[imagesource: Fred Tanneau / AFP / Getty Images]

A French man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for murdering four of his family members after he became convinced they were hoarding gold hidden from the Nazis.

This “ordinary man” had become obsessed with the idea of treasure with no evidence of it ever existing, and unfortunately, the obsession became fatal.

Per The Guardian, Hubert Caouissin admitted to killing his brother-in-law, Pascal Troadec, 49, with a crowbar, along with Pascal’s wife, Brigitte, 49, in February 2017.

He then murdered the couple’s two children, Sébastien, 21, and Charlotte, 18, who were in their beds.

On that fateful day, Caouissin had gone to the family’s home in western France to eavesdrop on them with a stethoscope held against the window.

He was probably looking for any evidence that he and his wife Lydie, Troadec’s sister, were being cheated out of their share of what he believed to be some treasure.

Caouissin and his brother-in-law had a bitter and strained relationship for years because of this “treasure”, rumoured to have been discovered by Lydie and Pascal’s builder father in 2006 in the basement of a building he was working on in Brest.

It was believed that the gold was a part of a 50-kilogram haul that the Bank of France hid from the Germans during the Occupation in the Second World War.

When he entered the house to steal a key, the family woke up for the last time. Caouissin then dismembered their bodies to either burn them or bury them.

It is reported that the police later found 379 body parts around Caouissin’s remote farm.

Lydie Caouissin was charged for helping her husband dispose of the corpses and has also been jailed, but for three years, one of which is suspended.

Hubert Caouissin had felt cheated by his family and psychological reports suggest that he was suffering from “extreme paranoia”.

That psychological diagnosis did seem to help him get a shorter jail sentence, as he was expected to be jailed for life.

It took the jury at the court in Nantes seven hours, following a 16-day trial, to hand down the sentence.

[source:guardian]