The hypothesis of a crime occurring in a context of separation is increasingly tangible. The autopsies of the woman and her two little girls found dead at the end of October in a house in Carantec (Finistère), alongside the father discovered hanged, revealed that they had been asphyxiated, the Brest prosecutor’s office announced on Monday.
The 38-year-old mother and her two daughters, aged 8 and 11, died “from mechanical asphyxia” which “resulted, very likely, from strangulation for the mother and suffocation for the girls”, indicates the public prosecutor of Brest, Camille Miansoni, in a press release.
The bodies of the woman and her two children, who showed no signs of external injuries, were discovered on October 30 in their house in Carantec, in separate rooms. The corpse of the 41-year-old father was found on the ground floor of the home, where he had hanged himself.
“Slapped” by her husband
The woman had left the marital home shortly before, against a background of the couple’s difficult separation. She had reported to the gendarmerie that she had been slapped by her husband ten days earlier. She had not filed a complaint but had simply announced that she was leaving the family home to “settle with her parents”.
Heard by the gendarmerie, she had indicated that there had “never been physical violence” during the thirteen years of common life of the couple before this event. It was his mother, who worried about not having any more news, had called the police.
Toxicological analyzes carried out on the three victims “did not reveal the presence in the bodies of drugs, nor any other of toxic product which could be at the origin of the deaths nor likely to facilitate the commission”, specifies the magistrate.
An investigation for intentional homicides had been entrusted to the gendarmerie following this tragedy which upset this seaside town of around 3,200 inhabitants year-round, in the bay of Morlaix, very popular with tourists.