to the women's disappearances, investigators decide to seize Francisco's cell phone and laptop, as well as to take another look at the family's apartment.

While those items are being analyzed, they also establish a national tip line. Because they're having a really hard time finding witnesses who can either confirm or dispute elements of Francisco's story. And I think that's in part just due to the time of year. it is, because July and August are the months that a lot of French people go on extended vacation. So a lot of people who live in this area are out of town while all of this is.

Anyway, even with France being in its peak season at this point, investigators eventually track down some neighbors of the family who confirm overhearing frequent arguments coming from their apartment. Which we kind of already knew,

They get this tip from a man named Claude. But really, Claude is calling on behalf of his four teenage kids, who he had had with a woman named Simone de Oliveira Alves. Because when Francisco's face splashed across their television, Claude and Simone's kids couldn't believe what they were seeing. Or rather, they couldn't believe who they were seeing. You see, back in 2004,, nearly a decade before Alison and Marie-José went missing, 40-something-year-old Francisco had been stationed in the French city of Nîmes.

And, although he was very much married at the time and a father to Alison, who was around 10 years old, he insisted to Simone, this 28-year-old Brazilian mother of four, that he was single and childless. And, having no reason to disbelieve him, Simone and Francisco began this passionate affair. And things got kind of serious. I mean, serious enough that she introduced him to her kids. And, based on what they tell investigators, he hadn't just met them.

He'd practically acted as a stepfather to them for months, right up until the day their mother vanished without a trace. According to Simone's sister, it was when Simone found out about his whole other family that she disappeared. And not just that. Again, according to this sister, Simone might have even been pregnant. And it's not like no one noticed when she went missing back then.

I mean, she had four kids. So authorities opened an investigation into her disappearance. But it doesn't seem like it got very far before it went cold. All investigators were really able to determine was that Simone and Francisco had gotten into some kind of argument. And on the evening of November 29, 2004, she had texted him to say that she was leaving.

And she wasn't coming back. And then, poof, she.

But now, in 2013,, another woman connected to Francisco has sent this vague text that she's leaving and basically has fallen off the face of the earth. Then he takes his own life, just as police are starting to, like, squeeze on him. So yeah, maybe it's time to reopen that 2004 case. And they do. Now, it's also around this time that they get results back from Francisco's electronics.

And right away, they're pretty interested in a call he made just prior to ending his life. It was to a woman in Spain named Maria Teresa. Is this the woman he was seeing?

I get the.

now. They track her down. And she tells them that not long after the two women had, quote-unquote, left, she had a romantic rendezvous with Francisco at the family apartment. Hmm. How long is not long?

Less than a week. I mean, I think she was there on July 19th. Jesus Christ.

Without the necessary context, she didn't really question Francisco when he told her that the smell was nothing to worry about. Just the smell of the neighbor's garbage wafting in through the bathroom window. The closed bathroom window. Yeah, it's totally that. Right.

So, hearing all of this, investigators are thinking that the smell wasn't trash, duh, and the woman's bodies aren't in the apartment by now. I mean, they know that. They looked through the apartment. But could they have been on July 19th or in the days leading up to it?

Maybe there was something to find then, rather than wait until day 18 or whatever. I don't know.

Now, around this time, investigators expand their search efforts from the family home to include the facilities Francisco had access to while working with a French Foreign Legion. Because it's not like he just had your run-of-the-mill office job. He had access to living quarters and stuff. And when they start poking around in those areas and interviewing colleagues from the barracks, they realize that he had been doing some bizarre things in the days after his wife and daughter disappeared. Like, for one, they track down a witness who says that he helped Francisco transport a freezer from the family's home to the barracks on July 17th.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Francisco had decided he wanted to donate this.

He noticed while he was there that a sink was clogged with this thick red liquid. And did he ask why? I don't think so. But keep in mind, this is all happening before the women were reported missing. So he just made a mental note of it, probably not even super consciously, and then went about helping Francisco move this freezer.

And when they get the freezer out to the barracks, Francisco decided it needed a deep cleaning, which, the point you made earlier, seems like a strange priority for him to have at the time, especially in retrospect. And if that isn't chilling enough, another soldier comes forward and tells them he'd encountered Francisco washing what looked like bloodstained sheets and a floor mat at the barracks in the same time frame. And no, I don't know exactly what this floor mat is, possibly a floor rug. But again, translation issues. What I do know is this guy did ask, what the heck is going on?

And Francisco's response was, quote, I thawed meat. Huh? I mean, yeah. So again, like, no, it's just no. That's not an answer.

I think some form was there, right? You're trying to explain like blood and who's thawing meat on? like a rug or a mat or like, no, it doesn't make sense. No. So obviously, when investigators hear this, they know that they need to check out this freezer, see what might have been left behind in it.

And when they go, it's still there and they secure it. They run tests. And what they find are traces of Allison's blood deposited within it. His daughter's blood. Investigators find additional traces of DNA, definitely Allison's and possibly also Marie Jose's.

And that was in a washing machine at the barracks that Francisco was known to use. When another French Foreign Legion colleague comes forward in early September and tells investigators that he'd seen Francisco washing his hands in the bathroom at the barracks and that the sink was stained with red marks. Well, I probably don't need to tell you what everyone assumes he'd been washing off his hands.

Oh, so, by September 10th, they've got search teams out at a couple of the town's water treatment plants, as well as in some nearby pine forests and foothills.

But either way, they're pretty sure the women's remains were dumped in that chunk of time, from the 14th to the 17th. Okay, but then what's the smell on the 19th? I think the insinuation is maybe just lingering odor from whatever happened to the women in that apartment. But you're right. Like, I mean, I can't quite wrap my head around the time frame.

Like to me, the way that... Not lining up? quite right. Not perfectly, but I think we're probably missing some pieces. But either way, within just days, by September 12,, the search is put on pause.

It seems like there's only one organization in the country that's got a limited number of cadaver dogs. There's like eight or so. And the dogs get called to another mission. So it's not until the 24th that they're back at those water treatment plants, this time with dive teams. And I have to tell you, this job, whatever the divers are doing, it sounds intense.

Because I don't think they're just diving in water. According to what one outlet reported, an engineer familiar with this project said that they're diving into aeration basins full of something like, quote, molasses, at least in texture and density. That sounds incredibly unpleasant, to say the least. But the same engineer suggests that the swampiness of the liquid might actually work, if they find anything, to investigators' benefit, because it would likely slow down any kind of decomposition. And yet, investigators don't find any sign of the women's remains.

Not in the aeration basins or in the nearby bodies of water. Not in the foothills or in the pine forests. And by October 30th, the search is officially called off. So where the are they? They don't know.

They should have been here. Or they thought they should have been here. But clearly, a piece of the puzzle is missing. Or maybe it's all there, and they're just actually missing the women because of this molasses stuff they're diving in. Now, there is talk at some point of revisiting the water treatment plants the next summer, of possibly even having them drained, just to be sure.

But from what I can tell, these plans run into some kind of technical issues and they're just not pursued. And the case goes pretty cold. And it stays cold until September of 2016.. That's when Marie-Josée's brother, Eric, approaches investigators with a new lead. He'd been contacted on social media by a woman who had been vacationing on the beach near Lubacarez, another coastal town close to Perpignan, where the family lived.

And this was back in the summer of 2014.. And she was shocked when her dog dug up what appeared to be human bones. Now, to be clear, another source says that he found these bones in April 2015.. So I'm not totally sure what's up with that or why she didn't report it then. Either way, though, investigators descend on this beach in 2016 and they excavate the spot where the bones had been found.

And, shockingly, they do find more bones. And for just a few hopeful days, it seems like maybe, finally, Marie-Josée and Allison's remains have been found. But it's a crushing blow when the analysis of the bones comes back just a few days later and concludes that the remains were of an animal, not any human. And that is where things stand to this day. The secrets Francisco took to his grave all those years ago, in 2013, remain buried with him.

I mean, there have been theories over the years. Eric even had one back in 2015 that he thought investigators failed to explore. He thought that maybe the women never came out of that apartment building, dead or alive, because apparently in the apartment building that they lived in, there's this crawl space under the building's garage that contains an old septic tank filled with sand. And he thought that the women's remains could be in that. And it's hard for me to wrap my mind around it exactly, but he was pretty convinced at the time.

I mean, so much so that his lawyer filed a formal request for the area to be searched, although they were all ignored. Though I will say, if this was the case, maybe this to me is one of the only things that explains the timeline and the smell, right? Like you would still smell it, but eventually it would stop smelling. I don't know, but it's possible. Now, like I said, they never ended up searching it.

Apparently it's super difficult to access. And police say that even Francisco wouldn't have been able to without leaving some kind of trace behind. But at least for a time, some suspected that with his military training, he just might have found a way. Now, as far as I can tell, nothing ever came of Simone's reopened investigation. To this day, neither Simone's family, nor Marie-José and Allison's families have any idea what happened to them.

So now all anyone can do is wait and hope. Hope that, with time and with patience, long buried secrets will find their way to the surface once again. Francisco's death was devastating to this case, because it left a void where justice should be.

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