The call came on a Tuesday afternoon. My sister’s voice on the phone, tight and strange, barely holding itself together. “They found my mom. ”
Just like that.
After two years of waiting, two years of that terrible limbo where you don’t know whether to hope or to grieve, it was over. The relief and the sorrow hit me in the same instant, a wave of every emotion at once, because now we knew it was true. She was dead. They’d found her car in a lake in the south of France.
A reservoir called Bancali, a huge, remote expanse of water up in the hills, miles from anywhere. The summer had been so dry that the water level had dropped over thirty feet, and someone walking along the shore had spotted the top of a rusted vehicle breaking the surface. They called the police, and the gendarmes came, and they knew right away that something was wrong. There was no reason for a car to be down that path unless someone wanted to hide it.
It took the forensic divers a couple of days to plan the recovery. They worked slowly, carefully, photographing everything before they touched anything, logging the scene underwater the way they would on dry land. When they peered through the open driver’s side window, they found a body laid across the back seat. She was already gone, either unconscious or dead when she was placed there, before the car went into the water.
The license plate led back to a 52-year-old British woman named Evelyn Lund. A mother of three. A grandmother. She’d been missing from her home in the Tarn region of France for nearly two years.
Back in Lancashire, England, where Evelyn’s family still lived, the news hit like a second blow. Her daughter Vicky had spent those two years in agony, waiting for the phone to ring, trying to convince herself that her mother hadn’t just walked away. Now she had to accept something worse. “She wouldn’t have ever just gone off and left her family,” Vicky said.
“I was very, very worried something terrible had happened. ”
But finding Evelyn’s body wasn’t the end of the story. It was the beginning. The gendarmes had to figure out how she’d ended up at the bottom of that lake.
Had she driven in herself? Had she rolled in by accident on the stormy night she disappeared? Or had someone put her there? They started by looking at Evelyn’s life.
And the more they looked, the more they found. Before Robert, Evelyn had been a happy, outdoorsy mother who loved animals. She and her husband had filled their home with dogs, cats, goats, ponies, chickens. They were a normal, regular family, full of happy memories.
Then tragedy struck. Evelyn’s husband was diagnosed with cancer and died when Vicky was just thirteen. “He was the love of her life,” Vicky said. “It hit her really hard.
”
Evelyn inherited over a million pounds. She was financially secure, but she was lonely. She was left alone on the farm with the animals, missing her husband, vulnerable in a way she hadn’t been before. Within months, she met Robert Lund.
Robert was a 39-year-old divorcee and tree surgeon who lived in a caravan on their land. At a gathering at the house, he made a beeline for Evelyn and didn’t leave her side all evening. It was weird, Vicky remembered. From that day on, they couldn’t get rid of him.
They started a relationship, and Robert moved in. Whatever he wanted, Evelyn bought for him. A clay pigeon shooting hobby. A huge Clydesdale horse.
He was very good at spending her money. He was very interested in playing the lord of the manor. She was a wealthy widow, and he was somebody who saw somebody who could financially help him. It was the romantic equivalent of a salesperson.
Love bombing. But soon, Robert showed another side. He was condescending, always putting her down, bashing her confidence, saying nasty things about her appearance in front of other people. He had a terrible temper, shouting and screaming.
It escalated into violence. “There was a history of domestic violence in the relationship,” the investigators noted. “Certainly there was a history of Robert having assaulted Evelyn. ”
Despite all of it, they announced they were getting married.
The night before the wedding, Evelyn was upset. She pulled Vicky aside and said, “I don’t know if I’m making the right decision. ” Vicky begged her not to do it. She refused to go to the wedding.
But Evelyn went through with it the next day anyway. Shortly after, Robert put the idea in her head to move to the south of France. They bought a converted barn in a remote hamlet called Rayssac, in the Tarn region. Evelyn didn’t speak French.
She was isolated geographically and socially. In the domestic violence literature, isolation is one of the primary tactics of controlling a victim. Evelyn was going into the worst possible scenario. She did make a few friends there, including a fellow British expat named Mary Ann.
But even Mary Ann saw the tension. Robert was always criticizing Evelyn, always controlling her. Once, Evelyn wanted to go swimming, and Robert would only let her get in the pool if she was in the nude. Mary Ann just thought how controlling he was.
“He was just a nasty piece of work,” she said. Many times, Vicky and her sisters told Evelyn to leave. “You’ve got to get out of this. Have the guts to move away.
” Evelyn would call them, crying, in a deep depression. But she felt controlled by him. He twisted her brain with false information, telling her she’d have to give up her animals, that she’d have to pay him half her widow’s pension because they were married. It was emotional and mental abuse.
The last time anyone saw Evelyn alive was in January, shortly after Christmas. She had a terrible row with Robert and fled to Mary Ann’s house, crying. After lunch, they decided to rest. When Mary Ann woke up, she found a note from Evelyn: “Gone to feed the dogs and cats.
” That was the last time anyone saw her. A couple of days went by. Evelyn didn’t call. Everyone got concerned.
Then Robert phoned Vicky with a flat, strange voice. “Oh God, is she still with you? ” Vicky instantly knew something was wrong. There was no emotion in his voice.
A man whose wife was missing should be frantic. He wasn’t. Robert hadn’t even reported his wife missing. The family threatened to do it themselves.
Finally, three days after Evelyn failed to come home, Robert called the police. He said they’d had an argument that morning. She left. He didn’t know where she went.
The gendarmes launched a search. They scoured the countryside for miles around, sent divers into twenty lakes in the middle of deep winter. They used heat-seeking cameras from the air. Nothing.
Evelyn and her car had vanished. The French investigation was thorough, but they couldn’t find her. Vicky was convinced. She told her sisters, “I think he’s done something to her.
He’s killed her. ” They agreed. Vicky made the 900-mile journey to Tarn to search for her mother and to confront her stepfather. She drove around the country roads, looking down ravines, finding nothing.
At the house, Robert followed her around, asking what she was doing. Acting like a guilty man. Acting like a person with something to hide. He wasn’t happy she was there at all.
Police secured a warrant to search the couple’s smallholding. Robert was there, incredibly cool, almost arrogant. He didn’t seem worried. He seemed very confident that he was getting away with it.
But the search uncovered Evelyn’s handbag, still in the house, with all her cards and things inside. A woman who was leaving wouldn’t have left those behind. And in the house, they found something even more significant: a pair of glasses. Mary Ann distinctly remembered Evelyn wearing them the day she disappeared.
Evelyn needed her glasses to drive. If she’d driven off that day, she would have needed them. Their presence at the house proved she’d come back. They also found blood staining in the kitchen area, consistent with an assault.
Robert was brought in for questioning. He claimed Evelyn had driven off drunk after an argument. He thought she’d gone to a hotel to cool off. That didn’t make sense.
She’d told her friend she was going back to feed the animals. As an English national, Robert used his rights under French law to his advantage, demanding an interpreter, buying himself time to prepare his answers. He was very clever. The interviews reached a dead end, and without a body, French law at the time meant no one could be charged with murder.
Robert was released. He walked around the market thinking he was clever, that he’d gotten away with it scot-free. Then the drought hit the lake, and everything changed. When Evelyn’s car was recovered, the forensic work began.
The driver’s side window was open. That was suspicious. The day Evelyn disappeared, a storm was raging through the area. If you were driving in a storm, the last thing you’d want would be an open window.
But if you wanted to push a car into a lake, you’d wind down the driver’s window so you could reach in and steer it while you pushed from the outside. The gearbox was in neutral. The car wasn’t driven in. It could have rolled or been pushed.
Evelyn’s seat was set too far back for her to have been driving. She wouldn’t have been able to reach the pedals. Her body was found in the back seat, with no evidence of any attempt to escape. She was either unconscious or dead before the car entered the water.
There was very little water in her lungs. And there was dried blood in her clothes and on the back seat. The most telling detail was the boots. Evelyn was wearing her animal-care boots, but they were on the wrong feet.
A sober person would never dress themselves that way. The defense would say she was drunk. But toxicology tests revealed no trace of drugs or alcohol in her body. She wasn’t drunk.
Someone else had dressed her, and dressed her incorrectly. The picture was clear. Evelyn had been injured, had bled, and had been placed in that car and pushed into the lake. It was murder.
Three years after her body was found, the gendarmes arrested Robert Lund and charged him with Evelyn’s murder. At the trial, the family sat through days of testimony they couldn’t understand. Robert stared at them with his horrible eyes, trying to intimidate them. The prosecution laid out the motive: money.
Robert was financially dependent on Evelyn. He’d empty her account on the day her widow’s pension arrived, and he continued to do so even after she went missing. He stood to inherit her estate and claim her life insurance. But days before her disappearance, Evelyn had contacted a divorce lawyer in France, getting advice about leaving him.
In abusive relationships, the most dangerous time is when the victim is getting ready to leave. Robert realized his meal ticket was about to walk out the door. The defense argued Evelyn died in a car accident, that she was drunk. But the experts tore that apart.
She couldn’t have driven to that lake without her glasses, especially not in the dark, in the middle of a storm, down a narrow path with a sharp turn that you’d have to know well to navigate. She couldn’t have been in the driver’s seat at all. The evidence was overwhelming. But the jury couldn’t agree on murder.
They had to be convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that Robert had planned it. They couldn’t reach that decision with enough of a majority. Instead, Robert Lund was found guilty of involuntary homicide, a lesser charge, and jailed for twelve years. The family felt a sick mix of relief and anger.
He wouldn’t walk free, but it wasn’t the justice they wanted. Lund appealed. He lost. But a mistrial meant the case had to be tried a third time, two years later.
The family had to relive it all again. It was horrendous. If he was cleared, Lund would finally get Evelyn’s life insurance and the inheritance. But it was not to be.
When the verdict of guilty came back, he collapsed. He sat with his head in his hands, white as a sheet, in shock. He thought he was going to get away with it. They never saw remorse.
Never saw grief. Never saw guilt. Robert Lund was released from prison in 2013. He’s out there now, free, while Evelyn’s family lives with what he did.
The sad part is that she was killed just as she was making moves to leave. She didn’t get the chance. There are no words that will ever fix what he did.
