FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - Police have charged a Broward man with the murders of his pregnant wife and her father.
Family members of the deceased, Martine Bernard and her father Roosevelt Bernard, are mourning their loss, Thursday.
“My mom, she’s a strong woman, but she needs support,” said family member Roosevelt Bernard Jr.
“She lost a friend, a best friend, a lover, a husband and the father of her kids,” said family member Woodolph Bernard.
Cassandritz Blanc was back in court Thursday, charged with the murder of 68-year-old Roosevelt Bernard, who went missing last weekend and was found dead near his Hollywood home.
Blanc had already appeared before a judge Tuesday where was charged with first-degree murder and abusing a dead body in the death of his wife, who was six months pregnant.
Twenty-year-old Martine Bernard’s body was found early Tuesday morning in an alley dumpster behind the home she shared with Blanc.
An arrest report stated that Blanc had told investigators he shot his wife in the head because she disrespected him. In the same report, Blanc stated that he shot her father from behind.
“He shot behind the back,” Bernard Jr. said, “and he said he couldn’t do it because he couldn’t look my father in the eye. He knew what type of person my father was to him.”
In both cases, detectives believe Blanc moved the victim’s bodies to different locations.
Martine Bernard’s body was left in a dumpster after he had kept her body in the apartment for over a week.
Her father’s body was stuffed in a trash can and left in an empty lot, where a neighbor’s surveillance camera captured part of the crime and helped police solve the case.
The video showed that Blanc returned to the scene and set the 68-year-old’s body on fire.
“We’re in shock,” Bernard Jr. said, “We’re still trying to fathom how could this happen to us, and why we didn’t see it coming.”
Roosevelt Bernard Jr. said their family can’t understand how this happened.
“We can’t believe it,” he said. “We couldn’t believe it the first time and now you’re telling me it happened again, it’s like, how?”
Blanc was considered part of the family, they said. “He was a good person, in which we thought at first. Our house was opened up to him,” Bernard Jr. said. “He came in, he talked to my parents like, ‘Hey, Mami. Hey, Papi, what’s good? How you doing?’ and everything.”
Blanc is being held without bond.
The Bernard family is now preparing to bury two loved ones and the unborn baby. If you’d like to help with these unexpected funeral expenses, click here.
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