Man held in murder of his family hangs himself

The accused blamed his deceased wife for the children’s deaths.

LEBANON, Ohio (AP) — One of the most shocking murder cases in this southwest Ohio community’s history came to a stunning and abrupt ending.

The last surviving member of a suburban Cincinnati family was found hanged by a sheet in his jail cell early Tuesday, killing himself before he could be tried in the deaths of his wife and their four young children.

Michel Veillette’s death came a little more than three months after the night his wife, Nadya, 33, was stabbed to death and an arson in their home claimed the children’s lives. Warren County authorities said there had been no signals that Veillette was planning to kill himself, and one of his court-appointed attorneys agreed.

“I’m totally shocked,” said Tim McKenna, who was appointed to help represent Veillette after the suspect said he couldn’t afford an attorney. “He had been progressively more upbeat, and he was very interested in defending himself.”

McKenna recounted that Veillette, who had requested a French-language Bible in jail, always brought out photos of his children — Marguerite, 8, Vincent, 4, and 2-year-old twins Mia and Jacob — when discussing the case.

Attorneys and prosecutors had expressed concern about pretrial publicity. Among dozens of pretrial defense motions was one requesting a change of location for the trial, arguing Veillette would be unable to get an impartial jury in Warren County. A judge sealed records from a preliminary hearing in the case.

Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel said she had no estimate of how much a trial would have cost taxpayers and noted there already had been considerable time and expense spent on the case, which involved sending investigators to the couple’s native Canada.

“Being confident in my case, I would have preferred to have brought him to justice for the deaths of these little children and his wife,” Hutzel said.

Brenda O’Neill, who helps run Colors Cafe in Mason where Nadya worked for about three months, said friends of the woman would be spared hearing Veillette’s expected effort to portray her as responsible for the deaths.

“My thoughts were pulled in quite a few different ways,” she said.

“I’m glad that there’s an end to it. I also feel sad for both families.”

Veillette was alive in his bed when a corrections officer checked his cell at 12:54 a.m., Sheriff Tom Ariss said. But the next time rounds were made, at 1:39 a.m., Veillette was lying on the floor, a sheet around his neck tied to a towel rack, he said.

Jail medical staff began CPR and life support measures, and Veillette was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Ariss said. An autopsy showed no injuries other than those consistent with hanging, Ariss said.

On Jan. 11, authorities said, Veillette and his wife fought after he returned home from a business trip and she confronted him with a credit-card bill for jewelry for his mistress. They said he stabbed her and then used gasoline to set fire to the Mason subdivision home, about 20 miles northeast of Cincinnati.

“I don’t know if there is any justice for anything like that,” said O’Neill. “But this is one way.”

Veillette told The Cincinnati Enquirer in late January that he killed his wife in self-defense and claimed she set the fire and he tried to save the children but couldn’t.