A Frenchman obsessed with a supposed stash of gold hidden from the Nazis has been sentenced to 30 years for murdering and dismembering four family members. Investigators say there is no sign the treasure ever existed. Prosecutors said Hubert Caouissin thought his brother-in-law Pascal Troadec had concealed gold bars that the Bank of France had hidden during the German occupation in World War II, the Guardian reports. Caouissin spied on the family and when he was disturbed while trying to listen to a conversation through a stethoscope at a window, he killed Troadec, his wife Brigitte, and their children, 18-year-old Charlotte and 21-year-old Sebastian.
Caouissin believed Troadec's father, a construction worker, had found the stash in the basement of a building in 2006 but his wife and Troadec's sister, Lydie Caouissin, had not received her share. During a 16-day trial, he claimed the killings were an "accident." Prosecutors said he killed the family members with a crowbar, dismembered the bodies, and buried them on his farm. Some 379 body parts were found on his property. One of his lawyers argued that he suffered from a "chronic paranoid delusion," Euronews reports. Lydie Caouissin was sentenced to three years for helping her husband dispose of the bodies. (American treasure hunters say the FBI is cheating them out of a Civil War gold stash.)
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