Two years after apparently committing suicide, man is arrested in France

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A man believed to have killed himself two years ago has been arrested by French police. The 56-year-old, who had gambling debts, abandoned his car on the edge of a cliff overlooking the chilly English Channel in late 2005 and left a suicide note to his family, said Christian Wuilbaut, head of the judicial police in the northern city of Lille. In the note to his wife and three sons, the man said he intended to throw himself into the sea. Although a three-day search failed to turn up his body, the man was widely thought to have died, Wuilbaut said. That assumption was later challenged, however, by investigations that found that he was in debt and had applied for a visa for Algeria shortly before his disappearance. "He's someone who blew through his money and that of the company he headed at casinos," said Gerald Lesign, the public prosecutor in Boulogne-sur-Mer, where the man, an insurance broker, lived at the time of his disappearance. "He's a compulsive gambler." Lesign and Wuilbaut both refused to name the man, who was arrested in the Paris suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne last week after he gave his real name for a job selling postcards at a store. That alerted police to his whereabouts.