The bodies of Mr. Langlois and Dominique Marchand, missing for several days, were found charred in a car near Gallion in the south of the small Caribbean island on Friday.

According to the initial elements of the investigation, the aforementioned hypothesis of an accident was ruled out and that of murder was supported, the local police told the AFP news agency.

“Right now we have four people in custody, three foreigners and one Dominican,” said Rayburn Blackmoore, Dominica’s minister of national security.

“We cannot ignore this type of terrible crime (…) and we cannot allow those responsible to go unpunished,” he continued.

“A request has been made to the Canadian authorities for assistance in the investigation,” he added.

The Quebec couple had founded a luxury hotel in Dominica, where the government recently gave them an award for their contribution to the island’s development.

The Daniel Langlois Foundation, a philanthropic organization founded by the entrepreneur in 1997, announced in a statement Monday that the couple “died under tragic circumstances.”

“In the coming weeks and months, details of the exact circumstances of her death will be revealed as police authorities and the Dominican justice system carry out the investigation,” specifies the foundation.

Tributes from the world of cinema also poured in from Quebec and Canada, where Daniel Langlois was a recognized supporter.

The National Film Board of Canada expressed its “great sadness” on X (formerly Twitter) and praised Mr. Langlois’s “invaluable” contributions to cinema.

For Canadian director François Girard, he was “an artistic visionary, a creator who changed the course of cinema.”

“The legacy he leaves us reflects his innovative spirit,” Canadian Culture Minister Pascale St-Onge said on X, calling him a “visionary of digital technologies and cinema.”

Daniel Langlois, founder of the Softimage company in the 1980s, made his fortune by developing state-of-the-art 3D animation software, which has appeared in numerous Hollywood hits such as: Jurassic Park, Harry Potter or war of stars And matrix.

In 1994, he sold his company to Microsoft and three years later won a scientific and technical Oscar, according to his foundation’s website.