French restaurant owner 'cooked man's body parts' as outlined in stunning confession
Philippe Schneider, 69, and his girlfriend Nathalie Caboubassy allegedly murdered Georges Meichler, and then dismembered his body in order to conceal the crime
A restaurant owner is set to stand trial for the horrific allegations of "chopping up and cooking" a man with a butcher's knife, before scattering his remains across France. Philippe Schneider, 69, and Nathalie Caboubassy, 43, are charged with the 2023 murder of Georges Meichler, whose disappearance was uncovered by his daughter's missing person report, leading to a police investigation and the duo's arrest.
Schneider admitted to authorities post-arrest that during a burglary at Meichler's remote woodland home, they accidentally killed him, then chopped up and scattered his body to hide the evidence. Some of the remains were reportedly cooked at Schneider's home in what seemed to be a "religious ceremony."
France3 quotes Schneider's lawyer, Luc Abratkiewicz, saying: "They cut up the body, they cooked it in a mess tin, and then they burned the rest. It's crude, but that's how it is."
"The horror of imagining the body being cut up, cooked, burned, is there, but this stems from a botched burglary, a corpse they didn't know how to dispose of, and the insane idea to eliminate it."
The motive behind the gruesome act, according to Schneider's attorney, was trivial—a few thousand euros—leading to an unimaginable descent into horror.
Schneider's lawyer has confirmed: "Philippe Schneider acknowledges his full responsibility and all the facts he is accused of."
Philippe Schneider's account is that he was living a life filled with alcohol and drugs, which led to the irrational decision to rob his neighbor. He gagged him, things went awry, and the man died.
"His attorney added, "He made a grave error. "Of course, there's the horror of imagining the body was cut up, cooked, burned, but then you have a burglary that goes wrong, a body you don't know what to do with, and this completely crazy idea of wanting to get rid of it. And then, he continued to descend into absurdity and horror, because indeed, the act of dismembering this body will cost them heavily."
Schneider, along with his partner Nathalie Caboubassy, 43, lived in Camarès and previously worked for upscale restaurants and traveled before opening a pizzeria in Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance, prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.
