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Michael, the pleasantry refers to Melrose interpretation of ‘ce matin-la’, that morning.
I very much doubt the arrangements were made on the spot, there was planning needed to ensure a Pharmacist was on the premises during opening hours. Probably a shift system.
If the shop was shut during the lunchtime, then maybe she just didn’t go back, but Blanvllain says:
‘mais sa compagne est rentrée de son travail pour le libérer de quelques heures pour qu’il puisse profiter de ses instants de plaisirs’
She came back from work. There are staff who know the hours when Claire wasn’t in the shop, they all will have been interviewed.
Blanvillain refers to the questioning in the days and months after the tragedy, even TP says it was easier for the police to look into the Mollier angle, because of their HQ was within an hour of the family.
I don’t know who did this, I don’t know why it occurred, there have been errors along the way, there have been big mouths that should have remained shut (that includes Maillaud), nevertheless I suspect a full investigation has taken place and is continuing.
Have a great summer.
@ M
the ENGLISH police do sometimes my big mistakes, as well.
John GOLDFINGER Palmer was shot at least six times and suffered wounds to his back, chest and arms – so how did police think he was NOT murdered, they thought for a week that he had had a heart attack?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3155737/John-Goldfinger-Palmer-riddled-bullets-Gangster-shot-six-times-suffered-wounds-chest-arms.html
John GOLDFINGER Palmer had a cadre of corrupt police officers who tipped him off about major criminal investigations, looks like it was a proffessional hit job.
@MN
In the case of SM=Target I always wondered what alibi X would have prepared
The killing of SM would be the easy part. To get away with it would be the difficult part. So, how would X do this?
It has been suggested that it would have been easier to drive down SM, than to shoot him. A car accident would indeed be more simple, but you’d still have the driver. Of course you could have arranged a hit-and-run car kill, in which the car disappears, but that would be a bit like a gun kill.
When thinking about this problem I came up with
– The ‘masked’ killing (SAH is ‘mask’)
But that was argued to be overly complex … and I agree
I also came up with the
– Fake an ‘accident’ killing
In the latter SM would be found dead in e.g. a river. And it would seem like a bike accident.
… Now … in my latest post, with JMC=WMC=X, driving counterwise until bumping into SM somewhere on Combe d’Ire, maybe this was what MC/X was doing. He would force or whatever SM into the river or sidebank or trees, and SM would be fatally killed. Sure enough, if SM was going downhill on a fast bike on a bad road, and he would crash with 50km/h, it could happen that a fatal accident might occur.
So, maybe that was the plan of MC/X
It certainly would be a very good method to kill SM without attracting attention
– – –
So, if MC/X was chasing SM to try to force an accident (push him into the river), maybe that happened around Martinet. SM fell on the ground, MC/X got of the MC and shot him (because the ‘accident plan’ had failed). But as the SAH’s were witnesses, they had to be killed too.
@Max
Yes, but.
Martin says ” He wasn’t grazed like you’d think you’d see a cyclist with , being a cyclist I have fallen off my bike and got what they call “road rash” in the past, and you’d sort of expect that type of injury. ”
So Mollier didn’t fall from his bike.
If it was Sm target it sounds to me like something or someone tipped x to that day.
The time was of SM’s making by being there I wonder what happened in the week before or after that might make a difference ,SM rode out most days he could have been attacked anytime did X have to be somewhere else so it was now or never or did something happen that tipped him over the edge that day or in the previous week and that was his first chance to act etc I am not good at thinking these things through some of you may come up with with something though.
Has there been anything come to light that happened or was about to happen in SM world that might trigger the killing.
@ Max
There would have been so many simpler, less risky ways of staging an accident on SM. For example:
– Stringing a wire across the road at neck-height and pulling it taut at the last moment, as you saw him approaching downhill at speed. (Would probably have been written off as an adolescent prank.)
– Overtaking him on your motorcycle while he went downhill and, out of his sight, dropping two glass bottles of generic supermarket olive oil onto the road just before the next sharp corner. (Would probably have been written off as a bona-fide misadventure.)
– Following him on your motorcycle, making him crash by delivering a judicious lateral kick, then manually breaking his neck. (Something that former Foreign Legionnaires could do in their sleep, and which would almost certainly not be flagged up in a post-mortem.)
– Waiting a few days for the start of the hunting season and then shooting SM from a distance with a high-powered hunting rifle. (Must have been yet another hunting accident. Oh, will those hunters never learn!)
– If you happen to be a pharmacist or someone else with specialist knowledge, all you need to produce high-purity cyanide is a tube of superglue, some aspirins, some distilled water and a microwave oven. Spray a fine mist into his face on a steep uphill stretch and, voilà, you have the most copper-bottomed case of sudden heart failure that the pathologist has seen in many years. (Oh, those keen middle-aged athletes never seem to know when they should act their age and scale back their training regimens!)
I could go on and on. So could the average guy, if you just gave him sufficient time to brood on those matters, plus a sufficient hatred of SM as a motive.
In pharmacies elsewhere, sometimes the shop is open all day, but pharmacists are only on duty for certain hours.
Peter, you know too much. You’re starting to scare me. 😉
Peter you know far to much about this stuff whats your day job writing thrillers thats scary.
@ Pink
Didn’t you know? Writing thrillers is indeed my day job, or at least I am trying to make it that. Seriously.
Its ok Q we can hold hands .
To mirror Pink’s question above, what happened in SAH’s world in Feb 2012 or shortly prior to that date?
His cousin Hussain in Baghdad gave Feb 2012 as the point that SAH’s conversations ‘changed’ and he mentioned that he wanted to leave Britain etc.
Assuming that their conversations were periodic, whatever it was could have happened over, say, the previous 2 months.
It could have been something totally tangental such as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) induced by the short dark days at that time of year in the UK or it could be something pertinent to his demise.
Anyone got any ideas?
@ Peter no I didn’t know I suspect I won’t be reading them either but good luck with your plan 🙂
05/09/2012 “Slaughter of the Horses” was an exceptional murder scene, even by FRENCH standards, so we have to think of eXceptional theories.
I suspect Sylvain Mollier occassionally undertook secret business, I imagine he had been undertaking secret business for rather a long time, maybe bu 05/09/2012 Sylvain Mollier thought he was out of the seret business but on that afternoon he had a visit from someone who made him an offer he could not refuse.
He does not have to have known or known of the family al-Hilli
but I think Sylvain Mollier had been set up.
As Caroline has said, Sylvain called claire.
“Claire, I have to go out and do business, I know i said said i was done with that, this is the last time, come home now”
then Claire leaves her not secret business in Grignon and drives to Ugine to release Sylvain.
Sylvain then goes to Le Martinet to conduct business, perhaps with the al-Hillis.
They are all shot, very, very professionally.
So far the end of the story.
In short:
I think Sylvain Mollier was being retired.
MN
BB did find some Mafia type connections Peter can probably fill you in he’s the murder guru 🙂
I am an innocent I know but SM’s life does not look like all that criminal to me he was working until he had the baby and Claire is a working professional not a deadbeat,he cycled and kept fit these are usually people who are doing something with their lives not committing crime.
Don’t bother with the exceptions I know its a broad brush but you get my gist .
GIP Feb to Sep is a long time brewing does not sound like a red flag to getting yourself killed.
As MAX has said
“The killing of SM would be the easy part. To get away with it would be the difficult part. So, how would X do this?”
If this was a local business, how to get away with it.
One ploy is to use confusion,
like having more than one motorcyclist on the scene.
Wait thirteen months, then reluctantly issue an amazing likeness of
the local Lathuile-gun-nut-eXcop.
Everyone thinks the motorcycle cop did it but after a bit of fuss, it seems he did not.
For a time the end of the motorcycle killer theory.
Meanwhile more confusion as Nicole Communal-Tournier is shot dead in her home by five locals, could this crime be linked?
Wait a couple of years untill people have lost the will to care.
Enter LYON motorcycle man, arrange to have Eric Devouassoux in court on the same day you release a statement about the innocent motorcyclist, this intentionally leads to confusion.
Then it turns out the innocent motorcyclist is not Eric Devouassoux but an unnamed motorcyclist-how confusing. It is meant to be confusing, possibly so the real hit-men never get caught?
Then it seems there maybe a third motorcyclist, the one Lathuile-living-eX-RAFMAN sees, now this third motorcyclist should not be Eric Devouassoux because he was set-up and he did not do it, it should not be the unnamed motorcyclist because we have been told he is 95% innocent,
therefore there is a third motorcyclist, who fled the crazy scene in a very unhurried maner, moments before our hero reaches the awful slaughter.
As the
Pink
Doesn’t it? You seem highly motivated, perhaps with Peter’s extensive knowledge you two should go into busi. . .. Wait a minute, what am I saying? We’re not some networking forum, er besides, that would be wrong, totally, totally wrong and everything.
Anyway, I suppose you are right, I am just a lazy, lazy, man.
But we cannot be sure that there were not previous attempts. Someone previously suggested that the suspected “heart attack” could have been one.
My view is that this may have been the the point of realisation for SAH that he was well and truely f*****. The f***age may not have been imminent but appeared inexorable.
Although we were expecting that the local eX-cop Eric Devouassoux was the shootist,
he had the correct creentials, it turned out he was completely innocent but what if it was another local cop.
One who tried to put Eric Devouassoux in the frame?
A local cop who is confusing Eric Maillaud?
Likewise M. And keep passing the open windows.
Peter: ” Writing thrillers is indeed my day job. ” Play it like MZT. Give us Chapter One as a free sample on Amazon, and many of us may buy the e-book.
Day job? People on this blog are unemployed. Even our host is. But none of us ever goes camping next to Chevaline.
@GIP
I think if SAH was target it could have been a long time brewing even from his fathers era, his death may have changed something if you managed to keep up with BB and all that turned up on history, who knows .
I was thinking more about the SM target idea we are on now it has a feel of a triggered event as we are talking about it.
Not to sure where the networking and lazy lazy man stuff came from it went over my head unless you misunderstood something I said I know I am not very clear when I write .
I am warming to the notion that the killer or killers are local policemen.
If WBM saw ONF2 (the 4×4 green) and LMC was long gone (went down before ONF2, not seen by WBM) … then it follows that WBM’s MC (who is not LMC) was coming downhill AFTER ONF2.
I assume ONF2 did not see this MC (nobody made any mention of it)
So, how could this MC be behind ONF2 and not been seen by ONF2?
A: Because this MC came from Col de Cherel, and is Janin’s MC
Of course, in this case, Janin got the time wrong. Well, they practically all got the time wrong:)
” Well, they practically all got the time wrong:) ”
If only the time was wrong.
Of course Melrose
Janin saw a MC
Janin saw the direction he/she was heading
So, the only thing he could have had wrong was the time. He wasn’t clocking everyone who passed by (read nobody but MC) so he had to guesstimate, and I guess he guessed wrong.
Janin saw a MC going direction Martinet, and some phantom MC (not being LMC) shows up and is seen by WBM … well, do the calc:)
As WBM is precise up to the minute (because of the phonecall timestamps), Janin’s time has to be tweaked.
Pink
Yes, sorry, I was thinking about SAH and to me Feb to Sep did not at all sound like an excessively long time brewing, in the context of most of the ‘likely’ theories.
Thus I suggested jokingly that you seemed ‘highly motivated’ and I was a ‘lazy man’. . .
It would be interesting from a criminological perspective to understand the ‘lead time’ for typical ‘types’ of murders. It might not yield much though. For instance I would have thought that ‘hired killer’ murders would have a long lead time, yet the recent Palmer murder was presumably organised very quickly.
I am guessing here but maybe the process goes like this ‘brooding time’ -> decision to act -> ‘organisation time’.
Presumably, if needs must ‘organisation time’ could be shortened at the expense of increased risk of detection.
And yes I think you are likely correct that the death of Khadim changed something. My guess would be that neither of the two brothers had a complete picture of the Swiss Bank account whilst he was alive.
After their fathers death, presumably one of the brothers found some documents and maybe assumed the other brother had been holding out on him.
ZAH clains that he was aware of the account but not how much money was in it. I believe him because I feel that as an accountant he would have urged his father to utilise the capital more effectively. Even if interest were unacceptable, it could have been donated to a good cause.
Unfortunately I don’t know what SAH knew and when he knew it. However I seem to remember reading that SAH possessed the actual bank book for that account, though it was some time ago and I cannot be sure.
Max
You wrote “then it follows that WBM’s MC (who is not LMC) was coming downhill AFTER ONF2”
Yes indeed!
“So, how could this MC be behind ONF2 and not been seen by ONF2? ”
A: because it was a trail bike rider who was only on the main track briefly as he crossed the valley from the west side to the east. That is from a western side track -> briefly on the main track -> turn onto eastern side track thence to la combette.
Remember, the GG’s claim is that he was on the other side of the valley when the shooting took place. It seems likely he crossed the main track at some point in order to get home.
Note that I think that there may have been another trail bike rider up there based on Claude Antoine’s deux mobylettes. Thus the sighting by WBM may not have been of the GG.
@GIP
You make some good points on the banking situation I have thought myself that given the brothers had fallen out SAH was inclined to think the worst and as someone else pointed out I forget who was almost making a case against Z