THE BENOÎT PHILIPPENS CASE: THE BANKER SHOULD NOT HAVE SAID NO | Enquêtes criminelles | W9

April 18 2014. Police in Visé, Belgium, are alerted by gunshots to what is normally a quiet street. Two bankers, Benoît Philippens, 36, and his wife, Carol, 38, are seriously wounded. With them was Carol’s godson, Esteban, 9, who has taken a bullet in the head. None of them survives. Before she died, despite her difficulty in speaking, Carol related the seconds leading up to the triple slaying to the investigators: “He came up to my husband and said to him, ‘Do you recognize me?’ and then he fired.” Following up on the theory of a settling of scores, the investigators discover that Benoît and Carol had made plenty of enemies. In fact, the husband, a born Casanova, had made persistent advances to his female colleagues and even to his clients! But that’s not all. At the time of the tragedy, there was a legal dispute between the victims and two clients, who found themselves heavily in debt after their request for a €175,000 loan was refused. So, who had such a grudge against the Philippens couple that they executed them in cold blood and killed an innocent child in the process?