He Kidnapped His Twin Daughters And Left A Disturbing Note Behind For His Ex-Wife

On January 30, 2011, six-year-old twin girls named Alessia and Livia Schepp disappeared from Lausanne, Switzerland, in the company of their father, Matthias Schepp. He later took his own life in Italy. Police searched extensively for the girls, but they were never found.

In 2003, Matthias met a woman named Irina at a work event. They both worked for the same company. A year later, Irina became pregnant, and they got married. Alessia and Livia were born on October 7, 2004.

Over time, Irina began to notice that her husband was exhibiting strange behaviors. He was obsessive and psychologically manipulative.

She convinced him to go to couples therapy, which turned out to be unsuccessful. She later filed for divorce, and Matthias showed some resistance.

In early January of 2011, Irina emailed Matthias to let him know that the divorce papers were ready to be signed. He retaliated against her by committing the most atrocious act.

The twin girls were supposed to spend the last weekend of the month with their father. On January 28, he headed to France with them and turned off his cell phone.

Irina could tell that something was wrong, so she notified the police. When the police went to his home, they found a disturbing note.

Matthias had withdrawn some money in Marseilles and took an overnight ferry with his daughters to the island of Corsica, where the family had vacationed before the parents separated. It was the last time the girls were seen.

They arrived on February 1. Before boarding, he wrote a postcard to Irina that read, "It's too late now."

Marinaks - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only, not the actual children

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He then wrote a letter to her, saying that he had killed their daughters, and they were "now resting in a peaceful place."

He sent a total of eight letters from Bari, Italy, to Irina in Switzerland. The first seven letters contained 4,400 euros, which equates to $6,000.

The most likely theory is that he threw the girls into the sea, but their bodies have never been found. It is also possible that he handed the girls over to someone.

On February 3, 2011, Matthias took his own life by throwing himself under a train in southern Italy. According to Swiss police, Matthias had visited websites about ferry schedules, guns, poison, and suicide before taking the girls.

Matthias's family believes that he must have suffered a breakdown. Irina's family claimed that he had a split personality.

In 2014, an anonymous letter stated that the twins had been taken to Canada. The writer claimed to have worked for someone who created the false documents for the girls to be transported to Canada. One of the girls reportedly lived in Ottawa, and the other was living in Lachute, a town in Quebec.

To this day, Irina is still searching for her daughters. She launched an organization called Missing Children Switzerland. She spends her free time advocating for education on parental abductions and fighting for an Amber Alert program to be established in Switzerland.