QUEBEC - The mother of two Quebec girls killed by their father in July 2020 told the opening of a coroner's inquest Monday she still has no explanation for why Martin Carpentier committed such heinous crimes.
Amélie Lemieux recounted the horror she's endured since Carpentier killed their daughters — Romy, 6, and Norah, 11 — in the woods near St-Apollinaire, Que., southwest of Quebec City. He killed himself shortly after.
"My girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the person they loved the most in the world," Lemieux told deputy chief coroner Luc Malouin at the Quebec City inquest.
The search for the girls and their father turned into a multi-day police manhunt that gripped the province. And since the girls went missing, questions have arisen about the quality of the police investigation.
Quebec's public security minister ordered a coroner's inquest last year after Radio-Canada reported on new evidence that had not been part of a coroner's report into the girls' deaths. Meanwhile, the coroner's October 2021 report found flaws in the police investigation and recommended changes to the process for triggering an Amber Alert. It also recommended the creation of a dedicated police unit to investigate the disappearance of children.
The case started when the girls and their father vanished after their car was involved in a crash on Highway 20 in St-Apollinaire, on July 8, 2020, just before 9:30 p.m. Police initially believed the crash was unintentional and had thought the family had simply left the scene of a collision.
It was not until 3 p.m. the next day that police issued an Amber Alert for the missing children.
Lemieux told the inquest that she tried to impart a sense of urgency to police in the hours after the disappearances of her children. She said police told her they didn't have enough information at first to trigger the alert.
"We asked for the helicopter; we asked for the Amber Alert, but it took a very long time," Lemieux said. She recalled telling police that "Martin would not come out of the woods" and that "he was scared."
Lemieux said she was sleeping when a police officer called at 9:45 p.m. on July 8, 2020, informing her of an accident involving Carpentier's vehicle and that the three were missing. The mother said she went to the scene that night and returned early the following morning to search herself.
She said she asked truckers at a truck stop to use their radio system to announce the disappearances, adding that she also asked clients at a nearby convenience store about her kids.
Lemieux said she even searched around the area close to where the girls' bodies were eventually discovered. She said she didn't walk down a nearby gravel road because she knew her eldest daughter was missing a sandal, which was left behind in the car.
“I was right next to them — I was so close; I didn’t know," Lemieux sobbed.
Police found the girls' bodies in the woods on July 11. But the coroner concluded they were likely killed the afternoon of July 9. Carpentier died by suicide in the hours after the girls' killings, but his body was only found on July 20.
Lemieux recounted how she cried when investigators told her they had found the girls. "I fell down and I didn’t feel anything more. I could hear people yelling around me but it was all dark … I felt cold."
The couple had been together since 2008. Carpentier was not Norah's biological father but had adopted her in 2010, she told the inquest. Romy was born in 2013, and Lemieux said she and him separated in 2015.
She said that by 2020, Carpentier had lost a lot of weight in the weeks ahead of the killings and had expressed concerns about his finances after his construction job was on hold because of COVID-19.
The inquest also heard Monday from Carpentier's girlfriend, whose identity is protected by a publication ban. She said Carpentier was about to file for divorce and was fearful of losing access to his children. Earlier in the day, Lemieux told the inquiry she was unaware Carpentier wanted to divorce and was afraid of losing the girls.
Carpentier, the girlfriend testified, was also upset because Norah had made contact with her biological father.
"I knew that it preoccupied him," the woman testified. "What I told him is I don't know how someone like you could lose custody of your kids; for me he was a wonderful father."
She agreed with the coroner's assertion that the prospect of losing his kids was an "obsession" for Carpentier.
The inquest continues Tuesday.
This report by ´ºÉ«Ö±²¥was first published Feb. 13, 2023.
— By Sidhartha Banerjee in Montreal.
