French father suspected of killing wife, children ‘heard voices’

BOBIGNY, France: A 33-year-old French man who admitted to killing his wife and their four children claimed he “heard voices” telling him to “cause harm”, a prosecutor said on Thursday.

French police on Tuesday arrested a man with a history of psychiatric illness on suspicion of murdering his Haitian-born wife and their children aged nine months and four, seven and 10 years old.

Their bodies had been found on Monday, Christmas Day, at home in Meaux east of Paris.

The man, a plumber, has been receiving treatment since 2017 for depression and psychotic behaviour.

Meaux public prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier, citing the results of Wednesday´s autopsy, said the children´s 35-year-old mother and her 10- and seven-year-old daughters had received “around 10 stab wounds each” which had been “administered with great violence”.

The four-year-old and nine-month-old boys “died of asphyxia following drowning”, he added.

The suspect was to appear before an investigating judge late on Thursday. The prosecutor has requested that he be remanded in custody.

The suspect said that he had “not been able to identify a trigger for his act”, said the prosecutor. He has “felt nothing” and “felt empty” after murdering his family, the prosecutor added.