Missing Swiss twins ‘did not suffer’, father wrote in letter

The mother of missing Swiss twins stopped issuing desperate public appeals on her Facebook page Friday as police made public the existence of a devastating letter about the fate of her daughters.

In the missive, the father claims to have killed the girls.

The letter was written by Matthias Schepp, Irina Lucidi’s suicidal Canadian-born estranged husband, shortly before he stepped in front of a train after taking their pretty six-year-old girls to the French island of Corsica.

"The father said he killed the two girls, saying he was in Cerignola (a town in southern Italy) where he was about to kill himself," Swiss police spokesman Jean-Christophe Sauterel told journalists in Lausanne.

"I can confirm that in his letter, he also said that they did not suffer and were resting in peace."

He also revealed that the Lucidi family was made aware of the letter on Tuesday, when a family spokesman told the media that their hopes were fading.

Since then, the family issued a number of appeals in five languages on the Facebook page, urging the public to help them find the children.

Swiss media reports said the public was kept uninformed about the letter to protect the "integrity" of the investigation and to avoid discouraging members of the public from offering assistance.

But police decided to confirm the existence of the letter after an Italian newspaper reported its contents Thursday.

Members of the Schepp family, meanwhile, made their first public statement since Alessia and Livia went missing Jan. 30.

"We all agree and are persuaded that our brother could have committed in recent times acts that are so terrible due only to a serious mental disorder and the loss of his normal personality," the family said in a statement to a Swiss news agency.

"We have all suffered because of his death and the terrible and uncertain fate of our two nieces and granddaughters."

Schepp’s mental state was also the subject of an interview Irina Lucidi’s sister gave to a Swiss broadcaster.

She said her brother-in-law had been seeing a psychiatrist, who concluded he had suicidal tendencies.

"He had determined that this was a man who was sick."

Investigators are now concentrating their search on the island of Corsica, since witnesses say Schepp arrived there with the girls but apparently left the island alone.

Police are focusing on an area of the island where Schepp, 43, had visited on holidays and for work in recent years.

"In all likelihood, they are in Corsica," Sauterel said.

The couple moved to the Swiss village of St. Sulpice in 2006, and they separated last year. Irina Lucidi is no longer living in her apartment in the village, said St. Sulpice Mayor Jean-Charles Cerottini.

"She decided it was better to leave the village and I guess, to go to some other place to avoid the press media and so on. So we’ll try to respect her will and we try to stop discussing this too much," he told Postmedia News.

The grim news of the twins’ apparent fate comes on the eve of a referendum in Switzerland Sunday on the possible tightening of the country’s liberal gun laws.

Vladeta Ajdacic-Gross, a suicide specialist at the University of Zurich’s clinical and social psychiatry research unit, said Switzerland has had a higher-than-average suicide rate for western Europe dating back to the 19th century.

He said the high rate is a result of the country’s Protestant roots and early industrialization, as well as to easy access to guns in a country where all men must serve in the military.

Suicidal people in more Catholic and rural countries have easier access to family and friends who can talk them out of doing something impulsive, he said.

Ajdacic-Gross said Schepp’s suicide was highly unusual, especially because it also involved an elaborate scheme spanning three countries and included the apparent murder of his daughters.

"Such strange acts are typically committed by people who are mentally ill," he told Postmedia News.

"It’s bizarre, it’s complicated. Maybe it has some symbolic meaning."

poneil@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/poneilinParis