NEIGHBORS started getting a bit worried when for the whole week nobody was seen going into or coming out of the Troadec family’s house.

This happened late last month in Orvault, a small seaside town close to Nantes along the Atlantic Ocean. Pascal and Brigitte, a couple in late 40s who lived with their son Sebastian and daughter Charlotte were observed normally entering or leaving the house or busy in their garden several times a day. Now it was deathly silence.

A bit anxious, the neighbours called the local police station. When the door was cracked open, the inside of the house was found very clean and very properly arranged. Too suspiciously clean, thought the officers and in their turn called the chemical analysts.

A careful examination of the floors and the subsequent laboratory tests proved the presence of several traces of blood. One of the two cars of the family was also missing.

Authorities promptly ordered more than a dozen policemen to search the area for further indications and by March 2 the abandoned car was found in the parking lot of the St Nazaire seaport.

Indications were there that the family had boarded a ship to go to some other country.

But once again the police found the inside of the car too laboriously cleaned. A careful examination of the seats and the steering wheel showed fingerprints and DNA belonging to Pascal Troadec’s own sister Lydie and her boyfriend Hubert Caouissin. They were questioned on March 4 and both insisted on not having seen the family for many months.

After being formally charged with premeditated murders of the family and questioned rigorously the whole night, the man finally made his confession on March 5. But he remained extremely cold and shockingly indifferent while he was recounting the details of his horrible acts. He said he had secretly entered the Troadec residence after midnight on Feb 16 and was trying to install an electronic device in the garage with the purpose of recording the conversations of the couple.

According to the accused’s own confession, Pascal and Brigitte, on hearing footsteps so late at night, entered the garage. He attacked them with a crowbar, killing them instantly. He then went up to the children’s rooms and murdered them one by one.

Things get more blood-curdling as we learn that Hubert Caouissin calmly returned home and went to sleep without telling his girlfriend anything about his disdainful acts. He went back to the Troadec house the following two nights, cutting the four bodies in small pieces and packing them in plastic bags.

On the night of Feb 18 he was helped by Lydie Troadec to load the sacks in the car, clean the house, take the car to a deserted place in the woods, prepare a log fire and burn the body pieces, then clean the car and drive it all the way to St Nazaire parking lot where it was abandoned by daybreak.

As Hubert Caouissin and Lydie Troadec are now in detention on the formal charge of murder, both the accused have been giving confusing and controversial statements as to the motive of their devilish deeds.

But a few details emerged in the press this week about a family heritage of gold coins that Pascal had refused to share with his sister and her boyfriend.

Further investigation by the media has revealed the worth of the gold pieces in question. According to newspaper reports, it hardly comes to some 35,000 euros, the price of a modest-range car or the set of a classical dinner table and six chairs at an antiquity shop.

While the French were concentrating on the presidential election hardly eight weeks away, the details of the appalling crime have shocked the whole country.

The writer is a journalist based in Paris

ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2017