French investigators have identified around 40 unsolved disappearances and other cold cases potentially linked to a former soldier who was arrested last year and charged with two murders in southeast France.
Nordahl Lelandais has already confessed to the killing of a hitchhiking soldier in April 2017, and the abduction and murder of an eight-year-old schoolgirl in August 2017.
He has also been charged with the sexual assault of two second cousins, both minors.
After just over a year of reviewing Lelandais's background and movements, police say he could be connected with around 40 unsolved cases, mainly in the Rhone-Alpes region.
"At this point, Nordahl Lelandais hasn't been formally and legally implicated in any of these cases," Jean-Philippe Lecouffe of the national gendarmerie military police force told journalists at its headquarters outside Paris on Monday.
Most of the cases are unsolved disappearances, while fewer than a dozen involve minors, said Lecouffe, who didn't rule out the possibility that more cases might come under review.
He did not disclose the specific cases under review, but they may include the 2011 disappearance of a man at the Elements electronic music...