Cédric Prizzon, the Frenchman suspected of killing the mothers of his two children, in Portugal, at some point between last Friday and this Tuesday, will be appearing in court in Vila Nova de Foz Côa for a preliminary hearing today.
His two children are being cared for by child protection services – with further details of their horrendous ordeal slowly emerging.
Correio da Manhã suggests Prizzon sedated his two victims, after abducting them, and their children, in France last Friday (March 20), driving with them in the boot – with the children up at the front with him.
Over the more than 1,000 kms travelled, the women were persistently threatened, says the paper. If they tried to get away, Prizzon said he would ‘harm the children’.
It is not completely clear when he killed the women. In fact, the murder of his partner, Angela Legobien-Cadillac, 26, appears to have been prompted by her threat to denounce him to police as he was burying the mother of his eldest child, in a remote spot in Bragança.
According to CM, Prizzon was ‘concerned’ when he heard a helicopter flying overhead. His eldest child, Élio, later told authorities that Prizzon thought it might have been a French helicopter, coming to capture him.
This suggests that, at this point, only one of the women may have been dead. Élio’s story has apparently led investigators to conclude that Angela was killed “because she threatened to denounce Prizzon at the moment when he heard the helicopter”.
This shocking story appears to have been the conclusion of years of ‘domestic violence’, arguments and court battles, particularly over the custody of/access to Élio. Prizzon lost free access after abducting his son in 2021, and this seems to have been the trigger that sent him into a spiral of increasingly obsessive (and violent) behaviour.
CM writes that had it not been for the routine police stop in Longroiva, Mêda, last Tuesday, Prizzon may have ‘got away with his crimes’.
There are still a number of details to clarify: particularly when, where and how the two women were killed.
