The mystery surrounding the discovery of four bodies recovered simultaneously from the Seine river has only deepened. On Wednesday, August 13, at 1:45 pm, a passerby noticed a body floating in the river near the Pont de Choisy in Choisy-le-Roi, a southeastern suburb of Paris, close to the RER train station, and immediately alerted emergency services.

When police officers, firefighters and the river brigade searched the area, they discovered not one, but four bodies submerged within the same perimeter. According to a press release by the Créteil prosecutor's office on August 16, initial observations quickly made it clear that the bodies had not all been submerged at the same time: The first, the one spotted by the passerby, was "relatively well preserved," while the other three showed "a very advanced state of decomposition."

At this stage, nothing indicates that the four bodies were submerged at that exact spot in the Seine. Various factors, such as the shape of the riverbed, the current and even tree branches, could have trapped them there after drifting for several days. Their discovery within the same restricted area "could be explained by the river's configuration at that point," the prosecutor's office added.

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