The husband of a woman accused of murdering her daughter was researching historic mass suicides on his iPad in Dublin two weeks before their deaths, a court in Reykjavik heard on Monday. This evidence was given on the fifth day of the trial of Ming Ting Mancel in Reykjavik. The Dublin-based French woman is accused of co-operating with her late husband Emeric Mancel, to murder their 29-year-old daughter, Catherine, in June 2025.Catherine and Emeric were found dead from stab wounds at the Reykjavík Edition Hotel. Ming Ting Mancel, with an address in Leopardstown, Dublin, who survived the incident with a punctured lung, claims the family had agreed to a planned joint suicide. The central issue rests on whether Catherine wanted to die or was influenced by her parents. Emeric Mancel also looked up “where is the heart located in a woman”, “does being stabbed in the heart hurt”, and “diagram female body with heart”, as well as researching the survival time for a stab in the heart. He had been trying to figure out the most effective way of taking their own lives, the court was told. When informed of her parents’ suicide plans, their daughter had not considered staying on her own, Ming Ting Mancel said. She said Catherine had been afraid of being alone since she was young, and was “afraid of being abandoned. If we left, she was leaving with us”. She said she had offered to stay alive for her daughter but that wasn’t enough, and that her father was the most important person to her. She said Catherine wasn’t happy that a knife was being used, but didn’t raise any objections. After being stabbed the first time, Catherine had asked her father to stab her a second time and “she said also that she loved us both”, said her mother, adding: “She wasn’t happy with the process, but she wanted to go.” None of them were happy with the method, she added. Ming Ting Mancel claimed they hadn’t discussed much that night. “We had no need to say goodbye because it wasn’t a separation, it was a collective departure,” she said.“The logic was that we were always together so to leave together.”When asked how she felt psychologically and not logically about her daughter’s decision to also take part in the suicide pact, she said: “I agreed with her.”Questioned about her daughter’s psychological state, Ming Ting Mancel said she wasn’t depressed, but that with everything going on with climate change and conflicts in the world, it was a period she didn’t like. When asked to describe her daughter’s character, Ming Ting Mancel said that as a child she was quite happy and extroverted until she got epilepsy and things became more difficult for her. Her friends had avoided playing with her due to her motor skills delay, and school had been challenging for her. Regarding her relationship with her daughter, she said “it was sometimes complicated” and they had “conflicts, but nothing bad, we were very close and always together. We had differing viewpoints”. She said they did a lot of activities together and that Catherine had loved doing arts and crafts with her. Earlier in the day, Ming Ting Mancel became visibly upset when testimony was given describing her daughter Catherine as “a ray of sunshine in the office” by her former manager at Airbnb in Dublin. When asked to describe Catherine, Léo Bérteaux recalled her as a colleague who always said hello, whose results were very satisfactory and whose attitude was exemplary. During this account, Ming Ting Mancel became visibly upset for the first time during witness testimony, closing her eyes for a prolonged period and wiping tears away. Bérteaux said Catherine had asked him for time off work to go to Iceland without much notice, which was unlike her. He said he remembered she had seemed a bit embarrassed about this, and had said that her parents had organised a trip at the last minute. A second witness, Aisling McNevin, gave evidence as Catherine’s programme manager, who had found her work laptop left behind at the office a day or two after Catherine was supposed to be back in Dublin. She said Catherine was always very smiley, happy and quiet but was “extremely hard-working, and one of our top performers on the French team”. She confirmed Catherine had left small handmade crocheted teddy bears for members of her team before going to Iceland.The trial also heard from Berta Lamartine, who had started working at Airbnb at the same time as Catherine in January 2025. Asked to explain her colleague’s character, she said she was nice, cheerful and a good worker who was always ready to help. She added that Catherine “wasn’t the kind of person who came to you with her problems”, and didn’t talk much about the future, but had once said she would like to become a manager.The trial continues on Tuesday.