Despite several leads followed by investigators, the murder of a British family of Iraqi origin and a French cyclist in France in 2012 remains a mystery.
Family dispute? Settling scores ? Industrial espionage case? Ten years later, the murder of an Iraqi-British family and a French cyclist in France, known as the “Chevaline killings”, remains an enigma, despite thousands of hours of investigation and hundreds of auditions.
Investigators did “everything humanly possible, but as long as the DNA leads nowhere and there are no eyewitnesses, it’s the perfect crime”, notes a close source folder.
Read also: The mystery of the Chevaline murder
On September 5, 2012, a British cyclist, Brett Martin, saw on a forest road on the heights of Annecy, in the Alps, a racing bike lying on the ground, a BMW, engine running, and a little girl bleeding, which staggers then collapses. Thinking first of a road accident, he then sees in the car “a lot of blood and heads pierced by bullet holes”.
The investigation will show that Saad al-Hilli, a 50-year-old engineer, his wife Iqbal, 47, his mother-in-law Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, a Swedish woman of Iraqi origin, have just been killed at close range. , with Sylvain Mollier, a 45-year-old worker from the region on the road.
Only the couple’s two little girls survived, then aged four and seven. Zainab, the eldest, was shot in the shoulder, knocked unconscious and left for dead. Zeena, huddled at her mother’s feet in the back of the car, saw nothing.
The investigation established that a “violent” conflict over the paternal inheritance opposed the two brothers
Ten years later, the “bad guy” described by little Zainab when she left hospital has not been identified and her motive remains mysterious. It is not known if he acted alone.
Described by investigators as a “seasoned”, “very experienced” man, or as a “low-cost hitman from the Balkans”, the killer fired 21 times in a few minutes, 17 bullets hit their target. The weapon, a 7.65 parabellum caliber Luger P06, an old model used in the Swiss army, has never been found.
In ten years, magistrates and gendarmes have succeeded each other and the numbers assigned to the investigation have shrunk, going from around a hundred in the first months to three full-time in 2022.
This massacre of “incredible savagery” generated a “particularly complex” investigation, as the public prosecutor at the time, Éric Maillaud, had said. Last February, prosecutor Line Bonnet, the third on the case, said she was still convinced of the chances of succeeding “thanks to scientific evidence”, even if the different tracks look like dead ends.
Zaid al-Hilli, Saad’s older brother, soon came under suspicion due to a dispute over paternal inheritance, but he has an alibi.
He was arrested twice, in 2013 and 2014 in England, then released for lack of evidence. He never ceased to proclaim his innocence by criticizing the methods of the French police.
The investigation established that a “violent” conflict over the paternal inheritance, involving three to five million euros in property and buildings, opposed the two brothers. Died in 2011 in Spain, father al-Hilli, an industrialist, had left two contradictory draft wills. One completely disinherited Saad, the other established a fair share.
The al-Hilli family fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1970s, abandoning their possessions in Baghdad. These roots in a country that experienced a bloody civil war have raised questions that have not yet been answered.
The past of Iqbal, Saad’s wife, was also scrutinized and the investigators found “surprising things”
The thesis of industrial espionage was explored, Saad working for an English company specializing in civilian satellites (weather, crop monitoring). No result.
The investigations showed that the 50-year-old had “in his possession much more data than his job alone justified”, however “without much market value”.
The past of Iqbal, Saad’s wife, was also scrutinized and the investigators found “surprising things”. Including a first marriage in the United States with an American dental surgeon 13 years her senior. This man, James T., died in Natchez, Mississippi on September 5, 2012, the day of the Chevaline shooting. Official cause of death: heart attack.
The hypotheses of a lone killer acting on his own or a crazed gunman who posted himself on the lone road were also considered.
And the research carried out around a mysterious biker seen by witnesses near the scene of the shooting gave nothing. Identified after months of silence, this entrepreneur from the Lyon region without a criminal record claims to have seen nothing and remember nothing.