A British father living in France has admitted to killing his two children by slitting their throats, blaming a rocky divorce from his wife, prosecutors said yesterday.
Police arrested the 48-year-old unemployed man on Saturday after the bodies of his five-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son were found at his apartment in a suburb of Lyon.
“He offered explanations linked to the children’s custody,” an official from the Lyon prosecutor’s office said.
The mother left the man in 2010 due to family violence and his right to have the children visit him at his apartment, previously the family home, was revoked after a violent episode.
Bloodstained clothes
She arrived at the building to find him on the stairs wearing blood-stained clothes, according to local reports.
The father was taken into custody following a manhunt.
A police source said: “We believe the man was looking after the children for the first time since he divorced his wife.
“He was arrested at the end of [Saturday ]afternoon.”
Police were unable to say where the man came from in Britain or give any further details relating to his children.
According to local reports, he and his former wife, an assistant accountant, had gone through a “difficult” divorce.
She was awarded custody of the children following their separation and moved to live in Isère, a region to the southeast of Lyon, while he continued to live in the flat in the four-storey building.
Ahmed Benguedda, a former neighbour of the family, said his seven-year-old daughter used to play with the two victims, whom he described as “well-adjusted”.
"The people who live here are all in a state of shock," he told Le Parisien newspaper. A foreign office spokesman said: "We are aware of the reports and we are looking into them."