The police investigation into the double homicide at the Edition hotel has been completed, and it is now up to the District Prosecutor to decide how and when the case will proceed to court, reports RÚV. Many questions remain unanswered, although the woman admitted at the scene to having killed two people. She now denies guilt.
Last summer, two members of a French family, a father and his adult daughter, were found dead at the Edition hotel in Reykjavík. The mother, a French woman in her 50s, was subsequently arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband and daughter. It has now been 220 days since hotel staff contacted police, requesting assistance for a woman they said had been injured after falling in the shower in her room.
According to a ruling by the Court of Appeal, the woman was formally granted the legal status of a suspect while in an ambulance on the way to the emergency department in Fossvogur. Upon arrival, she spoke to a nurse within earshot of a police officer. She stated that the deceased were her husband and daughter, explaining that her husband suffered from severe kidney failure and was terminally ill, and that she did not want their daughter to be left alone in the world. She said she had intended to take her own life by stabbing herself in the heart.
Court ruling reveals new details
New information about the case is detailed in a newly published ruling by the Court of Appeal.
As police officers were on their way to the scene, they received more detailed information from hotel staff. The descriptions were grim: the woman had a stab wound to the chest with significant bleeding, while an unconscious man lay on the floor, covered with a sheet.
When police arrived at the hotel, a staff member greeted them and led them to the room, where the woman lay on the floor and clearly stated in English that she had killed two people, according to the ruling. In addition to the man on the floor, a pale woman lay in the bed and was also deceased. Both had suffered two stab wounds: the man to the abdomen and the woman to the chest. Blood was everywhere; bloodied towels and clothes lay on the floor and in the bathroom.
Among the case materials is an email from the husband to his family, sent a few days before the events at the Edition Hotel, in which he told them they no longer needed to worry about the future.
The woman was placed in pre-trial detention. During that period, she was granted permission by the District Court to attend the burial of her husband and daughter. However, in early September, she was unexpectedly released after the Court of Appeal rejected police demands for continued detention, ruling that there were no urgent investigative reasons to keep her in custody. Instead, she was placed under a travel ban. She now denies all charges.
What is known about the family
The individuals were identified as a French couple and their adult daughter. They had come to Iceland like any other tourists, gone on short sightseeing trips, and had a return flight booked to Ireland on the same day hotel staff discovered them. The family had lived in Dublin for several years.
Besies this, very little information is known about the family. They were not active on social media, there’s basically no information about them online, and their phones were completely empty — something investigators described as extremely rare. According to reports, the man’s family was very wealthy, owning assets worth billions of ISK, and had been involved in prolonged inheritance disputes.
The man’s sister also contacted police of her own accord, emphasising that it was her brother who controlled and dominated the marriage.
A Court of Appeal ruling from last summer states that police requested a psychiatric evaluation of the woman. She had claimed memory loss regarding the events, and the alleged crime was considered of such a nature that an assessment was necessary. She objected to the request, but the Court of Appeal approved it. According to RÚV, the evaluation found no indication that she suffered from mental illness or was legally unfit to stand trial.
What happens now
The police investigation formally concluded on Monday. It was complex and time-consuming, but investigators were afforded some leeway because the woman was subject to a travel ban rather than being held in custody, meaning they were not bound by the statutory 12-week deadline for completing investigations. Cooperation with Irish and French authorities has been good; police there have taken statements from the couple’s siblings and conducted searches at their home in Dublin.
The case is unprecedented in the history of the Capital Area Police; even the most experienced officers say they cannot recall a similar investigation. The next steps now lie with the District Prosecutor. The case will reach the courts in one form or another, but how and when remains unclear. In the meantime, the woman continues to report to a designated police station twice a week.
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