Little Girls Lost

Alessia.  Livia.  Those are their names.

For the past two months, police in Switzerland, France and Italy have been searching high and low for the two six-year-old twin girls who haven't been seen since 30 January 2011.  Unlike several heartbreaking stories dealing with missing children, the abductor of Alessia and Livia is known.  But that knowledge does not provide any comfort to their bereft mother or to other family members who love them.  On 3 February, their abductor, their father Matthias, threw himself under a train in Cerignola, near the southern port city of Bari in Italy.  Of the girls, there is no trace.

Their parents had been estranged for some months.  Having visitation rights for the weekend, Matthias picked up his daughters on 28 January.  The trio were last seen in the early afternoon of 30 January in the village where they lived: Saint-Sulpice, a suburb of Lausanne.  Later that same day, their mother Irina received a text message from Matthias stating that, instead of returning the girls, he would drop them off at their school on Monday.  That was merely the beginning of a strange, tragic and anguish-filled odyssey that has since been retraced by the authorities.

Although Irina was somewhat worried at first, she didn't really become alarmed until she received another text message from Matthias later that evening, sent from Annecy, France, stating that the girls were with him.   From there, Matthias likely spent the night of 31 January in the region of Montélimar, France and from there travelled to Marseille, where he withdrew cash, purchased three tickets and boarded the ferry for Corsica.  He also mailed a post card to Irina from Marseille, stating that he could not live without his daughters.

There things become very murky.  Because three ferry tickets were purchased, it is presumed that Alessia and Livia accompanied their father on the voyage to Corsica.  It is not known whether they actually arrived in Corsica.  Ominously, Matthias purchased only one ticket for the return trip on 2 February.  On 3 February, he mailed seven envelopes to Irina, containing a total of EUR 4,400.  He also wrote that the little girls had not suffered and were at peace.   Then he got as far as Cerignola before throwing himself under the train.  Since that time, authorities have investigated every lead and every report.  There have been vigils in the village of Saint-Sulpice and numerous appeals for information.  There is a Facebook page.  Even the CBS Crimesider website has featured their story.

As a mother and grandmother, I can barely begin to imagine the anguish of the mother in this situation.  The French prosecutor in Marseille has concluded that their father threw them overboard between mainland France and Corsica.  Irina, however, still clings to the hope that her daughters are still alive and, hopefully, well - somewhere.

On Wednesday, 30 March, representatives of authorities from Switzerland, France and Italy gave a press conference in Lausanne in response to criticism by the family that authorities had not reacted quickly enough.  They explained that it was very difficult in situations when a parent takes a child.  They maintained further that there was no reason for them to suspect that the children would come to harm, firstly, because they had gone only a few weeks earlier on vacation alone with their father without problem.  According to their reasoning, his withdrawal of cash in Marseille provided reason to believe that he was planning to take care of his daughters.  Still, they announced that investigations would continue and that no thesis would be discounted. 

It is literally unthinkable to believe that a parent, ostensibly one who had never previously manifested the slightest harmful intent towards his children, could ever deliberately take their lives.  Still, we have seen such stories in the headlines before.  Much as one would like to hope for the best, there is good reason in this case to believe the worst.