A Belgian clown broadcast himself live on Facebook during a four-hour armed siege with police before being arrested over the murder of a mother-of-three in front of her children.
But the 31-year-old was reportedly unable to get along with the three teenage children of his 47-year-old girlfriend, named as Caroline Dombrecht in Belgian press, “leading to their break-up a few days ago”, says The Daily Telegraph.
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Angered by the break-up, Lapeire allegedly roped in his yodelling stage sidekick, Dietwin Haegeman, to help kill his ex.
Haegeman, 38, is a “lederhosen-clad performer, who, like Lapeire, appeared on the Belgium’s Got Talent contest”, the Telegraph reports.
The pair are alleged to have broken into Dombrecht’s family home in Oudenberg, close to the Belgian seaside town of Ostend, on Sunday night.
Dombrecht “is said to have fallen asleep after being given a drugged cocktail”, according to The Times.
Lapeire reportedly then filmed himself as he took her three children hostage, tied them up and stabbed their mother to death in front of them.
After locking the teenagers in the attic overnight, Lapeire then broadcast himself live on Facebook the following day on top of a 13-storey apartment building in the coastal town of Bredene, “waving a pistol and throwing a gas canister off the roof”, according to Belgian media reports.
Police snipers were sent in and Lapeire eventually surrendered.
The children’s father, named only as Geert DN, told Brussels-based newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws that he could not find the words to describe what had happened. “It is too horrible, especially for my children,” he said. “All my care and attention now goes to them.”
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