A 48-year-old divorced Briton locked in a bitter custody
battle confessed on Sunday that he had killed his two
young children by slitting their throats near the eastern
French city of Lyon.
The bodies of a five-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy
were discovered on Saturday afternoon in the man’s
apartment in Saint-Priest, a southeastern suburb of Lyon.
The unemployed father confessed to the gruesome crime
“but did not go into details of the motive”, prosecutors
said.
The tragedy was “linked to a bitter separation” and “the
state of his visitation rights which he considered
insufficient”, another judicial source told AFP.
“In 2010, there was an incident of violence with his
spouse which led to restrictions on his visitation rights,”
the source said.
He was arrested on Saturday evening in Lyon and placed
in custody. A judicial official said a knife which is thought
to have been the murder weapon had been found.
The man had visitation rights but only in the presence of
another person, the official said, adding that this was the
first time he had brought the children home to his
apartment on the second floor of a four-storey building
without a third party being present.
He remained in custody late Sunday and was to be
presented to a prosecutor on Monday when he was
expected to be charged.
Police were also questioning his ex-wife, notably to learn
more about “the legal framework of the children’s visits
to their father”.
“We understand that a British national has been arrested
in France,” a Foreign Office spokesman told AFP. “We are
in contact with the French authorities and we await the
outcome of their investigation.”
Several witnesses said the man fled on roller skates after
his former wife encountered him on the stairwell of the
building and saw him with bloodstained clothes. She
immediately alerted the police.
A neighbour said the mother was soon joined by
relatives, including her brother-in-law and the children’s
grandparents, and was lucid although in shock.
A psychiatrist from the emergency services was
immediately dispatched to give her counselling.
“They were devastated but relatively composed,” the
neighbour said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“She said: ‘He has killed them’. I tried to comfort her
saying we didn’t know as yet although I knew at the
bottom of my heart that they were dead.”
Ahmed Benguedda, another neighbour, told AFP the
couple had divorced “two or three years ago” and that
the man had drinking problems and was a wife beater.
After the divorce the wife, who worked as an assistant
accountant, moved out of the apartment they had jointly
bought and was living in the Isere region of eastern
France.
But the children were “well-balanced”, said Benguedda,
whose seven-year-old daughter often played with them.
“All the people in this building are in a state of shock,”
Benguedda said.
More neighbours were being questioned by the police on
Sunday.