It is one of the most enigmatic cases of recent decades. Ten years after the quadruple murder of Chevaline, the mystery has not been lifted. At the height of the investigation, 90 gendarmes were mobilized, exploring more than fifty leads in France and around the world in order to flush out the identity of the killer who coldly killed, on September 5, 2012, three members of the Al-Hilli family as well as Sylvain Mollier who was taking advantage of a sunny day to go on a bike ride.
Letters of request have been issued in Iraq, Turkey, Canada and Costa Rica in order to verify the slightest clue likely to advance the investigation. The teams even went to New Zealand to find the holder of a bank card used on the day of the tragedy near the crime zone. Hundreds of witnesses were interviewed. But all meticulously followed leads have led to a dead end. The motive was never established, either.
Convinced, last February, of not being “very far” from the truth, the Annecy prosecutor, who relied on “scientific evidence”, finally found herself in an impasse, like her predecessors. At the beginning of August, Lise Bonnet asked to be removed from the case so that it could be transferred to the new Nanterre judicial center devoted to “cold cases” which has more resources and time. For the time being, the examining magistrate has not yet ruled on his requisitions, she indicates to 20 minutes.
To date, the 95-volume dossier, which includes 8,000 exhibits, raises more questions than it answers. Update on the main avenues studied so far.
The mysterious biker, the last track revived
Investigators took two years to identify him. The one who was presented as the “mysterious biker” and whose composite portrait had been widely distributed, appeared as a witness and then as a suspect. William Brett Martin, cyclist who discovered the crime scene and alerted the emergency services first, had been formal in attesting to having seen him go down at a slow pace “as if he was going to talk to him”. The timing was corroborated by agents from the national forest office. They too saw him at the top of the parking lot where the four victims were shot. They asked him to turn back, after telling him that the road was cut off.
So what was this entrepreneur doing near the crime zone? The person concerned replied that he was returning from a hang-gliding trip in the region and that he had taken small roads to enjoy the landscape before returning to his home in the Lyon region. Then, he kept repeating that he hadn’t seen or heard anything, which left the gendarmes perplexed. “He would never have made the link between the facts of Chevaline and his passage nearby despite the media hype”, they were surprised in their summary unveiled by The Parisian. Yet there is no evidence to link him to the quadruple murder. His past, his personality, his status as an “honourably known and above suspicion” entrepreneur do not match the profile sought, namely that of a mad or experienced shooter.
However, the man was taken into custody again in January. At the end, the gendarmes became certain that he was definitely not the suspect they had been tracking for ten years. Now, there is no longer any charge against him.
The family settlement, the buried track
Very quickly, the investigators discovered that Saad al-Hilli had a conflictual relationship with his brother, also living in England. The two men were angry to the point of not speaking to each other, except through their lawyer. At the origin of their estrangement, two contradictory draft wills concerning the heritage of their father, estimated at 5 million euros. One established a fair share, the other totally disinherited Saad al-Hilli who quickly suspected his brother of being the author. Died in 2011, a year before the tragedy of Chevaline, the patriarch did not have time to settle his estate.
The gendarmes then become convinced that the youngest of the al-Hilli brothers could have signed a contract to suppress his eldest in order to become the sole heir, but they have no evidence to support this hypothesis. The suspect will be arrested twice, in 2013 and then in 2014 before being released. The man, who has always claimed his innocence, is today particularly angry with the French investigators.
In addition, the gendarmes also sought to know if the heritage of Father Al-Hilli, who had fled the regime of Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, had not aroused covetousness in Iraq, where part of the property was. Who could have had an interest in making the heirs disappear? A lead that did not come to fruition even though a 35-year-old Iraqi was taken into custody in 2014 after being reported by one of his fellow prisoners for alleged confidences in the execution of a “contract to kill Iraqis” in France. The man was eventually cleared.
Iqbal’s past, an excavated time
The past life of Iqbal, wife of Saad, has also been meticulously researched. Investigators wondered if she was ultimately the shooter’s main target after discovering “surprising things”. Before meeting Saad, Iqbal lived in the United States, where she had been married for two years to a dental surgeon 13 years her senior, which had enabled her to benefit from a green card. His relatives, however, were unaware of all this. Even more intriguingly, her former husband died on September 5, 2012, the same day as the Chevaline killings. Officially from a heart attack while driving his car. A strange coincidence that will alert the police. But there again, they will not find anything allowing to explore this track further.
On the trail of a local killer
There remains the hypothesis of an experienced shooter on which the investigators have worked for a long time. According to experts, the shooting lasted a maximum of 90 seconds. Twenty-one bullets from the same weapon were found at the scene. The author allegedly reloaded his pistol three times in a relatively short period of time. This reflects a certain dexterity in the handling of weapons and an unusual coolness. The weapon in question, a Luger P06 automatic pistol, is a collector’s item. The investigators will direct their research in circles of enthusiasts. If they suspect a former municipal policeman from the region as well as a former soldier, they will end up failing to find the slightest evidence to incriminate them. Finally, the hypothesis of a mad killer, acting on his own, could never be corroborated at this stage.