{"id":613410,"date":"2026-07-31T12:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T12:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/613410\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T12:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T12:40:15","slug":"she-hadnt-wanted-to-die-how-dublin-resident-was-convicted-of-daughters-murder-after-family-suicide-pact-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/613410\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018She hadn\u2019t wanted to die\u2019: How Dublin resident was convicted of daughter\u2019s murder after family suicide pact \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It sounds like a plot from a Nordic-noir novel or a Netflix<\/a> drama: a father and daughter from a wealthy French<\/a> family, living in Dublin<\/a> but originally from a remote south Pacific island, die in a luxury Reykjav\u00edk<\/a> hotel. <\/p>\n

And a mother is charged with murder.<\/p>\n

The investigation stretches from New Caledonia to France to Ireland to Iceland, with a family dispute over a multimillion-euro inheritance serving as the trigger for an alleged suicide pact. But this isn\u2019t fiction. It is a true story that ended in an Icelandic courtroom this week. <\/p>\n

On June 12th, Ming Ting Mancel (56), who lived with her family in south Dublin, entered Reykjav\u00edk District Court facing trial for the murder of her daughter in collaboration with her deceased husband. <\/p>\n

Only two streets separated the courthouse from the Reykjav\u00edk Edition hotel where Catherine (29), her daughter, and Emeric (57), her husband, were found dead on a weekend exactly one year before. The three had travelled from their home in Ireland for a holiday. <\/p>\n

But they were not like other tourists and this was no ordinary holiday. The Mancel family had, according to Ming Ting Mancel, come to Iceland to end their own lives. <\/p>\n

With no jury system in Iceland, a panel of three judges was to decide her fate. That day, Mancel gave testimony for more than seven hours, starting in quiet French and gradually gaining confidence. Her interpreter explained everything phrase by phrase, as Icelandic and French volleyed back and forth across the courtroom. <\/p>\n

\"CatherineCatherine Mancel (left) with her father Emeric Mancel (centre) at a Japanese fencing competition in Australia. Photograph: Les Nouvelles Cal\u00e9doniennes <\/p>\n

The court heard how on Saturday, June 14th, 2025, shortly after 7am, Ming Ting Mancel alerted Reykjav\u00edk Edition hotel staff to an emergency in her room on the fourth floor. This set into motion an investigation that was to prove unprecedented for police in Iceland, a country that ordinarily sees just two or three murders a year. <\/p>\n

Staff discovered two bodies in the room. When police arrived, Mancel told them she had killed two people. She would later say that she had used this as a form of shorthand to get help to her family as quickly as possible. <\/p>\n

Mancel was taken to hospital, and later told police that her family had planned a collective suicide from Dublin, with her husband inflicting the wounds. <\/p>\n

Mancel was charged and kept in custody for 12 weeks but then released, as she was not considered a threat to the public. The family\u2019s names remained unknown until 10 months after their deaths as Icelandic police do not name victims of crime. <\/p>\n

She explained to the court how her husband had kidney failure, couldn\u2019t cope with losing his independence and wanted to die when he could still choose. <\/p>\n

She couldn\u2019t imagine living without him and the couple had offered their daughter Catherine, an only child, the choice to join them in death. <\/p>\n

Born in Switzerland, Emeric Mancel grew up in New Caledonia, a French territory comprising dozens of islands in the south Pacific, more than 1,200km east of Australia.<\/p>\n

His parents made their fortune running a jewellery shop in the capital, Noum\u00e9a. Ming Ting Mancel was from France. The family lived together in New Caledonia until 2017, when they moved to Dublin. Money seemed no object. The family lived at the Central Park apartment complex in Leopardstown. <\/p>\n

In Reykjav\u00edk, they chose the most expensive hotel in the city, the Reykjav\u00edk Edition, as their base, with two rooms costing about \u20ac16,000 for a week. <\/p>\n

\"ReykjavikReykjavik Edition hotel, where the bodies of Emeric and Catherine Mancel were found on June 14th, 2025 <\/p>\n

The family wealth became the heart of this case. Weeks before his death, Emeric\u2019s sister Fran\u00e7oise filed a criminal charge against her brother, accusing him of stealing hundreds of millions of francs \u2013 \u20ac8 million in all \u2013 from the family fortune. This allegation sparked the family\u2019s suicide plans, Ming Ting said, as her husband felt \u201cunable\u201d to defend himself. <\/p>\n

Iceland was chosen as the location. <\/p>\n

The acts of violence leading to the deaths of Emeric and Catherine were outlined in graphic detail in court during Ming Ting Mancel\u2019s trial.<\/p>\n

Emeric researched mass suicides and how to locate the heart in a woman\u2019s body before they left for Iceland. He brought knives from Dublin, along with over-the-counter sleeping tablets. <\/p>\n

The court heard that on the last night of their trip, he stabbed Catherine once as her mother held her hand. When that didn\u2019t work, Mancel said, Catherine asked him to stab her again. The second stab wound pierced Catherine\u2019s heart, and she died, according to the evidence presented in court. <\/p>\n

The prosecution contended during the trial that her parents also used a noose to strangle her and that Catherine had tried to break free and hadn\u2019t wanted to die. <\/p>\n

\"CatherineCatherine Mancel. Photograph: Linkedin <\/p>\n

Emeric Mancel later took his own life after attempting to kill his wife, but she survived. <\/p>\n

Over the six-day trial, Mancel cut an unassuming figure, very petite, with almost fully grey shoulder-length hair. She dressed in a black cardigan, trousers and black runners. She was polite, at times smiling and occasionally pouring a glass of water for her lawyer during proceedings. <\/p>\n

Mancel came across as sad, yet calm and self-contained. She appeared sure of herself, unapologetic and resolute in her evidence. <\/p>\n

When it came to others testifying, she remained impassive when her sister and sister-in-law gave evidence from France. <\/p>\n

But it was the evidence of Catherine\u2019s colleague, testifying via video-link from Ireland, that finally drew a reaction from Mancel. <\/p>\n

When Catherine was described as \u201ca ray of sunshine in the office\u201d by L\u00e9o Berteaux, her manager at Airbnb, the online rental website where she worked in Dublin, her mother became visibly distraught and her face contorted into a silent wail. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Irish manager contacted Iceland police after Catherine Mancel didn\u2019t turn up for work, court toldOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Colleagues gave testimony from Ireland, describing Catherine as a smiling, happy, but quiet girl, who always said hello. She had no known social media except LinkedIn. She was described as being \u201cin the full bloom of her life\u201d by the prosecutor. <\/p>\n

Asked by the judge if she had said goodbye or comforted her daughter in her last moments, Mancel showed a remarkable casualness towards their impending deaths, saying she said she hadn\u2019t needed to since they were all \u201cleaving together\u201d. <\/p>\n

She broke down once when she talked about her husband, saying he was a good person. Her aim now, she said, was to clear his name. <\/p>\n

When asked to describe Catherine\u2019s character and her relationship with her, <\/b>she said she didn\u2019t understand the question. Eventually Mancel replied that it was \u201csometimes complicated\u201d but that they were very close. Emeric was the most important person to Catherine, she said. <\/p>\n

During the trial, the family\u2019s ties to Ireland, their adopted home, came into focus when a suicide note written by Emeric was shown, saying that any damages caused to the room could be reimbursed through their AIB credit card. <\/p>\n

In their final days together in Iceland, the family mixed typical tourist activities with efforts to finalise their affairs. Where tourists send postcards, the Mancels posted souvenirs and copies of their wills to their siblings from a Reykjav\u00edk postbox.<\/p>\n

In a clue to Catherine\u2019s sensitivity, a recurring trait that came up during the trial, she had given hand-knit teddy bears to her colleagues in Dublin as farewell presents. They were the same bears she and her mother regularly spent time crafting together. One teddy was found near her where she died; another remains as the cover photo of her LinkedIn profile. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Dublin-resident French woman sentenced to 12 years over murder of her daughter in Iceland hotelOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Last Tuesday, the court reconvened for a 10-minute verdict hearing. Ming Ting Mancel was found guilty of her daughter\u2019s murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Her lawyer said that she was \u201cdisappointed\u201d and had already requested an appeal. <\/p>\n

The family travelled together from Dublin to Iceland in June 2025 with a plan to die together. Today, the remains of Catherine and her father are interred in a Reykjav\u00edk cemetery, and Ming Ting Mancel has begun a 12-year sentence for her daughter\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It sounds like a plot from a Nordic-noir novel or a Netflix drama: a father and daughter from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,2220,6,6904,19,17,11,12,43748,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-613410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-france","tag-headlines","tag-iceland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-leopardstown","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117014641849817844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}