Mother says Typhaine Taton is dead

A sad ending to the story of the five-year-old girl who "disappeared without trace" in June.

Anne-Sophie Faucheur, the mother of Typhaine Taton, a little girl who went missing in June this year, has admitted that her daughter is dead.

You might remember the case of Typhaine, the five-year-old girl who apparently vanished without trace while walking with her mother in the northern French town of Maubeuge in June.

Her disappearance made the national headlines here in France, with police questioning both Faucheur and her companion, Nicolas Willot as well as Typhaine's father, François Taton, from whom Faucheur was estranged, and searching both their homes and a lake and a river near the town.

But still there was no sign of the five-year-old and no indication of how she had "disappeared" so suddenly in broad daylight.

Faucheur even held a press conference a couple of weeks after her daughter's disappearance saying how she had panicked when she realised Typhaine was nowhere to be found and that she and Willot had questioned local shopkeepers and passers-by in desperation before reporting the girl missing.

On Monday though the 23-year-old was taken into police custody again and in the course of questioning apparently admitted that her daughter was dead.

It's still unclear as to whether Typhaine was the victim of abuse by Faucheur's companion, Willot, as some reports on national radio have suggested, or died accidentally with the couple trying to cover up exactly what had happened.

Both Faucheur and Willot are in police custody, and the search for Typhaine's body has been widened to include other towns in northern France and across the border in Belgium.