French father 'barbecued wife and fed her to children'

Benoit Piet, a father of six, has admitted digging up his dead wife, barbecuing her body and then feeding it to his children in a bizarre bid to escape a murder charge. Mr Piet told a court it was time to stop the lies after previously claiming his wife committed suicide.

In front of his two girls and four boys, aged 12 to 20, the 42-year-old said: ‘I promise to tell the truth to my children. A court is a good place to do it after telling so many lies.’ Police believe he murdered wife Adeline in 2006 after she asked for a divorce. He told officers then she had run off, sparking a nationwide hunt. Two years later, he was interviewed again and said she had hanged herself at their home in St Malo, Normandy.



‘I found my wife hanging in the garage. So that I wasn’t accused of murder, I buried her in the garden,’ he told police. ‘In May 2008, I dug the body up and burned the remains in the barbeque in the garden.’ Piet later changed his story again to claim she had been murdered by two strangers before reverting to the suicide theory.

He appeared in court on Wednesday in Ille-et-Vilaine, in northern France, charged with murder. He has admitted his wife died during a drunken domestic dispute but stopped short of saying he killed her. The case continues.