After twelve days of hearing, Hubert Caouissin, tried for the murder of his in-laws in 2017, was sentenced to thirty years of criminal imprisonment on the evening of Wednesday, July 7. Back on this trial around ten key phrases.
Appalling end-to-end trial. In the box, two defendants: Hubert Caouissin and his partner Lydie Troadec. One was sentenced to thirty years of criminal imprisonment. The other to three years in prison. Return on the trial through ten striking sentences.
“I did not expect such a result”
Hubert Caouissin talks about his quadruple murder with detachment. Lightness, even sometimes. He justifies this distance: “The facts, I recognize them. But, the idea is unbearable. “
This 50-year-old man killed his brother-in-law, Pascal Troadec, his sister-in-law, Brigitte, and his nephew and niece, Sébastien and Charlotte, on the night of February 16 to 17, 2017, after sneaking in in their pavilion in Orvault, near Nantes.
During the twelve days of the trial before the Loire-Atlantique Assize Court, he kept repeating that he did not want to eliminate them. That he simply defended himself from an assault from Pascal, who was armed with a crowbar. He grabbed it, he said, and hit the four limbs in turn. “I was in such a state… I thought they were going to be knocked out. “
“I didn’t want to damage the bones”
It was on the sixth day of the trial. Hubert Caouissin, who dismembered, cut up, eviscerated and burned the four bodies on his farm in Finistère, shares a surreal regret: “I didn’t think the bones were going to be reduced to ashes. I thought I would get them back clean, ”he continues. The president of the court frowns: “To do what?” He replies: “To give them back.” The president, again: “To whom? ” He does not know…
The forensic pathologist and anthropologist, dispatched to the scene, will find 326 g of bone fragments. And, below the house, in the fields and mudflats, the investigators will find 379 scraps of flesh. Including the rib cages of the victims. Only one of them no longer contains the heart, that of Pascal Troadec. The medical examiner is categorical: the heart has not been removed “Because of a simple stab in the wrong place. “. Hubert Caouissin therefore went, still according to the lawyer, as far as “Voluntarily extract” the heart of his brother-in-law.
” I am shocked… “
These are the words of Lydie Troadec, the partner of Hubert Caouissin. What inspires him these macabre discoveries described throughout the day, asks the president. This 52-year-old woman, accused in particular of concealing corpses, could have gotten carried away, yelling at Hubert Caouissin, she simply said: “Knowing that he did this to my family, it torments me. “
Lydie Troadec returned the image of a small thing, a naïve woman. Who has seen nothing, done nothing, heard nothing, knows nothing. Through his logbook, a sort of private diary, searched on the farm, another face appeared, that of a woman filled with hatred.
We could also see how much she could be submissive. One sentence, only one, sums up the arrogant hold of his companion. “ Answer me with your mistakes and your approximate syntax He wrote to her from prison.
Nevertheless, considered Advocate General Stéphane Cantero, Lydie Troadec “Is not a victim”. “His moral responsibility is total”, thundered the magistrate, who required three years in prison. “She was locked in a psychic prison”, defended Me Cabioch, his lawyer.
“But, mom, what did you get stung?” “
Pascal Troadec’s voice resonates in the courthouse of Assize, this Thursday, July 1. The president broadcasts a recording, dating from the summer of 2014, found on a dictaphone searched at the homes of the accused.
Renée Troadec is heard telling her son Pascal and daughter-in-law Brigitte, both of them unknowingly recorded: “I think I have the right to half of what you took”. A few minutes later, we understand that she accuses them of having stolen a family hoard of gold, a chimera. Pascal and Brigitte fall from the clouds.
Hubert Caouissin warns them: “Now, it’s not complicated. Two possibilities: either you have not recovered anything and you have nothing to fear, or you have something to reproach yourself with and too bad for you ”. He warns them: “For sums like that, we eradicate families.”
“A sacrifice committed on the altar of pride and jealousy”
This is what breathed, in her plea, Me Cécile de Oliveira, the lawyer for the sisters of Brigitte. Lydie Troadec does not deny her jealousy towards her brother, from an early age.
It is on this soil that Hubert Caouissin’s was able to thrive. He could not stand the multiple trips abroad of his in-laws. No more their sedan BMW second hand. Certainly, Hubert Caouissin thought that this lifestyle, which he considered expensive, was linked to the theft of gold, but his frustration was obviously earlier.
“And then he goes up a notch …”
His hatred grew stealthily. Gradually. Karine Laborde, the president of the court, repeats: “And hey, he goes up a notch, and doesn’t come back down. And tac, it goes up a notch, and does not come down. “ From 2013, the year in which his work stoppage which will last three years begins, the boilermaking technician from the Arsenal de Brest plunges. The slightest noise drives him mad. He bangs his head against the walls. His delusional paranoia swells.
“Mr. Caouissin, look at me! “
All the rage of Martine Vern bursts at the bar. It is the third day of trial. Brigitte Troadec’s sister stares at the accused and summons him to face her gaze. She gets carried away: “He shot them like dogs!” ” This grieving woman still recounts the incessant nightmares since the drama.
“I’m a jerk, I should never have existed”
It is the cry of anger of Jean (assumed name), the only son of the defendants, in January 2017. His mother, Lydie Troadec, recorded these words in her logbook. Jean, a loved child, but the victim of enormous academic pressure from his parents. And their madness.
Before being arrested, his father told him: “You see the monster that everyone is looking for, well, it’s daddy”. Jean arrived weighted down with this weight at the home of the Social Assistance for Children in Finistère. “He presented himself as the child of the Troadec affair, tells the bar the head of the social protection service. Today, he knows he is an individual in his own right. “
Now 13 years old, he lives under a different identity. Dropped out of school several times during his childhood, he impresses those around him with his intelligence.
“You can tell him that I love him, infinitely”, launches Hubert Caouissin, in tears, in the box on the sixth day of the trial.
“Hubert was always smiling”
Jean-Noël thus speaks of his younger brother at the bar on this second day of the trial. He also says : “I thought she was a beautiful person. “ Marguerite, the older sister, a retired engineer agrees: “He was gentle. “ The other brother, also an engineer, does not understand the drift of Hubert Caouissin any more.
Marguerite : “We had a strict education, with values, honesty, respect. But there was not much emotional display in the family. “ Hubert Caouissin also spoke at length about “(His) alcoholic and violent mother”.
“Is that 114 pages of tales?” “
Thierry Fillion, one of Hubert Caouissin’s two lawyers, storms this Wednesday morning in the courthouse. It is addressed to the Advocates General, who do not believe for a second in the impaired judgment of the accused: “Four expert reports, six experts, 114 pages of expertise tell us that Mr. Caouissin was suffering from an alteration. Is that 114 pages of tales? “
The lawyer is indignant at the requisitions, the life imprisonment: “The experts said that Mr. Caouissin was not in itself dangerous, if not for himself! “
Hubert Caouissin was sentenced to thirty years of criminal imprisonment. “It’s unexpected”, said Me Fillion, after the verdict. Lydie Troadec, who had been placed in pre-trial detention for four months, returned this Friday evening behind bars. She was sentenced to three years in prison.
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