Massive Police Search Launched for Missing Swiss Twins

Italian, Swiss and French police are hunting for missing 6-year-old twin girls whose father committed suicide after abducting them.

Canadian-born Matthias Schepp picked up Alessia and Livia on Jan. 28 from his ex-wife's home in the western Swiss lakeside village of St.-Sulpice. Police were alerted Jan. 31 when Schepp failed to take the girls to school, and on Thursday his body was found on train tracks near the town of Cerignola in the southern Italian province of Foggia, Agence France-Presse reported.

Police have deployed 40 seachers with sniffer dogs around the twins' Swiss home, and a helicopter is flying over nearby Lake Geneva. A similar operation is being conducted in southern Italy.

"We are putting all our resources at the disposal of the search operation," said Alfredo Fabrocini, the head of the police flying squad in Foggia. "The girls may be anywhere, we hope alive."

Although officers have so far failed to find Alessia and Livia, they have traced Schepp's steps over the past week. He first took his daughters to his apartment in St.-Sulpice, where he had lived since separating from his Italian wife, Irina Lucidi, 44, last year. Both worked for cigarette giant Philip Morris, according to Italian daily La Repubblica.

"Matthias had not accepted that the marriage was over and tried every way to convince Irina to come back to him," Lucidi's cousin, Roberto Mestichelli, told the newspaper. "He was very close to his daughters." He added that although Schepp found the separation difficult, the couple never argued violently.

Officers believe that Schepp, 43, drove to France on Jan. 30 and withdrew $10,200 from ATMs in Marseille the following day. He also sent a postcard to his wife from Marseille, AFP reports, saying he was desperate and could not live without her.

Marseille police said that Schepp bought three tickets to Propriano in Corsica on a ferry leaving on the night of Jan. 31. However, in a statement issued earlier today, Swiss police said they "had no eyewitness accounts of the presence of the twins in Switzerland, France or Italy since Sunday, Jan. 30 ... when they were in St.-Sulpice near their father's home."

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Mestichelli said he found the news of Schepp's impromptu trip to Corsica "very strange" as the father of two didn't have any "friends there." He added that he was shocked by reports that Schepp was found with only $140 in his pockets -- meaning he had spent $10,060 in just a few days. "He was really careful about money," Mestichelli said.

Schepp was found dead on tracks near the railway station in the town of Cerignola, but police said security cameras at the station did not film him. That suggests that he parked his car at the station and then approached the tracks on foot, The Guardian reported. Italian police found mud stuck to the wheels of his car and are now focusing their search for the girls on rural wells in the area.