A Dacquoise mother is suspected of having poisoned her daughter. After 48 hours in police custody, this woman was indicted on Thursday, January 20, and was remanded in custody. A young man, aged 21 and who is the brother of the victim’s boyfriend, was also indicted and placed under judicial control.
In November 2019, the 18-year-old girl became unwell, followed by convulsions, at her mother’s home, where she lives, in Dax. She is quickly taken care of by the firefighters and the Samu. But she died a few days later in Dax hospital. At this moment, nothing explains this death, no pathology, no physical trauma. The trail of suicide is quickly ruled out, because the investigators do not find any letter or object that could have allowed him to kill himself. A judicial investigation to find the cause of death is therefore open.
An autopsy is performed, revealing that the young woman died of an overdose of beta-blockers, a drug used to treat heart conditions. Over the course of the investigation and the numerous testimonies collected by the police officers of the Dax police station and by the judicial police of Bayonne, suspicions thus turned towards several people, and in particular the mother of the victim, pushing the Dax prosecution to open this time a criminal investigation for poisoning.
Six people were thus arrested on Tuesday, January 18. But at the end of the police custody, only two suspects are indicted: the mother of the victim, and the brother of the young woman’s boyfriend.
She consults a site on the effects of beta-blockers
The young woman had had a prescription for beta-blockers, but the prescriptions stopped a year before his death. Medication therefore continued for a year, excluding medical monitoring. A drug that has the particularity of being very small, which can easily be reduced to powder and which, moreover, has no taste.
In this context, the behavior and statements of the mother question the investigators. “Very many testimonies have been collected, which undermine his statements, in particular on the circumstances of the death”, describes the public prosecutor of Mont-de-Marsan, Olivier Janson. “This mother is a person who has, in the past, made a false statement about the state of health of her daughter, presented as extremely ill, taking her to see nearly 32 doctors in two years”, he adds.
But above all, “there are also material, factual elements”, explains Olivier Janson, “one of which, which is extremely important and on which she cannot explain herself today, which consists in particular of having consulted websites on the consequences that an overdose of this type of medicine could have, and that a few days only before the death of this young girl because of this overdose”.
She makes a false statement about the state of health of her daughter, presented as extremely ill, and taking her to see nearly 32 doctors in two years. — Olivier Janson, prosecutor of Mont-de-Marsan
The prosecutor also describes the Dacquoise as an atypical personality, mythomaniac, who maintains a close relationship, even unhealthy, of influence, with his two daughters. She isolates them, takes them out of school, also tells them that their father mistreated her, when nothing proves it. The father who has also several times seized justice and social services. But his two daughters have always defended their mother and refused to come into contact with him.
The question is also the role played by the brother of the victim’s boyfriend, who is also very inconsistent in his statements. Psychiatric expertise will be requested in order to verify that the two defendants do not suffer from mental pathologies. The investigation was entrusted to the Dax police station and the Bayonne judicial police.