- The victim’s name is Auriane Nathalie Laisne, from a town near Lyon
A young woman whose body was found in an abandoned church in Italy was hunting for ghosts and looked like a “walking corpse” before her gruesome death, police said.
The victim, a 22-year-old French woman named Auriane Nathalie Laisne, may have been the victim of a ‘consented killing’ or sacrifice – theories that researchers in the Aosta Valley village of La Salle are reportedly investigating.
A witness described seeing Laisne nearby with a male friend in the days before her death late last month, claiming the pair were dressed in dark clothing “like vampires.”
Her decomposing body was later discovered by a hiker on April 6 and it is believed she had been dead for several days, with her clothes soaked in blood. Some of the blood at the scene had been scraped from the floor and removed, police told CNN.
An autopsy revealed that Laisne had been stabbed multiple times in the neck and abdomen, and that she also suffered gunshot wounds to her neck and body that police said could have been inflicted after her death.
The victim, a 22-year-old Frenchwoman named Auriane Nathalie Laisne, was found dead in an abandoned church overlooking the village of La Salle in the Aosta Valley.
Investigators launched a manhunt for the man seen with her, eventually tracking down the suspect in France late last night.
The 21-year-old Italian man, Teima Sohaib, was arrested in Lyon on suspicion of murder. He is now being tried in the French city of Grenoble.
A witness described seeing Laisne and a young man, now identified by police as Sohaib, together in the area the days before.
They reportedly said Laisne looked “very beautiful, but suffering and emaciated.”
They described the man as having “black curls and an olive complexion,” said he looked “much younger” and added that he “didn’t look like a violent man, far from it.”
Laisne is from Saint-Priest, a town near Lyon, and her family are said to have traveled to Italy to identify her body.
The young woman was found with a package of pink marshmallows and groceries next to her body, according to police. She was wearing leggings, a sweater and a dark jacket.
Photos show the crime scene: an abandoned church where police suggest Laisne may have been looking for ghosts
Researchers in the Aosta Valley village of La Salle are reportedly investigating a number of theories (file image)
Sohaib is said to come from the Marche region of Italy and is the son of Egyptian immigrants. He lived in Grenoble, in Val d’Isére, in the south-east of France.
Sohaib had been wanted in France and Italy since the end of March for ‘violation of judicial control’, Sky Italy reports.
Police reportedly said Laisne’s death could be linked to a TikTok ghost hunting competition, which has become popular among young people in France.