The five members of the family had thrown themselves one by one from the balcony of the 7th floor of their building in March 2022.
A premeditated gesture. The collective suicide of a French family in Montreux, Switzerland, whose five members had thrown themselves one by one from the balcony of the 7th floor of their building in March 2022, was prepared and even rehearsed, reveals Tuesday March 21 the ministry public, who should close the case.
On March 24, 2022, the act of this family who lived in autarky in an opulent building in Montreux, a stone’s throw from the casino of this chic city on the shores of Lake Geneva, had caused consternation. The 40-year-old father, his wife, her twin sister and the couple’s 8-year-old daughter had died. Only the teenage son survived the fall, but was seriously injured and in a coma.
If the investigation had very quickly concluded to a suicide, the conclusions of the public prosecutor of the canton of Vaud reveal “that the mother and her sister presented dominant and possessive personalities, contrasting with an unobtrusive father”, and that they had “a strong hold on children and kept them believing in a world that was hostile to them”.
survivalist lifestyle
As the first elements of the police investigation already suggested, the family lived in survivalist mode, the children had almost no outside contact, were homeschooled and only the mother’s twin sister regularly went to work. . According to the investigation, the family had “prepared, rehearsed and organized his departure towards ‘a better world'”, without, however, having set a precise date, and she was waiting for a triggering event.
Neither the mother nor the baby girl were registered with the authorities, but the big brother was supposed to be homeschooled and it was a verification procedure by two police officers, on the morning of March 24, 2022, which seems to have pushed the family to take action.
As for the son, “he was heard, but he is not able to tell the story of the events. He is physically restored and taken care of by the Curatorship and Professional Guardianship Service”specifies the Vaudois ministry, calling for the greatest restraint with regard to this minor boy.