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| Marie's sister graciously gave permission to use this photo. |
Marie’s father: “We do not want
anger in our hearts.”
It is after a long and heavy wait, full of hope and anguish,
that Marie’s parents must now face the incomprehensible: the death of their daughter, killed by an
insane murderer shortly after her 19th birthday.
“Although we have seen our daughter, we still cannot believe
it. We haven’t yet processed the
irrevocable fact of her death,” confided Antoine Schluchter. At the other end of the line, the voice of
Marie’s father is fragile, broken by long silences that speak for themselves of
the immense suffering her parents are enduring.
Their daughter Marie had been living since September with a
friend of her father’s in Payerne where she was apprenticed in the restaurant
of a golf club. Born in Madagascar, the
young woman went home regularly to visit her adoptive parents in the Chablais Vaudois region.
After living in France for many years, the family returned
here five years ago. Before the
kidnapping, the couple had never heard of Claude duBois, the man with whom
Marie had recently formed a relationship and who coldly murdered her and
abandoned her body in the forest.
“We’re haunted by the fear she must have gone through,” said
her father. “But at the same time, my
wife and I are borne up by a hope that is stronger than everything else.”
Pastor at Villars-sur-Ollon, Antoine Schluchter affirms that
he finds the strength to overcome this trial through his faith in God. “I often doubt myself, but never the love of
Christ. This tragedy has not weakened
our confidence in God, but has strengthened it,” he explains, weighing each of
his words carefully.
Marie’s parents want to express thanks for the incredible support
they have received from their neighbors and also from complete strangers. The tragedy has created an international solidarity
that extends well beyond Switzerland.
“This support and this caring expressed by many are so
important to us. I learned that the
members of a mosque in a Moroccan village prayed all night for our
daughter. This is something incredibly
deep. We have received support from the
United States where our other daughter lives, and there have been so many
gestures of friendship from people here, too,” the pastor recounted with great
emotion.
Not the least sign of rebellion or anger appears in the words
of Pastor Schluchter—not even toward the system of justice that allowed the
murderer of his daughter, a man with a serious criminal past, to commit once
again an irreparable wrong.
“I have only one wish:
that a tragedy like this one we are living through would bring about a
realization, better follow-up and handling of cases like this. What happened to my daughter is something
incomprehensible, but we do not want to fill our hearts with anger nor be at
the forefront of a battle that we do not care to fight.”
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| Marie's sister shared this precious photograph of Marie and her nephew. |
"To God be the glory" and "Dear God, please bless this dear family."








