The Dublin-based French woman suspected of murdering her husband and daughter in a hotel in Iceland last year told police she was “a monster” after they arrested her, according to a new court record.
The still-unidentified family – French citizens who had been living in Dublin for several years – had travelled to Iceland for a holiday in early June 2025, staying at the luxury Reykjavik Edition hotel.
A week later, on the morning they were due to return to Ireland, the father (58) and daughter (30) were found dead in a hotel bedroom.
A woman (56), their wife and mother, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murdering them.
READ MORE
New details about what is alleged to have happened on the night of the killings are disclosed in a record published earlier this month, based on a court hearing last month in Reykjavik.
The woman was held in custody for 12 weeks, the maximum permissible by law in Iceland, and was then served with a travel ban prohibiting her from leaving the country.
Her passport was also confiscated.
The woman has still not been named, which is standard protocol for policing in Iceland with the names of those arrested or in custody never disclosed.
The identities of the victims of crime are also not named by Icelandic police.
The Nordic country’s low crime rate and small, close-knit population have traditionally meant that news of this nature spreads within the community.
A case of this type is unprecedented in Iceland.
New information about the events of the night of the suspected murders has been disclosed in a court document from a hearing held at the court of appeal on February 4th and published last week.
According to the document, the woman described herself as a “monster” when interviewed by police at the intensive care unit in Iceland’s national hospital the day after the killings.
She said that she, her husband and her daughter had decided to take their lives together and that her daughter had been the first to die.
The new record show that the woman admitted to killing her husband and daughter at the scene, but four days later denied this.
She claimed the family had agreed on a suicide pact before travelling to Iceland and that she had been upset when she had confessed to the murders.
According to the record, the woman claimed to police the family had made the decision to die together before going on the trip to Iceland, which was to be their last time together.
The suspect told a nurse, within earshot of a police officer, that her husband had been struggling with a serious illness and was dying, that difficult financial inheritance issues had weighed on the family and that she did not want their daughter to be the only one left alive.
She said the couple had given their daughter full freedom to decide her own fate and that she was determined to die with her parents.
The court record also reveals previously undisclosed details about the crime scene.
Police received a report from staff at the Reykjavik Edition hotel on June 14th, 2025, requesting assistance for a woman who had been injured after falling in the shower in her room.
En route to the scene, police received further information that the woman had a stab wound, was armed with a knife and that an unconscious man was lying on the floor in the hotel room.
When police arrived at the scene, a woman was sitting on the floor, with a visible chest wound.
She told police in English that she had killed two people. A man was on the floor with a sheet over his body, and a woman who appeared to be dead was on the bed.
The man had two stab wounds to the abdomen and the woman had two stab wounds to the chest.
There was blood on the floor, bloody towels and clothing in the bedroom and bathroom, and a knife was found on the shower floor.
The woman was arrested at the scene and taken to the emergency room at Iceland’s national hospital where she was found to have a collapsed lung.
The suspect told police in her second interview that her husband had brought knives with him and that it was he who had decided the place and time for their suicides.
Stabbed
She claimed that on June 13th or 14th her husband had decided that the time had come for them to die together, and she and their daughter had agreed with this. She claimed that their daughter had asked to go first and her husband had stabbed her with a knife as she lay in bed in the room.
The woman claimed that her husband then stabbed her in the chest with a knife and they lay side by side in bed, according to the court record.
She claimed she had been barely conscious and had fallen asleep, but then had woken up, covered the bodies with sheets and tried to clean them, and called hotel reception herself to report the situation.
In her initial interview, she claimed her husband had asked her to stab him and that she had.
She also claimed that on the same night her husband had tried to electrocute the two of them and that she had, separately, also attempted to take her own life by electrocution.
The court record also noted that the case was submitted to Iceland’s district prosecutor on January 19th.
But the prosecutor sent the case back to police a week later, saying the investigation was incomplete and giving 13 instructions for further inquiries.
The new ruling also confirmed that a travel ban remains in place for the suspect until March 30th.
The woman had appealed the latest travel ban, but it was upheld on February 4th.
The suspect has said that she would leave the country if her detention was lifted, but would return when necessary.
