Horror scene, Friday evening in Plainfaing, in the Vosges. First alerted by a resident at 9:30 p.m., worried about hearing an altercation among his neighbors, the gendarmes then received “a telephone call”. It came from “an individual declaring to them that he had killed a man”, explained this Monday the public prosecutor of Epinal, Frédéric Nahon.
On site, the soldiers discovered the body of a 55-year-old man, added the magistrate, specifying that the crime scene was “extremely violent”, with “several dozen wounds on the body, located in the back, legs and a completely disfigured face.”
The victim was killed by his two stepsons, with the participation of his partner, all three of whom were indicted and placed in detention, the prosecutor also announced. The two men, aged 27 and 30, were indicted for aggravated homicide, their mother, 54, for murder preceded, accompanied or followed by acts of torture and barbarity, as well as counts of abstention voluntarily preventing a crime and failing to assist a person in danger.
The defendants admitted the facts and confirmed during their custody that they had used “the objects present in the living room, namely a knife, a pruning knife and a baseball bat”, to kill the victim, according to Mr. Nahon.
A story of dogs at the origin
The reason for this surge of violence would be none other than the placement of her stepsons’ dogs in the SPA by the victim, without their consent. “They wanted to have an explanation with their stepfather on this subject, in the presence of their mother, and things degenerated, the stepsons saw red and attacked the victim,” according to the Epinal prosecutor. . In police custody, “his partner admitted to having first hit him a few times, without then stopping his sons from doing so,” added the magistrate.
None of the accused was under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The mother and one of her sons were already known for serious violence. The victim’s body will be autopsied in the coming days and further investigations will be carried out, particularly into the course of the events and the personality of those indicted.