Fifteen hours after the disappearance of Norah, Romy and Martin Carpentier following an accident on Highway 20, investigators still considered it “unlikely” that the girls were with their father.
The swerve took place on July 8, 2020 at 9:20 p.m. and on July 9 at noon, the two sisters and their father were still missing, the investigation was bogged down after a chaotic start and no one, at this stage. , did not understand with certainty the unfolding of events.
It is in this context that at 12:45 p.m., several senior officers of the Sûreté du Québec called a summit meeting with the officers responsible for leading the investigation.
Lieutenant François Giguère, a police officer with more than 30 years of experience, commanded operations at the time. On the fourth day of the public hearings on the tragic death of the two sisters, he said he had exposed, during this meeting, all the elements collected so far.
The police had found a girl’s sandal and a tub of blue ice cream still cold in the back of the passenger seat. On the cabin, there was the iPad belonging to Norah. On the bench, a child seat. The authorities had also got their hands on a video, captured in the hour preceding the accident, which showed Martin Carpentier buying candy at the convenience store with his two daughters. Several relatives had also testified that the last time they had seen the trio, the father was bringing Norah and Romy to the creamery.
At the end of the presentation, a high-ranking officer had asked him: “Could it be that the children were in the tank? »
“It may be, said Lieutenant Giguère to have replied. But that’s unlikely. »
A late report
The unusual nature of the accident, explained the policeman on Thursday, has long made the thesis of the kidnapping implausible in the eyes of the police. No one had seen the occupants get out of the vehicle. No witness, repeated the lieutenant during his testimony, had corroborated the presence of the girls inside the vehicle.
“Until the middle of the afternoon, I had in my head that they weren’t in the tank. It can’t be, it can’t be that they haven’t been seen, he stressed, still incredulous at this mystery three years later. It is unlikely that two children got out of this tank after a high-velocity accident, with lots of people around, without anyone noticing them. »
Witnesses had however seen a man leaving the scene of the accident, a child in his arms and a woman at his side – but they did not alert the police until the afternoon of July 9. The latter released the report of the missing only 18 hours after the accident, although the relatives of Norah, Romy and their father had authorized the publication of their photo at dawn.
No tracks excluded
The presence of the girls in the vehicle at the time of the accident, explained Lieutenant Giguère, was part of a bouquet of hypotheses when he took stock with his superiors. The driver may have left the scene on foot to go to the hospital. Another motorist had possibly picked him up. Who knows if he was not drunk and if he had not left the scene to flee the police?
Investigators considered it “unlikely” that the girls were in the vehicle because no one had seen them get out. Even if no element came to support the other tracks, the police, according to the testimonies heard since Monday, seemed in spite of everything to be stubborn to follow them.
Several testimonies, however, had sounded the alarm on the depressive state of Martin Carpentier. Amélie Lemieux’s spouse at the time assured that the latter was not well, that he had lost a lot of weight recently, that things were not going well at work either, that he had health problems. money, that he was “really” afraid of losing custody of the children and that he could not stomach the divorce he had started with the mother of the two little girls, with whom he had not lived for five years.
The children’s maternal grandmother, also a neighbor of Martin Carpentier, had also raised the idea that the father had been able to commit a voluntary act by causing the accident and disappearing with his daughters. A hypothesis “based on nothing, based on a feeling of grandma”, according to the testimony delivered Thursday by the head of investigations for the MRC of Chaudière-Appalaches in 2020, Lieutenant Annie Thériault. “We had discussions to the effect that he is not well, added the policewoman, but we were in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic. Lots of people were not well. »
Failures in communication
Lieutenant Thériault explained that the more the hours passed, the more her concern grew for the fate of the two children. Several senior members of his team had already left for the holidays at the time of the disappearance and the other police officers on the spot quickly found themselves overwhelmed. The first investigator assigned to the case testified on Tuesday that he received and made some 69 calls over an eight-hour period on July 9.
Despite this telephone frenzy, the sharing of information between the many police officers remained deficient, admitted Lieutenant Thériault. “It’s true, the communication was really bad,” she said Thursday. But now it’s settled: the Sûreté du Québec has rectified the situation. »