{"id":525473,"date":"2026-06-30T08:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T08:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/525473\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T08:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T08:10:08","slug":"husband-of-dublin-based-mother-on-trial-in-iceland-for-murder-researched-mass-suicide-court-told-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/525473\/","title":{"rendered":"Husband of Dublin-based mother on trial in Iceland for murder researched mass suicide, court told \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The husband of a woman accused of murdering her daughter was researching historic mass suicides on his iPad in Dublin two weeks before their deaths, a court in Reykjavik<\/a> heard on Monday. <\/p>\n

This evidence was given on the fifth day of the trial of Ming Ting Mancel in Reykjavik. The Dublin-based French woman is accused of co-operating with her late husband Emeric Mancel, to murder their 29-year-old daughter, Catherine, in June 2025.<\/p>\n

Catherine and Emeric were found dead from stab wounds at the Reykjav\u00edk Edition Hotel. Ming Ting Mancel, with an address in Leopardstown, Dublin, who survived the incident with a punctured lung, claims the family had agreed to a planned joint suicide. The central issue rests on whether Catherine wanted to die or was influenced by her parents. <\/p>\n

Emeric Mancel also looked up \u201cwhere is the heart located in a woman\u201d, \u201cdoes being stabbed in the heart hurt\u201d, and \u201cdiagram female body with heart\u201d, as well as researching the survival time for a stab in the heart. He had been trying to figure out the most effective way of taking their own lives, the court was told. <\/p>\n

When informed of her parents\u2019 suicide plans, their daughter had not considered staying on her own, Ming Ting Mancel said. She said Catherine had been afraid of being alone since she was young, and was \u201cafraid of being abandoned. If we left, she was leaving with us\u201d. <\/p>\n

She said she had offered to stay alive for her daughter but that wasn\u2019t enough, and that her father was the most important person to her. <\/p>\n

She said Catherine wasn\u2019t happy that a knife was being used, but didn\u2019t raise any objections. <\/p>\n

After being stabbed the first time, Catherine had asked her father to stab her a second time and \u201cshe said also that she loved us both\u201d, said her mother, adding: \u201cShe wasn\u2019t happy with the process, but she wanted to go.\u201d None of them were happy with the method, she added. <\/p>\n

Ming Ting Mancel claimed they hadn\u2019t discussed much that night. \u201cWe had no need to say goodbye because it wasn\u2019t a separation, it was a collective departure,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe logic was that we were always together so to leave together.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked how she felt psychologically and not logically about her daughter\u2019s decision to also take part in the suicide pact, she said: \u201cI agreed with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questioned about her daughter\u2019s psychological state, Ming Ting Mancel said she wasn\u2019t depressed, but that with everything going on with climate change and conflicts in the world, it was a period she didn\u2019t like. <\/p>\n

When asked to describe her daughter\u2019s character, Ming Ting Mancel said that as a child she was quite happy and extroverted until she got epilepsy and things became more difficult for her. Her friends had avoided playing with her due to her motor skills delay, and school had been challenging for her. <\/p>\n

Regarding her relationship with her daughter, she said \u201cit was sometimes complicated\u201d and they had \u201cconflicts, but nothing bad, we were very close and always together. We had differing viewpoints\u201d. She said they did a lot of activities together and that Catherine had loved doing arts and crafts with her. <\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, Ming Ting Mancel became visibly upset when testimony was given describing her daughter Catherine as \u201ca ray of sunshine in the office\u201d by her former manager at Airbnb in Dublin. <\/p>\n

When asked to describe Catherine, L\u00e9o B\u00e9rteaux recalled her as a colleague who always said hello, whose results were very satisfactory and whose attitude was exemplary. During this account, Ming Ting Mancel became visibly upset for the first time during witness testimony, closing her eyes for a prolonged period and wiping tears away. <\/p>\n

B\u00e9rteaux said Catherine had asked him for time off work to go to Iceland without much notice, which was unlike her. He said he remembered she had seemed a bit embarrassed about this, and had said that her parents had organised a trip at the last minute. <\/p>\n

A second witness, Aisling McNevin, gave evidence as Catherine\u2019s programme manager, who had found her work laptop left behind at the office a day or two after Catherine was supposed to be back in Dublin. She said Catherine was always very smiley, happy and quiet but was \u201cextremely hard-working, and one of our top performers on the French team\u201d. She confirmed Catherine had left small handmade crocheted teddy bears for members of her team before going to Iceland.<\/p>\n

The trial also heard from Berta Lamartine, who had started working at Airbnb at the same time as Catherine in January 2025. Asked to explain her colleague\u2019s character, she said she was nice, cheerful and a good worker who was always ready to help. <\/p>\n

She added that Catherine \u201cwasn\u2019t the kind of person who came to you with her problems\u201d, and didn\u2019t talk much about the future, but had once said she would like to become a manager.<\/p>\n

The trial continues on Tuesday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The husband of a woman accused of murdering her daughter was researching historic mass suicides on his iPad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2201,62,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-525473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-airbnb","tag-iceland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}