The death of Jean-Louis Turquin, convicted in 1997 in Nice for the assassination of his son
Sentenced in Nice to 20 years of imprisonment for the murder of his 8-year-old son, Jean-Louis Turquin was shot dead in the night from Friday to Saturday.
SAINT MARTIN/GUADELOUPE – Jean-Louis Turquin, convicted in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) in 1997 for the murder of his son, was found dead with a bullet in his back during the night from Friday to Saturday, January 7, on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, it was learned from Basse-Terre (Guadeloupe). The body had “a bullet impact whose inlet was in the back” and “two pierced cases” were found by the Gendarmes, said the prosecutor. “The premises had obviously been searched,” he said, adding that “all hypotheses” were being considered.
The veterinarian had been sentenced by the Assize Court of Nice to 20 years imprisonment for the murder of his 8-year-old son Charles-Édouard, whose body was never found. 68-year-old Jean-Louis Turquin had always claimed his innocence, even though he had been convicted on the basis of a confession made to his wife, but then denied it by withdrawing,
and justifying his confession using a game of role reversal.
An “investigation of flagrance” for murder was opened, entrusted to the Saint Martin research section of the gendarmerie of Pointe-à-Pitre, said Samuel Finielz, prosecutor in Basse-Terre.
On parole since 2006, Jean-Louis Turquin moved to Saint Martin in 2010 as a veterinarian.
On the civil status documents, his son was not declared dead
In the 1990s, the name of this veterinarian of Nice regularly made the headlines of the criminal news. On the night of March 20-21, 1991, his 8-year-old son, Charles-Édouard, mysteriously disappeared from the superb family home in the heights of Nice (Alpes-Maritimes).
Twenty-five years later, the Turquin affair rebounded with the emergence of a new element that could support the words of this 68-year-old man, who never ceased to claim his innocence. Through administrative procedures, he had discovered in 2016 that his son’s birth certificate contained no mention of his death, as should be the case. “On the civil status documents, this child is still not officially dead,” confirmed Olivier Morice, lawyer of Jean-Louis Turquin who judged the situation to be rather troubling.
According to Jean-Louis Turquin, this anomaly reinforced the thesis of an abduction of the child by his ex-wife, who died in 2014, who, according to him, could have hidden in Israel, a country where she had established relations thanks to his companion, an American of Czech origin and Jewish faith, who was also the biological father of the child.
Last May, the veterinarian told the Parisian: “I raised him, he became my child. It is true that it was not pleasant to learn it. Besides, we used that to say that I had a motive for the murder. But it’s totally invented! Today, I want to know what Charles Edward has become. It is unbearable not to know. I prefer to know it dead than not to know.”
SOURCE: Leparisien.fr with AFP
