Triple infanticide in Haute-Savoie: a woman's body found in Switzerland

A woman's body has been discovered on Wednesday in a parked car in Switzerland and checks are underway to determine whether it is the suspected mother ;surprised of having killed her children the day before in the village of Taninges, on the other side of the border.

According to information transmitted by the Swiss police to French investigators, it is indeed this 45-year-old woman, actively sought since Tuesday, two sources close to the case told AFP, confirming information from the Dauphiné Libéré.

The body that was found in Champéry, a Swiss commune in the canton of Valais located about 70 km from Taninges in Haute-Savoie, has yet to be formally identified. The Bonneville prosecutor's office, in charge of the case, did not immediately comment.

Two boys aged 2 and 11 and a 13-year-old girl were found dead Tuesday, with stab wounds, in the home of this blended family in Taninges. Their mother, a schoolteacher described as depressed, had been wanted since their bodies were discovered.

An investigation into the crime of “intentional homicide” had been opened while waiting for the “exact circumstances of the commission of the acts” to be clarified, indicated the prosecutor of Bonneville, Boris Duffau, on Tuesday evening.

Additional autopsies and expert assessments were to be carried out by the Grenoble Institute of Forensic Medicine (IML).

The searches mobilized around sixty members of the police force and a helicopter on Tuesday and Wednesday to search the mountains surrounding this small mountain town close to the Swiss border.

A police officer blocks access to a road leading to the chalet where the family lived in Taninges (Haute-Savoie) on November 13, 2024 © AFP – Fabrice COFFRINI

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Divers from Aix-les-Bains, Valence and Evian were also dispatched to the site to probe the water points. The operation was coordinated by the Bonneville search brigade and the Chambéry search section.

In Taninges itself, the police were again blocking access to the dead-end road leading to the large chalet with a garden with barbecue and swings where the family lived, at the foot of the mountains, on Wednesday, AFP noted.

– “Idyllic setting” –

The hamlet where the family lived, located away from the village, has only 11 inhabitants and the three young victims were the only children living there, a neighbor in a long cardigan told AFP from her doorstep.

“They often rode their bikes, they were cheerful,” she added, declaring herself “stunned” by these “inconceivable” murders.

These homicides have caused strong emotion in this mountain commune of 3,500 inhabitants in the Giffre valley, about 50 km east of Geneva, where a medical-psychological emergency unit has been set up at the town hall.

“They were a couple who lived in a hamlet (…) a little bit far from the town in a somewhat idyllic setting,” Mayor Gilles Péguet told AFP. “They felt good there, they have their parents, their grandparents who were right next door,” he continued, describing a family that is now “devastated.”

The mother was a primary school teacher in a village near Taninges, the Grenoble academy rectorate, which oversees five departments in the region, including Haute-Savoie, told AFP.

The search for a mother suspected of stabbing her three children to death in Taninges, Haute-Savoie, on Tuesday continues Wednesday morning © AFP – JEFF PACHOUD

Two establishments where she had worked were visited Wednesday morning by a representative of the rectorate and a “listening unit” was set up. “Resources are being put in place so that staff and students can feel supported in this tragedy,” was explained at the rectorate.

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