I killed Swiss twins, dad told wife
2011-02-11 16:05
Geneva - The father of the missing Swiss twins wrote a letter to his estranged wife saying he had killed them and intended to kill himself, Swiss police said on Friday.
Matthias Kaspar Schepp wrote in a February 3 letter from Italy that 6-year-olds Alessia and Livia were dead and he would now kill himself, and his body was found later that day, police from the Swiss canton (state) of Vaud said.
Police say Schepp threw himself under a train in the southern Italian city of Cerignola. His letter did not say when or where he killed his children.
The girls were reported missing by their mother on January 30, when her husband didn't return them.
"The father declared he had killed his two daughters and he was in Cerignola where he was going to kill himself," police spokesperson Jean-Christophe Sauterel said.
Schepp, aged 43, had used his work computer to trawl the internet for information on firearms, poisons and suicide.
Police searches
Investigators in Switzerland, France and Italy continued their search on Friday for the girls, focusing on the French island of Corsica, where Schepp took the girls by overnight ferry from Marseille, France, arriving on February 1.
French police say Schepp left Corsica alone later that day on a ferry to Toulon, France.
On Corsica, investigators were searching the city of Propriano, where the ferry arrived from Marseille, the towns of Macinaggio and Calvi and spots where the family had vacationed together in happier times.
They were flying over in helicopters, checking hotels and camping spots and interviewing people, the Ajaccio gendarmes' office said, but had turned up nothing so far.
In Marseille, police have been probing pharmacies to find out whether Schepp may have bought medications such as sleeping pills for use on his daughters, the prosecutor's office said.
Police checks on about 30 hotels turned up no sign of Schepp or his daughters.
Never a thread of hope
Roberto Mestichelli, a cousin of Irina Lucidi, the twins' mother, said the family was devastated.
"There was never a thread of hope. There is no hope" of finding the girls alive, he said.
Swiss police said on Friday that Schepp sent eight letters postmarked from Bari, Italy, to his wife in Switzerland. Seven contained €4 400 in 50 notes. In the eighth letter, he said he killed the girls and would kill himself.
Italian police also found two more envelopes containing €1 500 that Schepp tried to mail to his wife but put in unused mailboxes.
French newspaper Le Parisien said Schepp's deadly plan was also contained in a will he left in his home in Saint-Sulpice, an affluent lakefront community in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Swiss police said he wrote the will on January 27.
Swiss news agency SDA carried a statement on Friday from Schepp's family saying he must have suffered a breakdown.
The family in Ettingen, Switzerland, near Basel, described Schepp as a loving and caring father whose family meant everything to him.
"We are united in the certainty that our son and brother could only have committed such terrible acts if he suffered a serious emotional breakdown," the family said.
- AP
