"A very violent crime scene." These are the words that public prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier used to describe what police officers discovered when they entered an apartment in Meaux, in the eastern Paris region, on Monday, December 25. A 33-year-old man is suspected of having killed his wife and their four children inside. Intercepted in Sevran (northern Paris suburbs) on Tuesday and placed in police custody, the man suffers from psychiatric disorders, according to Bladier, who gave a press conference late that morning. The public prosecutor confirmed that a judicial investigation would be opened for intentional homicide of minors under 15 and intentional homicide by a spouse.

Just before 9 pm on Christmas Day, friends of the family approached police officers at the Meaux police station. They were concerned about the mother's lack of response over the last few hours. She had given no sign of life when her friends had knocked on the door of the ground-floor apartment, the shutters of which were down. A few traces of blood were visible on the landing.

The small apartment, cluttered with furniture, clothes and shoes – the symbols of an ordinary family life – was the scene of a gruesome massacre: Five corpses were discovered there, amid pools of blood and a large number of bloody handkerchiefs and paper towels. They were the bodies of the 35-year-old mother; her two daughters, aged 10 and 7; and her two sons, aged 4 years and 9 months.

The deceased mother and her daughters had been the victims of "a very large number of stab wounds, the number of which it is impossible to determine at present," said Bladier. The bodies of the two boys showed no apparent wounds. Suffocation or drowning have been cited as the most likely causes of death. Autopsies at the Paris Institute of Forensic Medicine are to take place on December 27.

Neighbors told investigators they had heard screams on December 24 at 11 pm and on December 25 at 3 am. However, they said they were not worried because "the mother of the family was in the habit of shouting at her children," according to the prosecutor. As for the main suspect, he had disappeared but was found through the use of surveillance videos. He was arrested shortly before 8 am, in the vicinity of his father's home in Sevran.

Placed in police custody, the accused said he "knew why he was in custody, that he had attacked his family, and mentioned his personal malaise and depression," the public prosecutor reported. At the time of the press conference, the suspect remained hospitalized in police custody with serious hand injuries.

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