De anyway, I’m going to kill myself!
Always the same distressing sentence that comes back… At the end of winter 2018, Nina only talks about suicide. Her friends, of Madagascan origin like her, no longer know what to do to comfort her. The young woman, it’s true, is going through a rough patch. The psychiatric hospital. The divorce. His two daughters who were taken from him. But we must move forward now! Except that Nina is stuck in the despair box. Every time his girlfriends visit him in downtown Vendôme, they leave for the same litany. Nina talks to them about God, about paradise, about her imminent death… To such an extent that week after week, all expect the worst. But no one anticipated the horror of the drama that is about to unfold. Because the “worst”, sometimes, exceeds anything that can be imagined.
Violent behavioral disturbances
Three years later, this Wednesday March 17, 2021, it is very much alive that Nina Razanadravao takes place in the box of the accused of the Assize Court of Blois. The 40-year-old Madagascan has gained a lot of weight. Tucked into her gray thick-knit waistcoat, her face puffed up with medication, she looks lost, harmless. But don’t be fooled by appearances. If this woman is on trial today, it’s for double infanticide. The mother of the family had announced her intention to kill herself. But instead of taking her own life, she took those of her two daughters. Maeva and Vaena were 9 and 4 years old.
Can we be born with misfortune in our skin? With Nina, there is something to wonder about. In Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, her native island, she had to be withdrawn very early from school, and even tied up: she had violent behavioral problems, attacked adults, bit them… Fifteen years later, although she has never been treated, Nina meets a Frenchman on vacation at her home. She is pretty, the madness that is in her cannot be guessed. The tourist marries her and brings her back to France. In 2008, Nina gave him a daughter, little Maeva. This will be his only gift …
Because for the rest, the “little flower of the islands” turns out to be unlivable. Unstable, disturbed, she spends all the household money, locks herself in the house, does not move except to satisfy her only passion: mass. The couple cannot resist it. Nina, divorced, finds herself alone with her child on her arms. She lands in a home for young mothers in difficulty. And it is there that she meets Christian, sworn fisherman, twenty years older than her, divorced. An idyll is born. The fifty-something certainly considers himself lucky to have got his hands on a woman so young, so pretty… He is wrong. New marriage. New birth. And another plunge into turmoil.
Nina does … absolutely nothing
Facing the court of assizes, skull and broad shoulders, Christian Rousseau looks terribly moved. He hardly dares to look at the accused. But it is with dignity that he returns to the infernal spiral that destroyed his life.
– I met Nina in 2012, he explains at the helm. She was beautiful. I fell in love. She found herself pregnant. That was not planned… I already had two grown children in my previous life, but she wanted to keep the baby, so little Vaena was born. I was very happy about it. I also got along very well with Maeva, her older sister. I never differentiated between them, they were both my daughters.
But the problem at home is Nina. In the couple’s pretty farmhouse, at a place called La Tuilerie, in the town of Gault-du-Perche, the young mother spends her days on the phone with her family, without worrying about the bill. And for the rest, apart from going to church on Sunday, she does… absolutely nothing.
– She even refused to take the little ones out! Christian continues, more acidic. She was not moving from the sofa!
In addition to this inertia, other disorders manifest themselves. Nina is delirious, makes incoherent remarks, speaks of God with a worrying enthusiasm… Then, the 1is February 2017, without anything to suggest, she runs away from home with the two little ones.
– I looked for them everywhere, remembers Christian. I ended up having Nina on the phone. She was hysterical, spoke to me in French then in Malagasy, quoted the Bible, I did not understand anything! She also talked about “Join God”, and that’s when I started to be afraid …
That same day, Nina goes to the gendarmes to accuse Christian of domestic violence. But what especially strikes the soldiers is that she is in complete confusion … They bring in a psychiatrist. The diagnosis is heavy: Nina is depressed, delusional, bipolar. She finds herself interned for several months in a psychiatric hospital, and this episode completes the dissolution of the couple. Christian asks for and obtains a divorce, as well as sole custody of the two girls.
– It was hard because I didn’t want to cut them off from their mother, he explains. I took them to see her every week in the hospital. Maeva said to me: “Mom, she’s in the west”… She understood the situation very well.
But this period, paradoxically, is also a happy parenthesis.
– It brought me closer to girls, said Christian with emotion. We were going to eat ice cream in town, we went fishing, picking mushrooms, apples… One evening, I showed Maeva glowworms, she didn’t know they existed! She was like me, she loved nature, animals, the countryside. And Vaena… I can still see her going to school with her little Mickey bag on her back… We had a good life, we were fulfilled…
Except that in the background, a terrible mechanism has started. When she left the hospital, Nina obtained accommodation in Vendôme and an emjob of cleaning lady. She finds her friends from the small local Malagasy community. It was at this time, as we have seen, that she constantly spoke of committing suicide. While being aggressive, unbearable with those around him.
– She was a real fucker of shit, testifies one of her friends. She kept pitting us against each other!
From time to time, Nina continues to come to La Tuilerie to see her daughters. It is there, during a visit, that she learns the news which will undoubtedly seal the tragedy: Christian intends to take the little ones on vacation to Madagascar. He would have a new girlfriend there …
Saturday 1is April 2018, Easter eve, the afternoon comes to an end when Nina shows up at the door of the farmhouse. Christian is surprised
to see her: she was only due to come the next day … But he didn’t have the heart to ask her to leave.
He only has two short hours
Nina’s arms are loaded with chocolate eggs, the little ones are hugging her. Christian brings her in and lodges her for the night.
– That evening, we didn’t do anything special, he told the audience. We talked about fishing over dinner, the kids watched The Voice on TV, then everyone went to bed. The girls slept in my room with their mother, and I in Maeva’s.
The next day, at 7:30 a.m., Christian Rousseau is the first to get up. Easter Sunday or not, he has to work, go on his fishing trip… The problem is that he is not supposed to leave the little ones alone with their mother – “Even to run a race”, recommended the psychiatrist to him. But it won’t be long. Before leaving, he sets up the breakfast table and places a brioche on it. Then he glances around the room to see if everything is okay. Little Maeva, already awake, coughs a little. He gives her a spoonful of syrup.
– Nina opened one eye and stared at me strangely, he remembers.
But duty calls him. Christian leaves the house. Barely two short hours. But two hours that will change everything.
“I got home a little earlier than usual to prepare for the girls’ egg hunt,” he explains at the helm, his voice shaking with every word. It must have been 10 am when I arrived. I opened the garage door with the remote. And there, immediately, a cloud of black smoke took me by the throat!
Matches all over the house
Toxic, unbreathable fumes … Distraught, Christian goes around the house.
– I was screaming « Nina ! », I called the girls… I asked the neighbor to alert the fire brigade and I grabbed a bar to smash the roller shutter of the room. By putting my arm through the window, I was able to open it. In the middle of the smoke, I saw Vaena on the bed. I knew straight away that she was dead… The poor man paused, overcome by emotion.
– Then help arrived. They took Nina out onto the terrace. She was choking, swallowing her tongue… I stuck my hand in her mouth to save her. I was angry with myself, I thought it was my wood stove that started the fire. But very quickly, the firefighters told me that there were several starts of fire in the house. And matches everywhere. So I understood …
Two small corpses are taken out from the burning building.
– Maeva was curled up on her bed, remembers a gendarme. His clothes were completely burnt. I will always see his position of pain, legs crossed, body tense. Vaena, she took refuge under her bed, in her little pink pajamas …
Under the high ceilings of the court, in a leaden silence, it is now up to the accused to speak. From the start, she admits having killed her children, but live, in front of the court, her confession is even more unbearable.
– That morning, I was sad, she begins in a tiny trickle of voice, awkwardly holding the flaps of her waistcoat. I could not any more. I didn’t want to be separated from my children again, so I decided to die with them…
– How did you kill them? asks the president.
– I took Vaena to her room and strangled her. I stopped when she was no longer moving. Maeva arrived, I told her to go back to bed. I joined her. She struggled… It took several minutes before she stopped struggling.
It’s long, one minute!
Nina Razanadravao explains that she then wanted to kill herself. She looks for her husband’s gun, can’t find it. Then drugs, which she could not find any more. She finally falls back on a bottle of brandy at 50 degrees, discovered in the garage. She sprinkles it on the mattresses, the sofa, then grabs the matches on the fireplace … As the first flames rise, the murderous mother takes refuge in the bathroom and locks herself there to make farewell calls to her children. relatives. This is where the firefighters will find her. The only survivor.
Atrocious precision: if the autopsy revealed that Maeva had indeed died of strangulation, little Vaena, she survived at the hands of her mother. It is alone that the girl took refuge under her bed to escape the flames, before perishing suffocated by toxic gases … For her last moments on earth, she lived through hell twice.
The Advocate General – this is rare – calls for a minute’s silence. Everyone is silent in the courtroom. Dozens of eyes are clouded over with tears.
– You see how a minute can seem long, said the magistrate, putting an end to the torture. Strangling someone is much longer …
On the screens of the Assize Court, pictures of the bodies are projected. Christian Rousseau cannot restrain his sobs. Neither does Nina Razanadravao.
– I apologize ! she stammers. I apologize !
There remains a central question. Was this woman aware of her actions when she committed the irreparable? On the contrary, was she in full delirium, in the medical sense of the term? For the prosecutor, no doubt: the accused knew what she was doing. He claims thirty years of imprisonment … The defense, on the other hand, highlights the alteration of his client’s discernment, established by an expert psychiatrist. In the end, on Friday March 19, the jurors ruled. For Nina Razanadravao, it will be twenty years of silence. But for Maeva and Vaena, unfortunately, the verdict has already fallen. It will be eternity.
An investigation by Vincent Sénécal
