An 88-year-old man was sentenced Monday by the Reunion Assize Court to twenty years of criminal imprisonment for the murder of his wife and her housekeeper, we learned from a judicial source. The accused, a retired teacher, claimed to have acted to end the suffering of his partner suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and then aged 78.
But his defense did not convince the attorney general, who had requested twenty-five years in prison against him. The personality investigation carried out on the accused described a “violent” and “authoritarian” man. The events occurred at the octogenarian’s home in Saint-Joseph, a town in the south of the island, on March 10, 2021. The man had suffered several blows with a sledgehammer to his wife and then fatally attacked the the couple’s housekeeper arrived on the scene shortly after the first murder.
He said he had “a big black hole” and did not remember attacking the second victim. Between 2006 and 2024, 52 women were victims of femicide in Reunion. According to figures from the judicial authorities, Réunion is the fourth department in France in terms of domestic violence.