Brit Arrested in France for Slitting His Childrens' Throats
 

AFP – 8 hours ago 20 May 2013

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• AFP/AFP - The building in Saint Priest, Lyon, in which the bodies of two children were found. French prosecutors said Monday they were currently not charging a 48-year-old divorced Briton with premeditated murder...

French prosecutors said Monday they were currently not charging a 48-year-old divorced Briton with premeditated murder after he admitted slitting the throats of his two young children.

"We are presently holding back from the charge of premeditated murder but this could always change in the light of (more) testimony," a prosecutor said.

Prosecutors said the man, who was locked in a bitter custody battle, admitted on Sunday that he had killed his five-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy after taking them to his apartment in a suburb of the central French city of Lyon.

A judicial source said the man had visitation rights but only in the presence of another person and he had brought the children home for the first time without a third party being present.
He was arrested on Saturday after witnesses said his ex-wife raised the alarm after encountering him on the stairwell of the building with bloodstained clothes. He fled on roller skates.
A knife which is thought to be the murder weapon has been found at the scene of the crime.


UPDATE:

Divorced British father Julian Stevenson to face court over deaths of his two children in Lyon

London Evening Standard UK, 20 May 2013


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Scene: The apartment in the Lyon suburb of Saint-Priest

A British father was set to appear before a French court today after allegedly cutting the throats of his two young children because of a bitter custody battle.

Julian Stevenson, 48, was arrested on Saturday after the bodies of Mathew, 10, and Carla, five, were found in his apartment in a suburb of Lyon, eastern France.

He is said to have carried out the double-killingin a fit of rage before fleeing covered in blood on a pair of roller-skates.

His ex-wife, who is French, had handed over the children on Friday evening, and they spent a night in the old family home in Saint-Priest, around three miles from the city centre.

It was the first time since he attacked his wife in 2010 before their divorce that Stevenson had been allowed to have the children with him unsupervised.

When the mother, an accountant’s assistant also in her 40s, returned to collect them from the second floor apartment at around 5pm she saw the father looking “panicked and angry”.

A neighbour said: “He was in the stairwell of the block, and his clothes were covered in blood. He made off on a pair of roller-skates, leaving his car in the apartment block’s garage.”

Following a short manhunt, Stevenson was found in Lyon’s 8th arrondissement at around 8pm on the same evening.

A judicial source said that a knife thought to be the murder weapon had been found in the flat and that Stevenson “admitted being the murderer” but “did not give many more details”.

The source said the double murder was “clearly linked to a painful separation” and “legal procedures concerning the right to access to the children which the father deemed insufficient”.

Stevenson, who is said to have a drinking problem, was expected to appear before a judge in Lyon today for a short hearing when a prosecutor will officially open a criminal investigation.

The session is to go ahead on what is a public holiday in France, owing to the significance of the case.

His traumatised ex-wife gave details of her troubled relationship with Stevenson to prosecutors yesterday.

He has been living in France for 10 years and married in 2005. She won custody of the children following the divorce and went to live in the nearby Isere region of France, to the south east of the city.

Investigators were particularly keen to know who gave the father legal authority to look after the children.

In a further twist, it emerged that the couple had been involved in a further legal dispute over the £100,000 flat.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We are in touch with the French authorities and await the outcome of their investigation.

“We stand ready to provide consular assistance.”

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