Fresh searches for missing Swiss twins

2011-02-07 15:45

Italian rangers show the pictures of 6-year-old twin girls, Alessia and Livia Schepp, outside the Cerignola Station in southern Italy. (Giovanni Marino, AFP)

Rome - Authorities in Italy, Switzerland and France on Monday ordered fresh searches for 6-year-old twin girls whose father committed suicide by throwing himself under a train last week.

Police using tracker dogs and helicopters were examining an area around the railway station of Cerignola in southern Italy where on Friday 43-year-old Matthias Kaspar Schepp killed himself.

Five days earlier, on January 30, Schepp had snatched the twins Livia and Alessia from their home in western Switzerland and drove them away in a car belonging to his estranged wife Irina, aged 44.

The girls and their father are believed to have travelled to southern France where in Marseille on January 31 Schepp bought three ferry tickets for Corsica and also sent a postcard to Irina.

However, last Thursday - a day before his suicide - the man was reportedly spotted dining alone at a restaurant near Salerno in southern Italy.

- SAPA