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MN, as I recall at the time of the release of the sketch, Lt. Col. Vinneman said the face was that of an everyman, they were more concerned about the description of the helmet.
I could list you umpteen men locally who look like the sketch.
Add to this, the snippets from Eric D himself, when speaking to the Press, the man in the sketch had black eyes, he had a black beard, he was more corpulent than him, in other words he knew the description given beyond a black and white sketch.
And it didn’t really look like him !
The car was not automatic transmission.
M.
LINK
22 Sep, 2015 – 6:30 pm
“The “reverse” position of the automatic transmission is always engaged, the engine running and the rear wheels trying to skate with the arrival of Brett Martin, who cut himself after the engine partly broken the driver’s window because the doors were locked ”
http://www.lejdd.fr/Societe/Faits-divers/Actualite/Le-scenario-minute-par-minute-de-la-tuerie-de-Chevaline-555890
Who does the money in Geneva belong to if it wasn’t left to the brothers ?
As for any suggestion of a suicide pact between JT and Iqbal, was she really so deranged as to risk the lives of her daughters, or at best have them bear witness ?
That is a ‘piste’ I will happily chuck in the virtual bin.
A point regarding Eric D., Maillaud says :
Un ancien policier municipal du coin ressemblant au portrait-robot d’un motard entr’aperçu sur la Combe d’Ire le jour de la tuerie a été appréhendé puis disculpé. «Ce fut une mauvaise piste mais le fait que nous avons trouvé chez lui beaucoup d’armes détenues illégalement a atténué notre échec.»
So he excuses their action.
GQ says:
Enough so, apparently, that Devouassoux hung up on me, too. The charges, however, were later dropped.
Pink, correct, this was the 15th September 2012, later stated maybe by Fat Bastard that it was a manual gearbox, also apparently by the description and number plate of the car as well.
By the way it doesn’t say WBM ‘cut himself’, it says he cut the motor after he broke the window, which we can all see was shattered by the bullets. And I’d guess by the angle he did that with his left hand, which was still gloved, see the blue plaster on his finger on the photo in the days after he returned to France, they were fingerless, he also says he took Molliers pulse, can’t do that through leather gloved hands.
“La position “marche arrière” de la boîte automatique est toujours enclenchée, le moteur allumé et les roues arrière en train de patiner à l’arrivée de Brett Martin, qui coupe lui-même le moteur après avoir en partie brisé la vitre côté conducteur parce que les portes étaient verrouillées…”
Sounds like an easy way to cover up why your DNA was all over the scene
M.
Re your 6:30 post.
I personally think there is mileage in trying to reconcile the sightings of the two mobylettes by the retired policeman with the accounts given by the GG and the LMC.
This process may reveal whether another person was riding a motorcycle there that day.
Unfortunately, only the gendarmes have access to the witness statements and the authority to carry out any re-enactments necessary to clarify matters.
GIP, I reckon they have reconciled WBM MC with either a trial bike or Mr Lyon, they’re not looking for another MC, because there wasn’t one.
Pink, I can excuse all the early reports and ‘scoops’, that’s the nature of the beast, it is the continuous copy and paste the British Press do now, and the real one that gets me is ‘they were all shot in the head’, the reports from the British Coroners Inquest say Iqbal wasn’t. She received four bullets (five entry and exit wounds) to her neck and chest.
Her mother, Suhaila, three bullets (no mention of exit wounds) to the head and chest and Saad 7 entry and exit wounds, 4 bullets, to the head and torso.
The Mirror:
“He revealed Saad had seven gunshot wounds – including bullet entry and exit points – in the head and trunk. Iqbal had five to the neck and chest and Suhaila three in the head and neck.”
http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/kingstonnews/11591529.Brother_gives_evidence_to_Al_Hilli_inquest_as_coroner_finds_Claygate_family__unlawfully_killed__in_French_Alps/
“He said Mr Al-Hilli received four gun shot wounds to the head and torso, Mrs Al-Hilli received four to the neck and chest and Mrs Al-Allaf received three.”
Another factoid from GQ:-
“Martin swore he never heard 21 gunshots fired less than 200 meters from where he was pedaling”
Less than 200m !
So, that rules out LMC as the shooter then, plus it would offer support to any claim by LMC that he didn’t hear the shots either.
Let me state that again. Less than 200m !
In case you doubt that the shooting was that close, the timing has been tightened a little by the timing given by the recent Paris Match article for the call to the authorities.
“A 15 h 44 et 59 secondes, les secours sont prévenus par deux témoins qui découvrent le massacre.”
http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/Faits-divers/La-mysterieuse-famille-Al-Hilli-La-tuerie-de-Chevaline-822463
That caused me to pull my timeline back a tad but not quite as much as is required to accomodate shots within 200m.
Remember the line that the killer had only just left when WBM arrived?
M.
“GIP, I reckon they have reconciled WBM MC with either a trial bike or Mr Lyon, they’re not looking for another MC, because there wasn’t one.”
Oh, I agree. Which is why I wrote another person, not another MC.
GIP, the 15:44 and 59 seconds appeared in Le Parisien quite a while ago, I have a few questions regarding this
WBM says he didn’t have a signal, did he try to call or just look at his phone and see no bars ? If he tried it would be on his phones call log, looking at the signal in the area, Le Martinet is on the limit, could be an area where a signal is weak and therefore could have pinged the Emergency Services without actually getting a voice connection.
If this was the joint call made when Bossy and Martin were together before going up to Le Martinet, then it moves the time back to Martin arriving at Le Martinet to before 15:40, the suspected shooting being around 15:35ish.
Other reports say MC/ONF2 above Le Martinet was about 15:25, did MC stop for a widdle and therefore end up behind the 4×4 of ONF2, and not see SAH pass… there is a logical explanation to the real time events, no vanishing, no lying, just witnesses being witnesses.
The 15:48 a second call made after they’d been up to the clearing, the Emergency Services starting to arrive at about 16:00/16:10 most likely at the bottom of the Combe, this tallies with LFR and his mate packing up and leaving and the speeding car of Sylvie being the builders mate, illegally employed, probably someone collecting dole. No proof of the last bit except that all other vehicles have been accounted for, there were twelve at the outset….
Is Bossy the same person as
Phillippe D.?
FRANCE arrest ETA leaders.
http://www.france24.com/en/20150922-france-eta-basque-separatist-leaders-arrested
@ Good In Parts, 22 Sep, 2015 – 10:03 pm
I wonder how they (or that GQ journo) worked out that figure of “less than 200 metres”. Assuming that WBM was travelling at 10 km/h and that the shooting took 90 seconds in total, WBM would have travelled 250 metres within those 90 seconds.
@ M., 22 Sep, 2015 – 11:08 pm
Emergency calls are always routed via the best available network. Thus, even if your network provider shows you “no bars”, you may still be able to make an emergency call via another network. WBM would have known this.
Also, the 200metres, how could they know WBM was that far away from the shooting if he didn’t hear anything and they din’t have the exact time it happened, makes no sense.
The mobile phone and coverage, if the phone was a British one it was always searching and using the strongest signal wherever it was…..
According to details available today, there is signal from Orange, SFR and Bouygues, although Combed d’Ire is at the outer edge.
Can you tell from the bullet /impact
if a silencer was used?
I think Peter can answer that, MN.
The female tourist cyclist ‘rat-tat-tat’ quote and Melvin and Franck heard the shots, apparently. Maybe there are others who haven’t spoken to the Press.
Even if only one person heard shots, then there wasn’t a silencer, although that would bring up Maillauds ‘one witness, is no witness’ again.
PD/PB, yes MN one and the same, he didn’t want to be identified at the outset. You need to look at the descriptions and age of the ‘two’, they are the same.
In The Sun article, Zaid says he has only just stopped fearing for his life, if he believes this is all about FRANCE, why would he think the killer/s would come after him ?
http://www.gq.com/story/alps-murder-chevaline-journalist-scene-of-the-crime
When Martin swore he never heard 21 gunshots fired less than 200 meters from where he was pedaling, investigators conducted acoustic tests. They discovered that, indeed, between the tumble of the river and sound tending to bounce up and the human brain simply not recognizing a volley of pops in an Alpine forest as gunfire, Martin would not have heard anything.
The phrase “sound tending to bounce up” is a giveaway here. Sound propagating through air is refracted towards denser, cooler air. During the day, when the ground has been warmed by the sun, air temperature decreases with altitude and sound waves are refracted upwards (vice versa at night, when sound travels further). If both sound source and the listener are close to the ground, this effect kicks in at distances > 200 metres.
Thus, I reckon that the correct conclusion to be drawn from this piece of quality journalism is that WBM was more than 200 metres away when the last shot rang out – far away enough for acoustic refraction to take effect, but not sufficiently far away to hear echoes bouncing off the surrounding hills. As the white-noise murmuring of the river would have cancelled out the higher frequency spectrum of the shots anyway, and as sound travels with the wind, which would have blown uphill, I have no trouble believing that he really did not hear those shots.
M.
Fear can be irrational. Maybe Zaid feared being extradited to france and being forced to confess then suicided whilst in french custody. Le case closed.
Of course, in reality, nothing like that would happen.
Zaid says he has only just stopped fearing for his life
Maybe because he has only just managed to scrape together the rest of the cash that he owed the hitman 😉
Peter, I do adore black humour !
GIP, the other bit about not wanting to leave his DNA in France, boy oh boy I hope he is receiving medical help, I recall way back he was on drugs to help him sleep, maybe they have caused the paranoia to be exacerbated ?
Peter
Whilst I agree with the second paragraph of your 11:35 post, I have to respectfully disagree with your concluding paragraph.
The conclusion I draw is that at least the final few shots were fired within 200 m.
I don’t think that the GQ journo calculated this figure somehow. I think he parroted it and the source was within the investigation, most likely Eric himself. Whether you ascribe it to defensive journalism or lazyness there is a strong tendency to block quote the gendarmes in this case.
The report of the emergency call made at 15:44 and 59 seconds tipped the balance for me.
Original article giving the 15:44 etc. dated 31st December 2013.
http://www.leparisien.fr/espace-premium/actu/les-dernieres-heures-de-la-famille-al-hilli-31-12-2013-3450913.php
Le cycliste Sylvain Mollier est arrivé sur place en même temps que les Al-Hilli ou juste avant. Il venait tout juste de raccrocher son portable, à 15h32 précisément, après une courte conversation avec son ex-épouse pour évoquer la garde de leurs fils en ce début d’année scolaire, promettant de la rappeler. Le massacre se joue en une poignée de minutes puisque l’alerte aux secours est donnée à 15 h 44 et 59 secondes.
M.
Thanks for that link. The wording is different but, to me, it still reads that the call got through. Your french is way better than mine, what do you think?
A parsimonious explanation for all the the fear and loathing could be as follows:-
The old man sells his business interests in Iraq and puts the money in the account in Switzerland. But doesn’t fully inform his two sons.
Fast forward to post Sadaam Hussein Iraq.
SAH comes to believe that ZAH has somehow gotten hold of some of the proceeds and/or that additional assets in Iraq rightfully still belong to his family (i.e. him). He goes off on a mission to recover them and asks for help from an unspecified source.
The current and rightful owners of said assets become somewhat peeved at any legal or physical threats made against them. But they have a problem. The wars have caused the loss of contractual documents and the payments they made to the father were a long time ago and difficult to prove.
This misunderstanding causes the rift between the brothers and some kind of vendetta with some party in Iraq or in exile in europe.
Threats and/or harrasment are made against SAH but he attributes them to ZAH and does not comprehend the real source the threat.
This all contributes to the fog of war surrounding the murders but was not the direct cause.
GIP I have wondered if KAH perhaps had not put his affairs in order
quite as well as he would have done if he had not become unwell if he had alzheimers it may have become difficult for him to leave things as he would have wished .
“In February 2014, gendarmes knocked on the door of a man named Eric Devouassoux, a 48-year-old in Lathuile, whose mobile number was one of the 4,000. He sort of looked like the motorcyclist in the sketch, and in the weeks leading up to September 5, 2012, he’d applied for a permit to carry a firearm and gotten sacked from his job as a policeman because of his temper. But there was nothing to connect him to Mollier or al-Hilli or put him on that road on that day. Unfortunately, though, he had a collection of guns, including some World War II–era weapons, which is neither unusual—the Haute-Savoie region was a center of the French Resistance, and heirlooms get passed down—nor illegal, as long as they’re declared. His were not, and there were enough of them that he was charged with arms trafficking. (Maillaud shrugs when he explains this, which translates easily into Sucks to be Eric Devouassoux. Enough so, apparently, that Devouassoux hung up on me, too. The charges, however, were later dropped.)”
http://www.gq.com/story/alps-murder-chevaline-journalist-scene-of-the-crime
Well according to this rag Eric Devouassoux lives/lived in Lathuile
he was charged with arms trafficking but the charges were later dropped,
is this true, he is no longer to be going to court for anything?
On the basis he was arrested in Talloires, have a look at the video footage from the day, who knows. Maillauds last outing stated this:
“Un ancien policier municipal du coin ressemblant au portrait-robot d’un motard entr’aperçu sur la Combe d’Ire le jour de la tuerie a été appréhendé puis disculpé. «Ce fut une mauvaise piste mais le fait que nous avons trouvé chez lui beaucoup d’armes détenues illégalement a atténué notre échec.»”
GQ articles have made many mistakes not least turning Louis into a daughter.
http://www.metronews.fr/info/tuerie-de-chevaline-ce-que-l-on-sait-de-l-homme-interpelle/mnbs!AwZO5noRBj0hQ/
Eric D., 48 ans, père de trois enfants, habite avec sa compagne à Talloires, un village bordant le lac d’Annecy, à dix kilomètres de Chevaline. Selon nos informations, il détenait également d’autres biens immobiliers dans la région qu’il louait à des vacanciers.
http://www.metronews.fr/info/chevaline-une-affaire-peut-en-cacher-une-autre/mnbs!hMbq7yCuTJDQQ/
MN, at the time of the murders he was still Municipal Police and was living in Community Housing, which he had to leave after he was sacked.
A neighbour in Talloires said the family had been living in the rented house in Talloires for about six months when he was arrested.
Eric D. let off, maybe his letter to Francois Hollande paid off, after all this mans daily life was destroyed as a result of his spectacular arrest for something he didn’t do.
As he’d been a Municipal Policeman for some 20 years, and he had housing with the job, maybe he and his wife invested in a property for rental (via a Bank Credit), that would seem logical to me.
The old building further away, maybe something inherited.
Most references to Eric Devouassoux have him living in Lathuile as does his mate who was arrested after him.
However at the time Eric Maillaud mentioned that there could be more than half a dozen arrests following the arrest of Eric Devouassoux.
Sorry I cannot remember the mate of E.D. but I do remember he was living with a woman
very close to the home of the family of Jean-Claude Deronzier,
he who fell of a local cliff.
The mate of Eric ( still can’t remember his name) also only lives a spit from this chap:
Guy Communal
http://fr.kompass.com/c/monsieur-guy-communal/fr3333200/
In a place of less than one thousand souls, they must have a very great understanding who are the murderers/smugglers/wife beaters/gun-runners/mayors/policemen and so forth.
It would seem inconceivable that Eric Maillaud was not aware of
Eric Devouassoux ( and his profile) for more than a year.
What I am suggesting is, E.M. did not need a curtain twitcher to call in and say
” I’ve seen your E-FIT-SKETCHT, and the likeness to a local policeman is stunning,
have you ever considered Eric Devouassoux?”