"Killing on purpose is not good. I love animals!"

Reading time: 12 mins

Renée Troadec opens the door to her veranda. Under the cold light of March, an 8-year-old boy draws. The two heads of the Finistère departmental council introduce themselves. The little one knows why they are there. Her father, Hubert Caouissin, and her mother, Lydie Troadec, were arrested last week. Just before his confession, his father had informed him of what was going to happen. He would be the one who would spend the most years in prison, because he was the one who had killed Pascal, Brigitte, Sébastien and Charlotte; his mother had nothing to do with it. The educational officials explain the provisional placement to the child. The little one doesn't say anything special. He puts his drawings in his bag, then follows them.

In the car leading to the reception area, the two educators cast a discreet glance at each other. In the back seat, the little one talks to them about the war, the fighting, and history in general. He talks constantly. “He didn't cry, didn't mention his mum, was able to mention that his dad could bang his head against the walls, but without emotion. He has a very elaborate speech for his age,” recalls one of the educators. After a while, on the road, she asked to see the little one's drawings. “They were knights with pipes through which blood flowed,” she told the court.

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***

In the fifth month of pregnancy, the baby's heart had suddenly stopped beating. At Lydie Troadec, the midwife had simply said, “If he wants to live, he will live,” and that was what had happened. In the summer of 2008, the little one, as if in a hurry to discover the world, was born three weeks early. He had to stay ten days in the maternity ward to have his weight monitored. The instinct of protection concomitant with the arrival of a child is often powerful, but it was a little more so with Hubert Caouissin. "Perhaps that's where the anxieties started," suggests Lydie.

As a baby already, he was a special child. In case of annoyance, he hit his head on the ground. “It was impressive”, reveals Lydie.

At school, the little one is perceived by all his mistresses as a child who is "kind, smiling and a good student". The problem, they later tell investigators, is her parents. They go up "all the way", for stories "insignificant like lost pencils", convinced that their son is harassed.

"If he's scared of me, it's not worth it for me to stay"

Finally, in CM1, the little one resumed "the school of Pont-de-Buis", as they call school at home. His parents ensure his education. The rules are strict: Hubert Caouissin has developed a leitmotif "MMS", for method, motivation, care. "He was a little patachon, with his pencils everywhere, etc.," argues the father. Homework must be done at a certain time, for a certain period of time. You should drink “eight glasses of water a day”. The figure makes Hubert Caouissin smile: “We told him to drink, but there was no quantity…”

Note in the diary of Lydie Troadec, 2016-2017:

“Tonight, Hubert was overwhelmed. He told me “He's scared of me, I'm mean. If he's scared of me, I don't need to stay."

When Jean-Noël, the brother of Hubert Caouissin, learned of the child's dropout, he said to himself: "Something is wrong." This came after Hubert's worries: headaches, difficulty concentrating and feelings of "short-term memory loss", and after Hubert told him he was off work. “I should go see him,” thought Jean-Noël. But time has flown, he justifies, “and then, we always have better things to do”. Barely has he pronounced this sentence, Hubert's brother collapses in tears at the bar. He wipes his cheeks, but there are so many tears it's hard. "Excuse me, I'm ashamed," he said.

The president of the assize court tries to reassure him, but Jean-Noël replies that she does not realize: he cries in front of Brigitte's whole family "with all that she has experienced". Finally, he begs: “Hubert, he's not well, we have to help him. We really have to help him." Before all that, there were petanque and tarot games, the tennis club and Hubert playing with his nephews and nieces: "He always behaved like an exemplary uncle," swears Jean-Noël. When his brother Hubert and his partner Lydie Troadec were arrested, the gendarmes asked him to pick up Heidi, the little one's dog. This is where Jean-Noël discovered the Pont-de-Buis farm.

***

At the beginning of his placement, the little one presented himself to others as "the child of the Troadec affair". The educators had to explain it to him. He had to protect himself. At the beginning, and in a general way, they noted in the child a “totally smooth and without affect” attitude. No problems falling asleep or nightmares. Many morbid drawings, and "logorrhea" as to the facts. Sébastien first, Brigitte who falls and gets up, or even: “For two weeks, Mom cried a lot. Shouldn't talk. Killing on purpose is not good. I love animals!" It was no longer a secret, said the little one. His father had confessed.

But three weeks after his placement in foster care, at the end of March 2017, the little one started to cry. The wall of reality had appeared to him: he would not see his father again for many years.

Gradually, note the educators, the child seems to "discover life", and in particular community life. He is happy to go buy clothes and go to the hairdresser. During an outing to the sea, he takes a forty-five minute walk which he describes as “wonderful”. The little one talks about his mother's evening hug. The educators realize in turn: “The other children say with tears. With [le petit], everything is verbal, in fact.”

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“He says his father knows everything about everything”

June 2018. In her office, the psychiatrist appointed by the juvenile judge observes the little one. Hubert and Lydie's son will soon be 10 years old. With her, he ranks the animals in order of preference: first, wolves, like his father. “After the wolves, the dolphins, and I really like cetaceans,” he points out to the psychiatrist. At the Pont-de-Buis farm, he also has a hen that he adores and considers his sister: “She's a super hen. Very smart and very quick.” The psychiatrist then notes that he becomes "logorrheic about this".

The ad hoc administrator of the child is responsible for representing minors in court. But its role is broader. During their many meetings, they both talk a lot. It's easy, with the little one, because he likes to talk. "He loves his books passionately," says the court administrator. “He wants to be a doctor, a researcher, or a writer.” His general culture is prodigious, and on that, all the professionals agree: the child has a passion for nature, Latin, French and history. “He says things that his father taught him, reports the administrator. It's quite touching, I must say. He says his dad knows everything about everything.”

From prison, his father sends him long letters. Using a pen, he outlines his hand on the paper, so that the little one can catch it. Hubert Caouissin sends him lots of kisses. He is very proud of himself. The little one could become a doctor or a president when he grows up. Hubert Caouissin tells him not to miss his German class for a session with the psychologist. This worries his son.

"Why do you call him 'the little one'?" asks the president.

– Because I didn't see him grow up, explains Lydie Troadec. – Does he like it? – No. – Why?

In the box, Lydie Troadec purses her lips a little.

“Because he wants to grow up,” she replies.

"Can you tell her I love her?"

Today, her son is almost a teenager. “He is a young person in reconstruction”, clarifies one of the educators at the helm. If he could, at the beginning of his placement by the ASE, be very anxious at the idea of ​​missing an exercise or a course, the teenager learned to think by and for himself. About his German course, he immediately talked about it with the educators: "He said that his father was wrong."

The farm at Pont-de-Buis, he doesn't want to talk about it anymore. “He is very angry, underlines the educator. Not in relation to the facts, but in relation to what he experienced there. Whole Sundays doing maths, on pain of not eating in the evening. His father, scary, when he couldn't use the set square. In college, the child learned to play basketball, video games, and was elected eco-delegate of his class. Of that, he is very proud.

The ad hoc administrator then turns to the dock. She has a message for Hubert Caouissin and Lydie Troadec. Their son asked him to tell them “that he loves them”. The sentence is so short, that she repeats it again: “There, he loves them.”

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Curled up on the bench, Hubert Caouissin cries under his mask. Then he gets up to answer: "It was very framed, it's true, but I didn't think so... I'm sorry that he experienced it like that..." The accused passes his hand over his forehead , and squeezes the tears flowing. In detention, he ended up removing his son's photos from the wall. They pierced his heart every time his eyes fell on them. “Can you tell her that I love her?”, he asks the administrator before letting out in a sob: “Infinitely.”

His son knows it. But he is still afraid of becoming like him, “of throwing tantrums like dad”. The child psychiatrist is working with him on that. Despite his 12 years – soon to be 13 – the teenager has a “very youthful appearance”. The child psychiatrist wonders if his puberty will not begin after the trial. When it's all over.

At the start of his detention, Hubert Caouissin wrote a long letter to the educational manager. Of his son, he noted: “[He] has a rich personality but some traits of which escape us.” Despite his delirium, he was not devoid of lucidity. Despite everything he projected on his son, the latter was not him, and never would be. In front of the children's judges, the little one had thus declared: “What is sad for me is that even if Pascal is not very nice, he is a member of the family. And that's important."

"I know it's ugly, but I don't feel anything"

When Lydie Troadec had left Brest for Paris, after her studies, she had taken dance lessons. Pascal, then, laughed, took her in his arms, so that she would teach him to dance too. It's a good memory, she said. But the bad memories always take over. “When I told him about my cancer, it was like telling him that I had bought a pair of socks,” she complains. In his postcards, he always spoke of himself, never of her. She wished he had been more attentive. She loves her brother. Or she loved him. She no longer knows how to tell the difference between the present and the imperfect. His mother Renée constantly mixes the two times, she herself had a hard time finding her way around.

Often, Lydie would like to talk to him about what happened, about Pascal and the children. Sometimes she tries an approach, especially on birthdays. But Renée Troadec says nothing, “she is silent”, notes her daughter. Renée didn't pay for the funeral. She did not become a civil party to the trial. All memories, whatever they are, live behind closed doors today. Lydie has no one to talk to about it, and it is now difficult for her “to build relationships when your name is Lydie Troadec”. Alone in her bed, she cries at night.

Martine, Brigitte's sister, talked too much about it. Now, she avoids doing it, so as not to “dwell on it”. Her nights are filled with "horrible nightmares". Since the facts, she can no longer open the trunk of a car, nor eat meat. She says she is unable to grieve. Facing the Loire-Atlantique Assize Court, Martine suddenly exclaims: “I cannot allow four people to be massacred, dismembered, cut into small pieces and burned.” Then, his bust pivots towards the dock. She reminds him: “For nothing! For nothing! For nothing, Monsieur Caouissin!”

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Hubert Caouissin lowers his head. "Intellectually, I know it's ugly, but I don't feel anything," he explained to psychiatrist Zagury, who came to assess him in detention. And of that, of not feeling anything, “he complains about it like the amputation of his person”, reports the expert. However, advances the psychiatrist Coutanceau, “[Hubert Caouissin] is marked by what he has done”.

In the first months of his incarceration, an image had suddenly come to his mind. He had seen 18-year-old Charlotte Troadec. He had seen the blow he had given him, that night of February 16 to 17, a blow of extreme violence and "completely disproportionate". So Hubert Caouissin got up from his bed, tied his shoelaces together, and put them around his neck. After his suicide attempt, he had been hospitalized in psychiatry.

Doctor Coutanceau summarizes: “No biographical element explains paranoid delirium. We can psychoanalyze on lived experience, but we should not try to explain all mental illnesses. There was no genetic predisposition, no heredity, no reason for paranoia. It entered the brain for nothing, and insinuated itself into the interstices, until it invaded the slightest thought.

“The day he stops believing in it, what will happen?”

At the start of the trial, Lydie Troadec admitted, about the hoard: "Today, I think it did not exist." She had come to this conclusion by consulting the press and doing her own research. On parole, he had had to return to the Pont-de-Buis farm to secure the entrance, and take some clothes. She didn't know what to do with this cursed building. We should get rid of it and sell it, she admits. But some things never wanted to leave her. “I have a strong guilt too, she had burst into tears. And I don't know how to do…”

“Mr. Caouissin, if we found no proof of the existence of the hoard, underlined the president of the court, recalling the work of the investigators, is it not quite simply because it does not exist?

“Or else it's because we haven't looked hard enough,” replied Hubert Caouissin.

“We don't know how to treat paranoid delirium, warned psychiatrist Bensussan. Nothing works." Drug treatments, at most, will soothe the person. In prison, Hubert Caouissin takes painkillers. “I cut the ventilation, he explains, otherwise I would have lasted three days. People shouting at windows don't bother me. It's more the heavy doors that slam." Medicines also help to cope with the noise. In view of the trial, and against the advice of his psychiatrist, he stopped his treatment. He wanted to have a clear mind to explain himself.

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“He clings to his delirium like a branch. It's his whole existence, points out Dr. Zagury. The day when he no longer believes in it, what will happen? There, indeed, there is a risk of suicide.

“How do you envision your future?” Asked the president to Hubert Caouissin on the first day of his trial. “I plan to cut ties with everyone. So that they stop suffering. They should stop wearing that." For a moment, he looked at the Assize Court, his hands behind his back: “Otherwise, [the little one] will wait for me all his life.”

On July 7, 2021, Hubert Caouissin was sentenced to thirty years of criminal imprisonment for the murders and the "attack on the integrity of the corpses" of Pascal, Brigitte, Sébastien and Charlotte Troadec. If he escaped life imprisonment – ​​a penalty required by the public prosecutor – it was because the jurors recognized an alteration in discernment. Lydie Troadec was found guilty of "concealment of a corpse" and "modification of the crime scene" and sentenced to three years' imprisonment, one of which was suspended.

One day, in college, the history and geography teacher was telling the class about the Second World War and the gold from the Banque de France taken from the Nazis, leaving on military boats from the port of Brest. The teacher then launched to the students: “You must have heard of the Troadec affair…” The son of Hubert Caouissin and Lydie Troadec had said nothing. No one knew who he was. Today, he lives under a new identity.