On the morning of the 3rd of August 2015, Sylvie Bourseau made the drive to Toulouse. She had not spoken to her daughter Eva in eleven days. Eleven days of unanswered calls. Eleven days of telling herself there was surely an explanation – that Eva was busy, that she had perhaps gone somewhere without saying. But the silence had grown too heavy to ignore any longer.
She went to Eva's apartment building on the rue Jean-Baptiste-Merly (*Roo-zhahn-Bap-teest-Meh-lee*). She climbed the stairs. Then froze as she stood outside her daughter's door… A strong odour overwhelmed her immediately.
Sylvie called the fire brigade. When the firefighters broke through the door, the thick, chemical smell was sickening. The bedroom door had been sealed all the way around its frame with tape. When they pushed it open, they found a large plastic trunk sitting in the middle of the room. Inside it, submerged in a dark reddish liquid, was a body. An owl tattoo still visible on the victim’s back. They had found Eva Bourseau…
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Eva Bourseau was born on the 5th of April 1992, at the Hôpital de La Grave in Toulouse. She was the only child of Christophe and Sylvie, a young couple who would separate when Eva was just three years old. She was the spitting image of her mother, with the shape of her face and her chestnut hair. From her father, she got her striking blue eyes and, as those who knew her would later say, a certain way of looking at the world.
After her parents separated, Eva went to live with her mother Sylvie in the Lot, a rural area in the south-west of France. Her father Christophe visited every two weeks, and by all accounts their relationship, despite the distance, remained warm and close. Eva was quick-witted and self-assured from a very young age. She didn't let people walk over her. Asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would answer: a businesswoman. When her father pressed her — what kind of business? — she would simply say: 'Business.' He laughed when he recalled it.
Her stepmother Christine described a girl who always wanted to stand out from the crowd:
“I think she liked not resembling anyone. Being different.”
Eva had a passion for Japanese culture, and the summer before starting university, her parents pooled their resources to send her to Japan with a friend, a trip Sylvie had quietly saved for.
In 2011, Eva moved back to Toulouse to begin her studies at the Université du Mirail — now called Jean-Jaurès — enrolling in applied modern languages with a focus on English and Japanese. Despite her obvious intelligence and enthusiasm for the subject, she struggled to validate her academic years. By 2014, she had left university altogether.
By the time she stopped studying, Eva was 22. She was living alone in a small studio apartment at 38 rue Jean-Baptiste-Merly, in the Arnaud Bernard district — a lively, bohemian neighbourhood close to the Basilique Saint-Sernin, one of Toulouse's most iconic landmarks. Her neighbours described her as warm and sociable, someone who loved music and art. She had a tattoo of an owl on her back, and friends remembered her as full of energy and joie de vivre.
Toulouse is a city of students. Nicknamed La Ville Rose — the Pink City — for the distinctive terracotta brick of its buildings, it is the fourth largest city in France and home to several major universities. The student population is enormous: hundreds of thousands of young people from all over France and the world converge on its cafés, parks, and riverside promenades. The Prairie des Filtres, a long stretch of green space along the Garonne, is particularly popular — a place where students gather to relax, socialise, and in some cases, to buy and consume drugs.
It was there, in early 2015, that Eva met 21-year-old Taha Mrani Alaoui (*Ta-ha Mra-nee Ah-la-wee*) and 18-year-old Zakariya Banouni (*Za-ka-ree-ya Ba-noo-nee*).
Taha had grown up in Morocco, the son of a journalist father and a mother who had left her career as a laboratory director to raise her children full-time. By every account, Taha had had a stable upbringing: a loving home, excellent schooling, and parents who had invested entirely in his future. He studied at a prestigious lycée in Casablanca before coming to France in 2013 to pursue an engineering degree. He sat the entrance exam for the École Polytechnique — one of the most selective institutions in the world — and narrowly missed the mark. He then enrolled at ENSEEIHT, a highly regarded engineering school in Toulouse, before transferring to the Université Paul-Sabatier to study mathematics.
Zakariya Banouni was French-born of Moroccan origin, he had been identified as exceptional from an early age. At 16, he passed his baccalauréat with distinction at the prestigious Lycée Pierre-de-Fermat in Toulouse — one of the best schools in the region. He had been awarded a scholarship by the Fondation de La Dépêche du Midi, which provides financial support to outstanding young people from modest backgrounds. His tutor, Olivier, visited him every two months and later described him as 'brilliant and gentle.' Like Taha, Zakariya eventually transferred to Paul-Sabatier to study maths.
The two met at a party for Moroccan students in May 2014. They had so much in common: a passion for mathematics, strong academic foundations, and the shared experience of being high achievers who had placed enormous pressure on themselves to succeed. They became close quickly. But from the beginning, there were cracks.
Toulouse's student culture means the city has a strong drug scene. Taha and Zakariya began using cannabis, then gradually moved on to harder substances: MDMA, hallucinogenic mushrooms, LSD. They started dealing to fund their habits. Their studies, which had once been the centrepiece of their lives, began to slip away. Neither of their families, who had sacrificed so much for their children's education, had any idea what was going on.
By the summer of 2015, Taha and Zakariya were heavily in debt to their own drug supplier — a dealer known by the nickname 'Guillaume le Chinois.' They needed money urgently. Eva Bourseau, whom they had been using drugs with for months, had mentioned to them that she kept cash – a some drugs – in her apartment.
What exactly drew these two men to target Eva that summer’s night — whether it was purely the debt, or something more calculated — would become a topic of much speculation. Taha's own phone contacts contained a list of debtors, and according to one witness, he had told Eva she could repay him 'in kind' after a bottle of mescaline she had accidentally broken or lost. Eva had refused. But the clearest motive established by the prosecution was straightforward: they wanted her money.
On the evening of the 26th of July 2015, Taha and Zakariya went to Eva's apartment on the rue Merly. The three of them spent the night together, consuming drugs — including ecstasy and atropine, a substance that stimulates the heart rate. It was a chaotic, sleepless night. Towards six o'clock in the morning, Eva asked them to leave. They went.
Then Taha recalled that Eva had mentioned the fact that she had money at home. The two young men turned around. Zakariya rang the doorbell, pretending he had left his keys behind. Eva let them back in.
Zakariya struck first. He hit Eva in the face with a set of poing américain (or brass knuckles). Eva tried to run. He hit her again. Taha, demanding to know where the money was hidden, could not find it and joined the attack, striking her in the face with a crowbar. The blows continued. Eventually, they found the cash: approximately 950 euros, tucked behind an armchair. By that point, 23-year-old Eva Bourseau was no longer alive.
Realising this, Taha took charge of the situation, telling Zakariya he had a plan – something he had seen on television. In the very first season of Breaking Bad, the chemistry teacher-turned-drug manufacturer Walter White uses hydrochloric acid to dissolve the body of a man he and his partner Jesse Pinkman have killed. A gruesome scene, portrayed in clinical, methodical terms.
Taha and Zakariya went out and purchased 15 litres of hydrochloric acid and a large plastic trunk. They returned to the apartment, placed Eva's body inside the trunk, and poured the acid in. They sealed the trunk lid with tape. They taped the bedroom door as well, to contain the smell. They placed air fresheners around the apartment.
Over the following days, they returned multiple times. The body was not dissolving the way it did on television. The acid was not working fast enough. Eva's neighbour downstairs, Thomas, heard strange sounds from above — creaking, movement — but assumed it was someone in the apartment. It didn’t sound like Eva though, but he couldn’t say why.
It had now been more than a week since anyone had heard from Eva. Her friend Camille had tried knocking on her door and got no answer. Thomas, growing uneasy, reached out to Eva's family. Her mother Sylvie, who had last spoken to her daughter on the 23rd of July, had already been trying to reach her. Eva's father Christophe had not heard from her since the 21st.
On the 3rd of August 2015 — eight days after the murder — Sylvie Bourseau made the journey to Toulouse. Standing outside her daughter's apartment door, she could smell something terrible. She called the fire brigade immediately.
The firefighters broke down the door. The smell was overwhelming. The bedroom door had been sealed with tape all the way around its frame. When they pushed through, they found the trunk. Inside it, submerged in a reddish liquid, was a body in an advanced state of decomposition. A firefighter asked Eva's friends if she had any distinguishing marks. They told him about the owl tattoo on her back.
There was no longer any doubt. They had found Eva.
The investigation moved quickly. Within two days of the discovery, Taha Mrani Alaoui walked into the Toulouse police commissariat with his girlfriend Flora and said he had information about the murder of Eva Bourseau and gave them Zakariya's name.
According to Taha's first version of events, it was Zakariya who had struck Eva and come up with the idea to dissolve her body. He presented himself as a secondary figure, someone who had merely helped conceal the crime after the fact.
Zakariya was arrested. In custody, he told investigators the real story — one that would prove far closer to the truth than anything Taha had offered. His confession took three hours. He described the plan, the return to the apartment, the blows, the trunk, the acid. He did not try to minimise his role.
Investigators quickly identified the inconsistencies in Taha's account. It was Taha, the evidence showed, who had conceived the plan to dissolve Eva's body. It was Taha who had organised the purchase of the acid and the trunk. It was Taha who had used the crowbar — the weapon responsible for the fatal blows to Eva's skull. And it was Taha who had led Zakariya back to that apartment at six in the morning.
A third suspect, the drug dealer known as 'Guillaume le Chinois,' was initially implicated on suspicion of having ordered the murder. He was arrested and held, but the evidence did not support that theory, and he was released in 2016 without charge. A fourth person — a young woman involved in the wider drug network — was indicted for drug trafficking but not for the murder itself.
Prosecutor Pierre-Yves Couilleau, when announcing the indictments, noted something that struck many observers: none of the four suspects had a prior criminal record. In his words:
“What is striking in this case is obviously the profile of the defendants.”
Taha and Zakariya were academically gifted and had bright futures ahead of them. It didn’t align with the heinous crime they committed.
The trial of Taha Mrani Alaoui and Zakariya Banouni started on the 10th of December 2018 at the Cour d'Assises de Haute-Garonne (*Cor-dah-seese-duh-Oht-Ga-ron*) in Toulouse — more than three years after Eva's death. It would last fifteen days, hear from 52 witnesses, and call 19 experts.
The families of both accused were present throughout. The families of Taha and Zakariya — people described by every account as decent, loving, and utterly blindsided by what their sons had done — sat through testimony that confirmed the worst things anyone could imagine hearing about their children. Taha's father, a journalist, had confirmed to investigators:
“We invested everything.”
Zakariya's parents had moved cities, built a house, devoted their lives to giving their children opportunities.
Eva's family sat on the other side of the courtroom. Her father Christophe, her mother Sylvie, her aunt Béatrice, and her cousin Luna had all come to bear witness. The forensic medical evidence was so graphic that they left the courtroom when it was being read. Béatrice said:
“It's like going back three years… It's difficult.”
Eva's father addressed the accused directly during the proceedings. He said:
“You will go directly to hell, because you are the sons of the devil.”
During the trial, both men confirmed that the idea to dissolve Eva's body in acid came from Breaking Bad — specifically the Season 1 scene in which Walter White and Jesse Pinkman attempt to dispose of a body using corrosive acid. Taha described it as a trick he had seen on the show.
What the television programme had not shown, of course, was that dissolving a human body in acid is a slow and imperfect process. The acid they had purchased was insufficient. The body did not disappear. Instead, Eva lay in that trunk for over a week while her killers came and went, hoping that the problem would somehow resolve itself.
The prosecution called for life imprisonment for Taha and 30 years for Zakariya. Prosecutor David Sénat described the crime as a cowardly murder compounded by a degradation of the body — an act of what he called ‘hapless alchemists.'
In their defence, both men pointed to their drug use as a mitigating factor. Their lawyers argued that the spiral of addiction had warped their judgement, their values, and their capacity for empathy. A child psychiatrist testified that for Zakariya, drug use had not been a choice in any straightforward sense — it was, he said, a matter of 'encounters and pathways, not a decision.'
The jury was not persuaded that addiction excused what had been done. But they did take into account the youth of both accused at the time of the offence, and the psychological influence Taha appeared to have exercised over Zakariya. One of the defence lawyers made the point methodically during cross-examination of an investigator: Who had the idea for the burglary? Taha. Who organised the acid? Taha. Who had the crowbar? Taha. Who went to the police to accuse his friend? Also Taha.
On the 21st of December 2018, after more than four hours of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict. Taha Mrani Alaoui was sentenced to 30 years of criminal imprisonment. Zakariya Banouni was sentenced to 25 years. Both were found guilty of the murder of Eva Bourseau.
Both men remained expressionless as the sentences were read out. Neither appealed the outcome.
Eva's family was devastated — not by the verdicts themselves, but because the sentences fell short of what the prosecution had asked for. Her father had wanted exemplary punishment. 'I will never feel compassion for them,' he said, leaving the courtroom.
The legal proceedings did not end in December 2018. In February 2021, Eva's parents learned that the Fonds de Garantie des Victimes — the French government's victim compensation fund — had refused to indemnify them in full. The fund's reasoning was that Eva bore partial responsibility for her own death, given her involvement in the drug world.
Her father found this intolerable. His lawyer, Maître Tiffany Dhuiège, called the reasoning 'totally false,' noting that the debt story Taha had used as a justification had not been upheld at trial. Eva had been killed by two men who attacked her in her own home at six in the morning while she was defenceless. The suggestion that she was in some way culpable was, to her family, a secondary wound.
In prison, Zakariya Banouni — who had been 18 years old when Eva was killed — took up sport, completed a degree in English, and began studying French literature. His tutors described him as engaged and reflective. Whether that represents meaningful change, only time will tell.
For Christophe Bourseau, there is no resolution that could feel adequate. At the trial he had said:
“Before, I used to watch true crime programmes and I'd think: how do parents survive this? Now I understand. They don't survive it. They endure it.”
People who knew Eva remember her blue eyes, her strong personality, her laugh, her passion for Japan. They remember that she had once sat in her father's living room in the Gers, looking out at the Pyrenees on the horizon, and said:
“One day you'll see me on television. I'll be famous.”
She was right that the world would one day know her name. Just not the way any of them would have wanted.
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