Paris: an American mother and son tried for attempted assassination on the French father

Based on placed microphones and anonymous threats, June Hopkins, 60, and his son Brendan Walsh, 30, are suspected of having spied on the latter's father,Grégoire L., against a background of inheritance and family money business.

In 1990, it was aboard an Orient-Express thatGrégoire L.And June Hopkins meet.She quickly fell pregnant but returned to the United States before the birth of Brendan, "to divorce" her American husband, she said.

June returns to Paris a year later and fell pregnant with their second son.But she leaves again before birth, this time for good: the American will only get in touch with Grégoire fifteen years later, when the latter's father died.

In 2009, she spent a month in France with her two sons, now great adolescents.She would like them to take the nameGrégoire L.The steps are taken.June Hopkins and her elder are back in 2010 and housed in the father's apartment.When he realizes that she took the opportunity to photocopy her wealth tax notice, documents from the succession of his father and a life insurance contract up to 500,000 euros, a dispute bursts.

Sitting on the sofa,Grégoire L.feels a liquid flowing behind and hears a repeated rattle.He turns around: his son poured him from the essence on it and holds a lighter, he will say to the investigators.Grégoire L.files a complaint for this first attempted assassination but the Americans - who dispute it - have already left the country.

He modifies the beneficiaries of his life insurance (his nieces rather than his sons) and plunges into a deep depression, which does not arrange when he learns that the American husband of June Hopkins shattered his skull in his garage,by falling from a scale on a drilling tool.A "suspect" death, according to American investigators, who will however conclude an accident.

Son under control

En 2015, la sœur deGrégoire L.Go home when a man and a woman, faces masked under motorcycle helmets, jump on her and try to strangle her.Neighbors intervene, fleeing the attackers.It’s "the Americans," she groans.Grégoire L.launches on their kits.His ex-partner drives her fingers in the eyes, his son tries to strangle him with a cord.Again, neighbors put them on the run.

The investigation after their arrest will reveal a "criminal project" to the "obsessive character" according to the accusation, to which the mother and the son devoted their time since their installation "in clos" and in secret in Paris, in 2012.

Investigators will find a large garden shovel under the American bed in a cover.In the cellar, a saw, an ax, a machete, protective glasses, a cord roll. Mère et fils ont toujours nié, assurant au contraire queGrégoire L.And his family planned to "eliminate them," said June Hopkins to investigators.According to psychiatric expertise, Brendan Walsh was at the time in the influence of a "totalizing link" with his mother who was able to alter his discernment.

June Hopkins, who tried to escape from prison in 2016 by knotting her cell sheets before falling six meters, was finally placed under judicial supervision in 2018, like her son.They fled to the United States where they were arrested in 2019, then extradited to France last February.