Var Assizes: life imprisonment for the murder of in-laws

A 41-year-old man, Anthony Barotin, was sentenced Friday by the Var Assize Court to life imprisonment for the murder of his in-laws, with whom he had a terrible relationship and whose inheritance he eyed.

At the end of a week of trial in Draguignan, the jury followed the requisitions of the attorney general, even going as far as a security period of 22 years, whereas the latter had requested 20 years. Patrick and Marie-Laure Lauro managed the “Domaine des sources”, a magnificent property in Tourves (Var) with a reception room, a large outdoor terrace, horses, a swimming pool and guest rooms which was to be inaugurated on the occasion of a wedding on July 3, 2021.

But when the wedding procession arrived early in the afternoon, everything was closed and a guest, climbing the gate, discovered traces of blood. Alerted, the couple's son and the police entered the house: Patrick was lying in a pool of blood in the entrance hall, Marie-Laure in the bathroom, each shot several times in the head or chest.

After more than four months of investigation, the gendarmes arrested Anthony Barotin, the couple's son-in-law: heavily in debt, in conflict with his in-laws, he tried after their death to speed up the succession, told several interlocutors that he was expecting imminent income and was doing research with a view to expatriation.

While in police custody, he provided detailed confessions: on the evening of July 2, he went to his in-laws in a car that he had borrowed and armed with a weapon that he had bought a few weeks earlier from a friend. He cut off the electric meter, forcing Patrick Lauro to go out and reset it. He took the opportunity to sneak into the house, go upstairs to kill his mother-in-law who was in the shower, then go down and shoot his father-in-law who was coming back into the house.

The meter was turned off at 10:49 p.m. and the murder weapon was found in the lake where Anthony Barotin said he had thrown it. In November 2023, the son-in-law, however, retracted his confession, claiming to have acted in the company of two masked men, under threat from a former police officer associated with Patrick Lauro within several driving school companies. But nothing from the investigation corroborates this version.

Throughout the trial, in front of a room full of relatives of the victims, Anthony Barotin nevertheless stuck to this version, going so far as to call to testify the investigating judge who, according to him, had not investigated it enough. The various testimonies, however, painted the portrait of a man cornered, both by debts and by the growing hostility of his in-laws, especially since he had violently hit his eldest son.

“Barotin is a liar, a manipulator, a profiteer,” denounced Loïc Lauro, son of the victims, castigating the apparent coldness of his ex-brother-in-law. “Today, his only regret is that he got caught.”