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Last Updated: Thursday, October 1, 2026 at 06:11 PM
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‘Cursed’ man drowns 2 kids, leaps to his death

A father, convinced he was the victim of a voodoo curse, apparently drowned his two young children in the bathtub and then jumped to his death in front of a subway train, police said Thursday.

A father, convinced he was the victim of a voodoo curse, apparently drowned his two young children in the bathtub and then jumped to his death in front of a subway train, police said Thursday.

Franz Bordes, 39, died Wednesday evening at a Brooklyn subway station. Investigators found several suicide notes indicating he was at odds with relatives of the children’s mother, a Haitian immigrant like Bordes.

“They’re using everything they can to destroy me, most of all voodoo,” one of the notes read, according to police.

Bordes, who was unemployed, lived with Francoise Mercier, 42, and their children, Sweitzer, 2, and Stephanie, 4, in an apartment on Staten Island. Family members told police that the father usually looked after the children while Mercier worked as a nurse’s aide.

After Mercier learned Bordes was dead, she rushed home from work to check on her children, and found them in the bathtub, not breathing, police said. Paramedics later pronounced them dead.

One of the suicide notes was found on Bordes’ body. Six more were in the home.