The Belgian Geneviève Lhermitte, sentenced in 2008 to life imprisonment for having slit the throats of her five children, died this Wednesday by euthanasia in a hospital in the Wallonia region, south of the country, according to local press reports on Thursday.
Lhermitte, 56, died at the Léonard de Vinci hospital in Montigny-le-Tilleul by euthanasia, according to the Sudinfo newspaper, an end that has not yet been confirmed by those close to her, while the newspaper Le Soir points out that the woman he had requested and obtained "euthanasia due to hopeless psychological suffering".
On February 28, 2007, Lhermitte killed one after another her five children - Yasmine, born in 1992, Nora (1995), Myriam (1997), Mina (1999) and Medhi (2003) - in their respective rooms.
After slitting the boys' throats with a knife, Lhermitte tried unsuccessfully to take his own life, phoned emergency services and left two handwritten notes on his doorstep with the message "call the police."
The correctional court of Nivelles, a town located south of Brussels, sentenced the mother to life imprisonment in December 2008, after the jury found her responsible for her actions and guilty of premeditated murder.
The case shocked Belgian public opinion, which promptly followed the development of the investigation and the trial.
Geneviève Lhermitte and her husband, the Moroccan Bouchaib Mokadem, did not seem to have any major problems, although, according to some testimonies collected by the prosecution, she felt completely socially isolated.
Mokadem, employed in the pharmaceutical sector, was on a business trip at the time of the events.
Until the very day of the trial, the psychiatrists who examined Lhermitte held him responsible for his actions, despite the fact that he was in a state of acute anxiety and depression when he murdered his children.
But during the trial, a letter appeared that Lhermitte had written to his psychologist the day before the events and in which he revealed his plans to commit suicide and take his children in his death.
A second analysis carried out after that revelation indicated that the woman could not be held responsible for her actions and recommended admitting her to a psychiatric clinic.
But the jury found against those recommendations and found Lhermitte guilty of premeditated murder.
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