Kidnapped His Daughters, Committed Suicide And Now No One Knows Where The Girls Are — Schepp Twins

She is Irina Lucidi, an Italian-born lawyer who worked at the Swiss headquarters of the tobacco company Phillip Morris.

It was there that she met Matthias Schepp, an engineer born in Canada.

In 2003 they started a relationship and immediately the woman became pregnant with twins. Although they lived in a village in Lausana, Switzerland, the couple married in Italy in July 2004.

On October 7 of that same year, Alessia and Livia were born.

Her mother says that with the passage of time they became very dynamic, cheerful and brilliant girls who loved to spend time together, it can be said that they were inseparable.

In 2010 the marriage of Irina and Matthias began to make water and apparently the man had become excessively controlling especially with the education of his daughters so he never took Irina into account.

He decided everything they saw on TV, when they went to bed and chose the tasks that everyone had to do, which she was not willing to tolerate.

In mid-2010, Irina couldn’t take it anymore and decided to separate from Matthias in an amicable way. To be close to his daughters, the man moved to an apartment that was in the same town.

Although he could see the twins whenever he wanted, the agreement they reached was that the girls would spend every weekend at the father’s house, which worked quite well for months.

In fact, Irina said that although during her marriage there were problems, her ex-husband was a very attentive father and never thought he was a bad person.

In January 2011, Matthias returned from a vacation with his daughters and many noticed a sudden change in behavior.

Those who knew him say that although he never admitted it, he was suffering a lot with the separation, which brings us up to date with the events.

The facts:

On January 28, 2011, it was Friday and Matthias, 43, picked up the twins from the school to spend the weekend with him.

He usually returned the girls on Sunday afternoons since the next day they had school. However, on Saturday morning the man sent a text message to his ex-wife in which he said we are fine, we will return on Monday

Irina replied that this could not be because the 6-year-old girls had to be at home as usual so as not to change their routine. However, he did not get a response from Matthias.

Although on Sunday 30 at about 12 in the morning Alessia and Livia were seen with their father for the last time in the village, he never left them at his ex-wife’s house again.

The hours were passing and Matthias did not arrive with the girls, because of this Irina called him on the phone several times to see what was happening but the cell phone appeared off.

What the woman did was go to Matthias apartment, but there was no one there.

Irina, already quite worried, went to the police to report the disappearance but the agents told her to wait a few hours to see if the next day the man left the girls at school, which did not happen.

Because of this, the agents started working on the case and that’s when they found something: On Sunday 30 at 5 in the afternoon Matthias’s audi at 6 was recorded as he crossed the border from Switzerland to France.

Irina was the one who had the little ones’ passports, so how could they cross the border without them? The theory is that they had to do it inside the trunk of the car because several witnesses saw them with their father hours later.

The authorities issued an international arrest warrant, contacting Interpol since Matthias had kidnapped his daughters and taken them to the other side of the border illegally.

Thanks to the mobile phone, the car’s GPS, the security cameras and the witnesses, the agents managed to know the route that Matías made after leaving Switzerland.

The morning of Monday, January 31, it was recorded by several security cameras while withdrawing money from different ATMs in Marseille. In total it was more than 7,000 euros.

Then and from other destinations he sent Irina 4400 euros distributed in 7 letters that came to him days later. In one of them he wrote the following: I can’t stand living without you.

That same night several witnesses saw Matías taking a Night Ferry in Marseille bound for Propriano, Corsica with his daughters.

Another person said some time later that he saw the father with the girls on the ferry. As he recalled, they were very happy and didn’t stop playing.

Irina was convinced that they were her daughters because of this man’s description of the little ones’ clothes and their physique.

But the strangest testimony came from a woman who was also traveling on that ferry.

What he said was that during the trip he saw Matthias talking for quite some time with a black-haired lady.

Curiously and despite the calls, the identity of the mysterious woman with whom Matthias was talking was never known.

On Tuesday, February 1 at 06:30 a.m. Matthias disembarked in Propriano but here no one could confirm if he did it in the company of his daughters.

It can be said that at that point it was when Alessia and Livia’s track was lost forever.

At 9 at night the man took another Ferry in Bastia, northeast of Corsica bound for Toulon where he arrived at 7 in the morning on February 2.

Two hours later he was photographed only at a toll, and the next day, Thursday, February 3, several witnesses saw him in Naples, Italy.

That same night the tragedy happened.

At ten to 11 p.m a man threw himself on the train tracks in Cerignola, in southeastern Italy, losing his life instantly.

He was quickly identified as Matthias Schepp. He only had 100 euros on him and although the car appeared abandoned very close to the station, there was no trace of the girls.

Almost at the same time in Switzerland, agents searched the man’s apartment and there they made several surprising discoveries.

To start on their computer they found an email with the divorce agreement dated January 2011, but not only that... Days before the disappearance Matthias looked for information about poisons and firearms in addition to the schedules of the Ferri to Propriano.

They also found a will dated January 27 where he left the apartment to Irina and the rest of the belongings to her daughters. However, an interesting clause appeared in it... If the little ones died before him, things happened to their brothers.

For their part, the Italian police, when searching Matthías’ car, found a sample of saliva from one of the girls in the trunk. This reinforced the theory that he had crossed the border with them in there. But that sample was so small that it did not serve to detect if it had given them any type of poison, which he had previously looked for on his computer.

It is important to mention that they did not find blood or other types of tests in the vehicle.

The authorities of France, Italy and Switzerland were involved in the investigation and began to look for the little ones by land and air in the forests and lakes. But they didn’t find any clues about the whereabouts of Alessia and Livia.

After Matthias’ death, Irina began to receive numerous letters that he had sent her with money from France and Italy.

The most important one was dated February 3, just the day the man took his life. The content was chilling:

“You won’t see the girls anymore. They have not suffered, they rest in peace in a safe place”

Theories:

Although the last letter makes more or less clear the fate of the Schepp twins, I’m going to talk about the two theories of this case.

The first and the one that the agents believe for the letter sent and for the detailed planning of everything is that Matthias took the life of his daughters. Obviously he did not overcome the divorce and thinking that he could lose them or simply to hurt his ex-wife he took them the last weekend of January 2011, during the ferry trip he gave them some kind of poison and threw them overboard. As it was a night trip, no one saw anything.

The second theory that Irina and the rest of the family believe in is that he left them with someone else, perhaps the mysterious lady with whom he was seen talking on the ferry.

This would justify the amount of money that disappeared. Let’s remember that Matías withdrew more than 7000€ and sent his ex-wife 4400. Maybe the rest used it to pay the person who took care of the girls.

Irina has given numerous interviews to the media in the hope of obtaining information about the whereabouts of her daughters, but without success.

It is true that several people called the police alerting that they had seen the girls with a black-haired woman, similar to the one on the ferry, but when the agents investigated these clues they did not get anything.

In 2014, what seemed to be an important clue came to light. And it is that an Italian journalist told something.

This man claimed that he had received a letter from someone who had worked in the place where false passports were printed for the girls. According to their version, they were sent to Canada, specifically one to Ottawa and the other to Quebec.

Maybe Mathías used the money to pay for the fake documentation, however once again this did not take them anywhere and today no one really knows what happened to Alesia and Livia Schepp.

Although the authorities believe that they are no longer alive, Irina has not given up and together with the national center for lost and exploited children she has been creating images of the age progression of her daughters. If they were alive now they would be 19 years old.

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