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8,072 thoughts on “Not Forgetting the al-Hillis continued

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  • Good In Parts

    Max

    – “Who talks biking with SM?
    – Who could calculate/predict the ‘next time’

    need not be the same person as

    – “Who may have a motive

    I have been thinking about PM and what he is reported to have written in his letter. One possibility, which I have not yet fully worked through is that inadvertantly he had caused, triggered, or enabled these events.

    His sense of honour upon realising what he had done, may have led him to his fate, but he was not the bad actor.

    The kind of scenario I have been musing about is based on EM’s portrait of him as being the kind of guy who gets into fights in bars. Usually pub fights are preceeded by a whole lot of verbal abuse which then escalates into fisticuffs.

    Having lived in the same block as SM and dated his sister, PM probably knew quite a bit about his affairs. He could also have deduced more than he was told by adding info which came directly from SM (or by observing his comings and goings) to info that came from his sister.

    Back in the bar, maybe spoiling for a fight or just flyting, perhaps he mouths off along the lines of “SM is a jammy dodger. You know he had a queue of women outside his door when he moved into my block after leaving his wife! . . . Huh, don’t know what you are all laughing for. Your wife was in the queue, and yours, and yours” Pins being heard dropping. . . cue fisticuffs.

    But it could just as easily fit your proposal.

    PM may have had a good understanding of where SM liked to ride and may have let slip that now he had a wickedly expensive new bike which he liked to ride to isolated carparks on Wednesday afternoons. Maybe somebody just asked him.

    Remember the curious statement by PM’s sister to the effect that the gendarmes “were looking for something” during the interrogation. I am reaching here but maybe the ‘something’ was not a literal ‘something’ but rather the ‘source’ of certain information (or in my scenario, the ‘source’ of certain rumours).

    PM may have lost his thread during the interrogation when he realised that his big mouth had possibly ‘enabled’ the tragic events.

  • Max

    GIP

    CS is instrumental in SM being at Martinet
    So, X must have known that CS would go back home so that SM could go biking

    How did X know this?

    (I rule out that CS told X, and anyway, I don’t think CS would know where SM would go)

    Was it every wednesday that CS would come home so that SM could go biking?? No, I don’t think so. And how could it be. CS just had a baby. With materny leave 16 weeks, so I estimate 8 weeks = june/july at home that leaves only 1 month to get into this ‘every wednesday’ rhythm (if it exists at all) … and X working this out

    Now, I don’t think this (the ‘every wednesday’ thingy) happened

    Yet X must have known perfectly well that CS would trigger SM to go to bike AND(!) X also knew the destination of SM

    Do we really think PM could have worked this out all by himself?

    I don’t think so.

    If PM was X, he must had been tipped off by somebody else (Y)

    So the KEY figure becomes Y. Who is Y?

    And maybe Y did the killing himself (and thus becomes X, but thenit can not be PM)

    – – –

    So, who is Y?

  • Max

    Uncle Fernand comes close. SM maybe talked ‘biking’ with him. And maybe UF knew the timing and destination of SM. But … I guess UF doesn’t have a motive.

    But, as said, UF comes close.

    So … who is even closer?

  • M.

    An enabler.

    Have a think about that in reference to the al-Hilli family, someone who is now trying/has tried to put things right ? There’s more than one cadidate.

    GIP, I picked up on your reference to ‘putting things right’, there’s more than one answer whomever was the intended target.

    Many people who commit suicide believe the people around will be better off without them, he implies this when he says:
    ‘c’est mon facon de defendre les miens malgré les douleurs et le chagrin’

    ‘this is my way to defend mine/my own despite the pain and sorrow’, ‘les miens’, he likely refers to his family.

    Was his gest a way to stop his family being persecuted, of course it made things worse at the time.

    Things settled down and got better then came TP’s newspaper references and someone giving him the mans name, which he didn’t have when the book went to print, causes renewed interest in his family, so Christelle speaks out in defence of her family.

    TP says he was told Francois, Legionnaires often use a different name.

    Pink, I’ll see if I can find out whether First Responders/Sapeur-Pompiers have to give their DNA when having a medical for entry.

    Although for all that, Patrice M. was highly unlikely to have been in attendance at the crime scene, the police would have known, he couldn’t have been on duty that day if he was with his young nephew (no school on Wednesday afternoons).

    I have to admit I have long toyed with the idea the gunman was at or near the crime scene after events, watching the scenario unfold.

  • Peter

    Just two quick points (while I watch Greece burn) …

    – Bar brawls are just something that is associated with Foreign Legionnaires, albeit with good reason. I once saw at least twenty of them have at it in broad daylight in Calvi, and that fight can only be described as epic.

    – Thierry Schutz is said to have “suggested” that day’s route to SM. In this day and age, suggesting a route to a cyclist means sending them the relevant GPX file. (This is also how I would explain the notion that SM was “lost” at the Martinet: the Martinet was not a waypoint on his GPX file.)

  • Good In Parts

    M. & Max

    Max sorry, what I posted “he had a wickedly expensive new bike which he liked to ride to isolated carparks on Wednesday afternoons” was just a placeholder, not a seriously thought through suggestion. I haven’t even fully worked through my own scenarios.

    I was trying to illustrate that someone ‘inadvertantly enabling events’ followed by ‘honourable way out’ could answer the first two of your three ‘who’ questions. I should have made myself clear.

    M. “An enabler. . . someone who is now trying/has tried to put things right” Good thinking! I had not thought further than ZAH in the context of the Al-Hilli family victims. But when you pose the question, the answers are obvious.

    the idea the gunman was at or near the crime scene after events, watching the scenario unfold” Yes indeed, and the main kind of crime, where ‘watching the scenario unfold’ is a core psychological motivation, is arson.

    This may be of no relevance, but it occured to me that the whole ‘stuck in the bank with the engine still running’ thing helped the killer considerably.

    If the killer was still nearby, either briefly observing or leaving, then I think that the still-running engine was key to their escape.

    For a start, the noise of the revving engine may have prevented WBM from hearing any faint sound from a motor vehicle if one was used as a getaway vehicle. Similarly, it prevented WBM from hearing footsteps, the crack of a broken branch, birds flying away disturbed or simply the absence of any engine noise if the killer departed on foot.

    The revving engine also ‘pulled focus’ for WBM, misleading him as to the true scenario and inducing him to move victims and disturb the crime scene.

  • Max

    @Peter, indeed TS

    TS, by his own admission, says they (SM and Him) ‘talked biking’

    Now, maybe TS didn’t have to force anything

    Maybe SM simply said to TS ‘Next time I will (re)visit Combe dIre’

    And that would be enough info for TS!!

    Because TS also knew what ‘next time’ was, namely the ‘CS goes home early’ thing

    This little sentence of SM might have been enough for biker TS! But of course TS kept this from CS. And CS probably didn’t notice this biker chatter at all.

    By this little sentence TS could calculate/predict EXACTLY where and when SM would be on that wednesday the 5th of september

    TS has motive and now knew both location and time, and this without any force, without even asking. SM wouldn’t have suspected anything, and CS neither … although CS very probably did put 1 and 1 together AFTER the shooting

    The only thing that now needed to be done is to have CS indeed going home after lunch so that SM could jump on his bike. Maybe TS (GSM) offered to ‘step in’ at the pharmacy?

    Still a bit of a gamble for TS to see if SM really would bike to Martinet as he had told him (days?) before. But why not.

    Because CS knew about the SM/TS biker chatter, TS couldn’t deny this, so he said that, yes, it was about a route, but not to Martinet. And who is to argue?? Nobody! But UF gave the show away. UF stated that SM visited Combe d’Ire often (not what TS said, TS must have been mad at UF)

    TS is Y. Maybe even X … if X, I wonder what alibi TS gave/has

    (in this scenario/configuration:)

  • michael norton

    If what Caroline Blanvillian has said is correct,
    then Sylvain Mollier must have given a compelling reason to Claire Schutz,
    as to why she should abandon her business in Grignon to come to Ugine
    so he could clear off out,
    it can’t just have been because he fancied a cycle ride.

    Now I’ve got lawyers in my family and I know they must not lie.
    If found out telling a lie they are very likely to loose their proffession.
    So, in such a high-profile case as the “family” of the dead Sylvain Mollier
    V the media intrusion, Caroline would not tell a lie.
    The media would have her arms ripped off if she was found to tell a lie.

    Therefor Caroline tells the truth.
    However that is the truth told to her by the “family” of the dead Sylvain Mollier,
    I highly suspect this will be either or all of the family Schutz,
    definately Claire but also possibly her mother and her father.

  • Peter

    @ Max

    In my humble opinion, this scenario needs some tweaking.

    Nobody in his right mind, and certainly not a local familiar with the place, would choose the Martinet as their preferred spot for a murder. Thus, my first tweak would be that TS’ “suggested route” led to some more suitable spot, but that SM abandoned the suggested route somewhere along the way in favour of his preferred hillclimb up the Martinet. SM “got lost” and the killer now had to play catch-up with him.

    A second tweak is required to make that particular day a now-or-never opportunity for the killer, motivating him to go through with his plan even though a car full of tourists had just shown up at the scene. Also, one needs to explain how the killer knew and when the killer knew that SM had deviated from the suggested route.

    I believe that I have come up with a possible solution: whilst following the “suggested route”, SM spotted X – somebody who had no reason for being there, somebody whom SM was wary of, whom he did not want to encounter alone in the middle of nowhere. SM turned around, not sufficiently frightened for him to race straight back to town, yelling for help – but clearly spooked, sufficiently spooked for him to have told his common-law wife about the incident afterwards. The killer could not allow that to happen. Instead of riding straight home, SM chose to make the best out of a spoilt ride and headed up to the Martinet. However, the killer knew SM well enough, or had been briefed well enough, to expect him to do just that. On his off-road motorcycle, he raced SM uphill, following the tracks above the Martinet, looping back down just as SM had reached the Martinet.

  • Max

    @Peter

    You didn’t follow my scenario correctly. It wasn’t TS who ‘suggested’ the route. It was SM himself who SAID that he would (re)visit Combe d’Ire

    And TS simply took this opportunity

    Of course to the outside world TS told a different story. (he had to because CS knew TS and SM had talked ‘biking’ and CS asked, ‘Dad, did you know where SM was going?’, and TS asnwered ‘No dear, I had no idea why he was there’)

  • Peter

    @ Max

    Of course I didn’t follow your scenario “correctly”, because, at least in my view, it needs some fairly major reworking before it can be taken at all seriously. There are two big questions to be answered in regard to that scenario: first, why would a local familiar with the amount of traffic at the Martinet on a given Wednesday afternoon during the tourist season have chosen that place, out of all places, to kill his foe? Secondly, why did the killer not abort his mission when he saw the AH family pulling into the Martinet? In your scenario, nothing would have prevented him from waiting another few weeks, months or even years for the prefect opportunity to arise.

    It is perfectly alright if you don’t like my own tentative answer to those questions. However, they need to be answered unless you are prepared to venture into the territory of Agatha Christie’s “The A. B. C. Murders”.

  • michael norton

    Perhaps, after the Annecy court case of the “Family” of the dead Sylvain Mollier V the media
    and the revelation from Caroline Blanvillian,
    that Sylvain expected Claire to abandon her business in Grignon to go home to Ugine,
    so Sylvain could go out:

    The Annecy Prosecutor should grill the Family Schutz,
    to ascertain the compelling reason that Sylvain Mollier gave over the phone to Claire Schutz
    that made her return that day to Ugine.

  • michael norton

    If Eric Maillaud does not grill the Family Schutz on this matter,
    you can be sure he is still fixated on the slaughter being initiated in the United Kingdom.

    Eric will not be doing justice any favours
    and he will not be finding the slaughterers.

  • M.

    Michael, I will turn this around.

    A MALE Pharmacist along with his assitants run the shop. His wife had a baby 10 weeks ago, he had to return to work and from time to time he leaves his assitants to get on with it.

    So he goes home, spends time with his 10 week old son and allows his partner to have a few hours to herself, be that at the hairdressers, shopping, the gym, shopping or sleeping.

    The chances are the Assistant was running the shop, Claire’s leave was pre-arranged. If you have ever owned a business, staffing is rarely decided at the last minute. This business isn’t a grocers, a qualified person is required to be on site at all times.

    Max is twisting on a sixpence, it is true if Claire hadn’t gone home, then Sylvain would not have been able to leave, no doubt, does that implicate her or her family, I leave you decide.

    Do you really think Claire covered all the hours the shop was open ?

  • michael norton

    @ M

    well I said for about a year
    that the only solution that i could see working was for Claire, Sylvain & their baby to be domiciled in Grignon, I suggested in the apartment above the Pharmacie Schutz-Morange.
    Almost everybody said I was bonkers, so I modified it to at oir close-by to the Pharmacie.
    I will still ridiculed, so a further modification, living in the building of the Pharmacie or living very close-by the Pharmacie or commuting together as a family from Ugine.

    But the only solution, that in my mind would work, was if Sylvain and the new-born were very close to Claire, who needed to mostly be in her business, which by then she had become the sole propriator of the Pharmacie Schutz.

    I also said, the only way I could see Sylvain going off for some relaxation would be if he left from the Pharmacie, with Claire having the baby with her in the shop or in her flat on call to the shop.
    This sceario would be normal.
    Any other in my mind would not be normal.

    However, as I have stated, everybody else thought I was wrong because the authorities let it be known that Claire and Sylvain lived in Ugine.

    Lived cabn mean different things to different people.
    Some people live at more than one address.

    What I want to know is from where EXACTLY did Sylvain depart on 05/09/2012
    did he leave in a vehicle with a bike strapped to it, did he leave in a vehicle without a bike strapped to it
    or did he leave cycling and stay cycling until he was slaughtered.
    Was Claire with him until the moment he left.
    Where did Sylvain say he was going and what did he say he was going to be getting up to.
    Was Claire worried before Sylvain departed.

    those sorts of questions.

    I suspect Eric Maillayud has so far played soft-ball with Claire, he needs to man-up
    and take her to the edge, like he did with Eric D and Patrice M.

  • M.

    Have you ever seriously cycled for fitness ? On an expensive racing bike ?

    They are not meant to be kept in the garage, he didn’t load it into his Black Peugeot Estate, serious cyclists start at home, in this case Ugine.

    If you want a link to the property try David Icke, British family gunned down in France…

    Great source of information. You’ll meet many friends there.

  • Q

    One serious cyclist I knew was seriously selfish. He expected his wife, with their newborn in a car seat, to drive to pick him up after his weekend cycling trip. This meant hours of driving for her. I don’t know if the baby had colic while she was making those trips, but they got divorced.

  • michael norton

    This investigation has been moribund for too long,
    the FRENCH wish to imagine that the slaughter eminates from Britain.
    If they wish to solve the mystery they have to drop their silly notions.
    Think from square one, begin again, think FRANCR

  • Peter

    @ Good In Parts, 6 Jul, 2015 – 12:20 pm
    This may be of no relevance, but it occured to me that the whole ‘stuck in the bank with the engine still running’ thing helped the killer considerably.
    If the killer was still nearby, either briefly observing or leaving, then I think that the still-running engine was key to their escape.

    Exactly, and that is one thing that the killer cannot have planned for, which leads me to conclude that the murders were not preplanned, either, at least not in the way in which they eventually unfolded.

    At any time, the killer faced a risk of passers-by coming from two directions (downhill and uphill), of which he could observe only one. He had no way of knowing who was within earshot and would have been alarmed by the sound of rapid gunfire. He faced the risk of the forest wardens coming to investigate the source of that noise.

    Vice versa, the noise of the revving car would have made it impossible for the killer to monitor his environment aurally (unless he had been wearing earplugs or a motorcycle helmet, his ears would have been ringing painfully anyway). He had no way of hearing excited shouting in the distance, a car approaching and so forth.

    (If there were some way of hypothetically putting the killer on a motorbike, the behaviour of the unusually slow motorcyclist whom WBM encountered would be entirely consistent with this – he would have been looking at WBM, trying to work out from WBM’s demeanour whether or not WBM had already twigged that something was not right at the Martinet.)

  • michael norton

    Just heard on Radio Four, Francis Rolleston “Frank” Gardner,
    the BBC Security Spokesperson say “There is no such thing as a Lone Wolf”

  • Pink

    If SM had ridden past the barrier and was on his way back down when the shooting started the first vehicle he would encounter would be SAH if he was injured he may have made a desperate attempt to get to the car throwing his bike down .
    SAH not knowing what was happening was just trying to get the hell out, with SM now close to the car SAH gets hit possibly Z at the same time and gives the shooter a whole new target to go for he has hit 2 of them so goes into panic mode and then finishes off SM ,that would let SAH of the hook and allow SM as target.
    And would account for SAH running over SM no time to do anything else.
    In a very early BBC report it was said the bikes came downhill which caused some confusion at the time do you remember Peter ?

  • Pink

    If SM was doing a hill climb would it not be logical to ride to the
    top where the roads changes to track and then come back down as he was on a road bike, another day he may have continued on the circular route because he was on a mountain bike.

  • Pink

    I wouldn’t be suprised if the shooter was on a bike rather than a motorbike, a bike on those tracks would not stand out to anyone how would you carry a gun and ammo on a bike ?

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