Twenty years later, he confesses to killing his wife... and his son

The husband of the deceased, whose body was found in 2005 in a jerrycan in Moselle, has confessed twice.

The husband of Hakima Boukerouis, whose then unidentified body was found in 2005 in a jerrycan in Moselle, has confessed to killing her and revealed that he also murdered his own son, Metz prosecutor David Touvet said on Tuesday.

The suspect, now 78 years old, was arrested in June 2025 thanks to DNA testing of the victim, whose identity had remained a mystery for 20 years.

Saïd Lalaouna, who initially claimed to have used a third party to "harm" his wife, finally admitted, during a new interrogation on June 9, to having killed his wife and a son, born in 1974, whom he had from a previous marriage.

He justified the double murder by citing "their adulterous relationship," the prosecutor stated.

Knife wounds

One of the suspect's nieces, "implicated by the latter for her involvement in the events", has been charged and placed under judicial supervision for complicity in murder, the magistrate specified.

The body of Hakima Boukerouis, known as the "barrel woman," was found on January 7, 2005, on the side of a forest road in Saint-Quirin, near Sarrebourg (Moselle). It bore stab wounds, the prosecutor's office indicated at the time.

The body was concealed in a plastic rainwater collection barrel, wrapped in black garbage bags tied with string, according to a report from the international police cooperation agency Interpol.

"The same barrel had been seen floating in the Saar Red River in mid-October 2004," the report also states. The victim, born in April 1970 in Algeria, died between September and October 2004.

Her husband, also originally from Algeria, continued to declare her to the tax authorities after her disappearance, the prosecutor stated.

Placed in pretrial detention in 2025 after an initial interrogation, he was released for medical reasons. The prosecutor did not specify whether he was remanded in custody again after confessing.