Hondelatte Raconte : L'affaire Ramona Canete (récit intégral)

This episode is a long-form crime récit, not a market discussion. It tells the case of Ramona Caneté, who in 2015 confessed to a gendarme that she had killed five of her babies immediately after birth over a six-year period, while hiding all of her pregnancies from those around her. The narrative begins with the discovery of a dead infant in a bag in the parents’ home in Gironde, followed by the finding of four more frozen bodies in the freezer. The speaker frames the case through the French criminal investigation file, especially the psychiatric and psychological reports in the dossier, and emphasizes that the matter caused national scandal because the autopsies showed the children were viable. A major thread of the story is the explanation offered by Ramona Caneté and her experts: that she was not insane, but trapped in an oppressive marriage and unable to assert herself. …

1. The case centers on Ramona Caneté’s admission that she killed five newborns after secretly carrying five pregnancies over six years.
2. The investigation found one infant hidden in a bag and four more in a freezer, making the scandal national in scope.
3. The defense narrative emphasizes coercive domestic control, fear, and psychological fragility rather than psychosis.
4. The husband was initially investigated but ultimately cleared of knowing about the five deaths.
5. Experts disagreed on the meaning of her condition: altered discernment and emotional blockage, but not insanity.
6. The court treated the case as both a legal and human drama, culminating in an 8-year sentence and no appeal.

• The account repeatedly says she was not ‘folle’ and that experts found no psychosis, yet the severity and repetition of the acts leave unresolved how much agency she retained.
• The husband’s claimed ignorance is accepted by the court, but the story acknowledges suspicious moments that could be read differently.
• The defense presents her as trapped by violence and fear, while the victims’ association insists on centering the dead children rather than contextual mitigation.
• The psychiatric reports are described as emphasizing altered discernment, but the mechanism behind five repeated infanticides is never fully explained.