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Thomas Higham (archaeologist)
French police investigating the Alps murder of Briton Saad al-Hilli have been accused of incompetence after it emerged his missing passport had been sitting in a police lab for almost two years.
The missing passport had fuelled the mystery over the murders of Mr al-Hilli, his wife and mother-in-law in a French beauty spot in September 2012.
But it has now emerged it was sitting in the businessman’s jacket in a police lab which was not properly searched until July this year.
Mr al-Hilli’s brother, Zaid, who was a suspect in the murder, said the blunder showed the police were “incompetent” and questioned what other evidence they may have missed,
In January, Surrey Police said there was insufficient evidence to charge Zaid al-Hilli over the murders although the French authorities said he still “remains of interest”. But Mr al-Hilli accused the French of being “racist” and conducting a witch hunt against him.
Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife Iqbal, 47, and his mother-in-law Suhaila al-Allaf, were shot dead in a quiet beauty spot while holidaying near Annecy in 2012.
His two daughters survived the attack but passing French cyclist Sylvain Mollier was also. The killer has never been found.
Mr al-Hilli, from Chessington, said the police had ruined the investigation through blunders and failing to secure the crime scene, which had been “trashed” by emergency service vehicles.
As late as last October the French authorities said the fact the passport was still missing added to the mystery around the unsolved murders. But Mr al-Hilli told the BBC: “In July this year we were told that the French police had found a passport and they claim that they found a passport in my brother’s jacket.
“It seems that the jacket has been in the lab for a year-and-a-half and no one bothered to search it so what other evidence have they missed?”
Mr al-Hilli also said police had failed to secure the crime scene which had been “trashed” by emergency service vehicles.
He was treated as a suspect amid allegations that he had fallen out with his brother in a row over inheritance.
He accepted there had been differences but insisted: “I love my brother, I love his family, I love my nieces, I would never harm them.”
He stressed police now established “that there is nothing to link our family with the crime”.
He accused the French authorities of turning the investigation into a witch-hunt and resorting to using “smears and lies” against the whole family.
“Our background is Middle Eastern and I think they set out to protect the white French families”, he said.
He said a public inquiry into the case was now needed.
Quote (from PINK) from December 2014 The Daily Telegraph.
The author of the above piece was Tom Whitehead
Tom Whitehead is the Daily Telegraph’s Security Editor. He reports on and assesses a wide range of issues including terrorism, policing and crime, immigration, and identity and data policies. He covered the July 7 attacks, the Iraq war and the Hutton inquiry.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/12067544/Did-al-Hilli-familys-killer-strike-26-years-earlier-in-Brittany-murder-of-UK-couple.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/oct/15/france.alexduvalsmith
I don’t see that many similarities between the two cases, but it is an interesting new angle.
http://www.lavenir.net/cnt/373940
The suspect even has a name: he is a gipsy named Michel Hecht, son of suspected murderer Roger Hecht.
What a weird story
http://www.rtl.fr/actu/societe-faits-divers/l-heure-du-crime-mardi-14-mai-double-meurtre-a-lanvallay-7771230864
http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/457492/DNA-could-solve-cold-case-gun-murders
Thank you Peter,
here is the write up from The Daily Telegraph.
A retired detective has asked French police to investigate whether the culprit behind the notorious al-Hilli murders may have also killed a British couple in similar circumstances 30 years ago.
The possible link between the murder of the British-Iraqi al-Hilli family in 2012 and another unsolved murder case in Brittany in 1986 has been made by Pascal Huche, who worked on the earlier inquiry.
Mr Huche was involved in the investigation into the Britanny case, in which two teachers, Lorraine Glasby, 28, and Paul Bellion, 29, from Norfolk, were found shot dead in remote countryside. The Telegraph can reveal that he has contacted French gendarmes to tell of what he believes are striking parallels with al-Hilli case, in which Surrey businessman Saad al-Hilli, his wife Iqbal and her mother were shot dead near at a beauty spot at Annecy in the French Alps. So far there has been no significant breakthrough in the case, despite an international investigation that has involved police in both France and Britain.
Mr Huche has also gave the al-Hilli murder squad the name of a suspect, who was never prosecuted over the Brittany case but who did later serve time for a triple attempted murder in Belgium.
• Al-Hilli Alps murder may be perfect crime, say French two fruitless years on
Mr Huche’s claims emerged as the French prosecutor’s office in Annecy announced last week that two traces of unidentified DNA had been found on the al-Hillis’ car. The DNA, found on the front bumper and under a floor mat, matches none of the victims nor anybody on the European criminal database.
Eric Maillaud, the Annecy prosecutor, also said a search was being conducted for the last known owners of all guns of the type used in the murders.
“We never give up. We remain confident,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.
Mr al-Hilli, 50, his dentist wife Iqbal, 47, mother-in-law Suhaila 74, and French cyclist Sylvain Mollier, 45, were all found dead on a remote mountain forest road near Annecy in September 2012. The only witnesses to the crime were the al-Hilli’s two young daughters, Zainab and Zeena, who survived the attack.
Since then, wildly differing theories emerged over the motive for the murders, ranging from speculation about a family dispute, through to claims that Mr Hilli was targeted by a foreign power over his work in satellite technology, or that Mr Mollier might have been the real target. Zaid al-Hilli, Saad’s brother, who was questioned at length by both British and French police, has vehemently denied anything to do with the brutal murders.
Like the al-Hillis, Ms Glasby and Mr Bellion were also found shot execution-style in a rural area. During his investigation of the Brittany case, Mr Huche identified a prime suspect in two young Britons’ deaths, but was never able to secure a conviction.
Then, in 2008, he was convicted for a triple attempted murder in Belgium, in which hunting weapons were used similar to those in the Brittany murder.
He was released early in 2011, on the condition that he never entered Belgium again, and has since lived in various regions of France, said Mr Huche.
His father was questioned by police in relation to the 1979 murders of a Belgium couple in Brittany – just 10 miles from where the British couple were murdered. No-one was ever convicted.
Mr Maillaud, the Annecy prosecutor, told the Telegraph that he had informed gendarmes investigating the al-Hilli murders of Mr Huche’s tip-off and was awaiting a reply as to whether they had questioned the individual or established his whereabouts at the time of the killings.
Mr Huche believes the authorities initially overlooked the tip, which he first passed on in 2014.
“The gendarmes never got back to me and I believe that they did not seek to interrogate the suspect,” he told The Telegraph.
In June 2014, a former French foreign legionnaire from the Annecy region, who had been questioned over the murders, was found dead following an apparent suicide.
Mr Maillaud told the author of a book on the Alps murders, published this summer and titled The Perfect Crime, that the legionnaire had been identified as a major suspect.
And in July last year came one of the strangest twists, the revelation that Mr Hilli’s wife had a “secret” first husband in the United States who died on the day she was murdered.
James Thompson’s body was found slumped at the wheel of his pick-up in Natchez, Mississippi, apparently due to a heart attack. Police have been unable to establish any link to the Alps killings.
Michel Hecht was convicted of trying to assassinate his own brother and the brother’s family
http://www.lavenir.net/cnt/67311
http://www.lavenir.net/cnt/152068
http://www.lavenir.net/cnt/154733
Perhaps we should remember,
French gendarmes are hunting for the killer of a British former musician who was killed by a single bullet which passed through his neck and killed him instantly.
Glenn Miller, 65, was found slumped in a corner of his dining room in a pool of dried blood on Sunday morning by a neighbour, it emerged last night. The shocked Frenchman told them his friend was dead and that bloody footsteps were visible on the floor of the room. Another neighbour reported hearing shouting at 11pm on Saturday evening but did not hear the sound of a gunshot.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2759640/Former-British-musician-shot-dead-single-bullet-neck-French-home.html#ixzz3vWK7qmBw
MN, Millers killer, 60 year old local man, you must have missed the FRENCH reports.
http://www.letelegramme.fr/fait-divers/meurtre-de-glenn-miller-un-suspect-mis-en-examen-et-incarcere-02-03-2015-10543437.php
A fuller account of the first double murder:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/lefigaromagazine/2006/08/25/01006-20060825ARTMAG90418-la_traque_sans_fin_des_tueurs_de_touristes.php
The Van Herpens were shot dead whilst sitting in their own car. The killer sat in the rear and used a sawn-off shotgun.
To my mind, the killing of the second couple (shot in the neck with a hunting rifle after being partially stripped, bound and gagged) carries sexual connotations. Interestingly, a VW van that had been stolen in Germany a few days beforehand played a role. Thus, it seems that the killer(s) were quite mobile.
This says that a .22 calibre gun was used in both historic cases.
http://www.lavenir.net/cnt/373942
Unless I am very much mistaken, in France, those weapons were freely available without a licence at the time. The small calibre makes sense, inasmuch both couples were killed at point-blank range with head shots, in order to achieve maximal lethality.
Having given the matter some thought, I perceive more differences than similarities between the historic cases and the Chevaline murders. In the historic cases, the killer(s) interacted with the victims over an extended period of time. Not so at the Martinet (as far as we know). The historic killer(s) lacked confidence in his shooting skills and the lethality of his weapon, e. g., restraining his victims in the second case. By contrast, the Martinet killer was a skilled, confident shot.
I do hope that events shall prove me wrong, but I fear that these historic cases are yet another red herring.
If we can return to recovered DNA
There were four dead bodies,
two living victims,
a FRENCH bicycle,
a BRITISH registered BMW,
25 or so recovered balls.
A recovered gun fragment,
not sure about recovered ball-casings but I expect so, not sure about recovered ball-clips
but I expect so,
anyway, many hundreds of recovered objects
but so far as we have been told, only two unmatched traces of DNA.
This might be true if they have recovered many samples of DNA and matched them with persons they do not consider to be implicated,
it would seem almost impossible to only recover DNA from the victims and two other sets from the crime scene & from the camping equipment of the family al-Hilli?
Peter – agreed.
At least it keeps the case ‘live’.
Are we overlooking the possibility that everyone in France knows the culprit(s), but restrain from comment due the strict privacy laws? e.g. I’d never have imagined at the time that M.le Prez was dating Sylvia Kristel? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/french-get-peek-at-all-the-presidents-women-1142633.html
MN, 21 bullets fired, 17 of which ended up in humans, so they have the 21 spent shell casings.
Magazines were not found as they did not know how many were used, it is assumed three and the last one blocked ….
And remember in January this year they asked Fat Bastards (James Mathews) ex-wife in Germany for her DNA, to compare with some found in the ‘caravan’, TP’s book gave this info. If I had it the book to hand I’d give you the page number.
O.K. let us say you are correct M, twenty one bullets were fired,
so that is 21 recovered lead balls and 21 recovered cases and a slither od handle grip,
so that will be 43 chances to recover DNA.
The shootist has shot and man-handeled the eldest al-Hilli child, so there is another chance to recover DNA.
The shootist was presumably trying to get at some property, so he may have rifled through the victims property, he may have been hit by the BMW – hence the bumper DNA
and so on.
…. and that my dear fellow is the problem, they have no discernible DNA on the bullets or the casings or the morceau of grip, clean, clean, clean – this is not an oddball psycho …..
Why do you presume the gunman was ‘trying to get at some property’, maybe he got his ‘prize’, one, two or all of the dead ?
Wouldn’t it be just marvellous to know what form the DNA on the bumper was, spittle, sweat or blood ?
MN, it isn’t me saying 21 bullets it is Maillaud, Parry and all the up to date Press reports, apparently the heat from a bullet being fired can eliminate the traces of DNA or does it ?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140901211031-13967252-successful-dna-profiling-from-fired-casings-bullets-and-cartridges
And if they still found none, it was delibrately cleaned…
If there were a ‘template’ then there may also have been dry-runs, when there were no potential victims present and/or abandoned-runs, when the killer did not strike for whatever reason.
These days I favour the local piste, so I would advocate determining the dates that SM had taken that route up the combe then trawling the cellphone operators database and log files for an abandoned attempt when the killer may not have covered his tracks fully. For example, they may have switched their mobile back on again when still in the local cell.
If there was an actual dry-run then it could take place at an arbitrary date/time and the killer may not have taken any cellphone related precautions, so records could exist.
Personally, I think that the effort required trying to trace every 7.65 cal Luger could be better applied to comms analysis.
I think the gun used was a burner, very valuable as a collectors item but invaluable in it’s untraceability.
Thus trying to trace it using official documentation will likely prove futile. It is the last thing I would do.
Interesting that both Eric Devouassoux and the unnamed motorcyclist from Lyon both had mobile phones traced “close” to the time and place of the Slaughter of the Horses?
@ M., 27 Dec, 2015 – 9:15 pm
apparently the heat from a bullet being fired can eliminate the traces of DNA or does it ?
The chances of lifting a useable DNA profile off a spent cartridge casing are low at the best of times. More importantly, though, there is a trade-off between trying to recover DNA and trying to recover fingerprints (unless somebody has bled profusely over the casing and left his print in the coagulated blood). Attempting to recover DNA traces will almost certainly destroy any fingerprint evidence and, albeit to a slightly lesser extent, vice versa.
As the chances of recovering (partial) prints are much higher than those of recovering a useable DNA profile, I presume that investigators have focused on that aspect and probably succeeded in obtaining partial prints, at the expense of destroying potential DNA traces in the process. They will have put aside only a few casings for DNA testing, and it seems that they did not get lucky with those. However, that does not imply that the killer was an obsessively neat “professional” who only handled his ammunition wearing gloves. More likely, it just means that he was practiced at charging magazines, working swiftly and with economy of movement, and used the loading tool that came with the pistol.
@ Good In Parts, 27 Dec, 2015 – 10:55 pm
I think the gun used was a burner, very valuable as a collectors item but invaluable in it’s untraceability.
Thus trying to trace it using official documentation will likely prove futile. It is the last thing I would do.
I would guess that at least one-third and up to half of those pistols are unregistered. Trying to trace those would be futile. Tracing the registered ones would be almost as pointless, because I doubt that the Chevaline killer is punctilious about complying with gun-registration laws. However, in my opinion, it would be promising to look at reported thefts of such pistols between, say, 2008 and 2012. There cannot have been more than a few dozen reported thefts of this type of gun between 2008 and 2012, and the original investigations into those thefts were probably quite superficial. There is also a slim chance that the killer himself reported his legally-held gun as “lost” after the deed, claiming that he last saw it a few months before the murders. In Switzerland at least, one can simply report a gun as “lost” without involving the police.
Are the “two pieces of unknown DNA” the “same” DNA ?
The DNA in the “foot well area” (under the foot mat)…was that there before the murders took place or at the time of the murders (can DNA be actually “timestamped” in any way ?).
And what kind of DNA is it ? Skin ? Hair ? Saliva ?
Under the floor mat…would indicate that the floor mat in question (at the time of the murders) was “back in place”. Standard BMW “factory fitted/dealer fitted” floor mats “lock/click” into place. Why would you remove and then refit one of them ?
Not sure a murderer would “remove and refit” a floor mat.
Or “search under it” for some reason….and then relock the car.
Then again, not sure a mechanic would remove and refit a floor mat either.
Is this a “red Herring” ?
Still the mystery rolls on…. as does the evidence, or what is known about it.
Is it likely that the unknown recovered DNA from the bumper of the BRITISH registered BMW
is because Mr.al-Hilli
rammed the shootist?
“They” ought to be able to tell the ethnicity?
M.
“they have no discernible DNA on the bullets or the casings or the morceau of grip, clean, clean, clean”
It’s the ‘morceau of grip’ that is interesting to me. Presumably leaving part of the grip at the crime scene was not part of the plan.
Now it could be just pure bad luck that nothing useful was recoverable, maybe DNA from Zainab’s headwounds just swamped the analysis.
However it could be that the gun was effectively clean and had not been handled other than maintenance and testing.
In which case the shootist must have practiced shooting and magazine changes with another Luger.
Maybe the other Luger was legally held. My guess would be that it was a 9mm. That is what I would be looking for rather than 7.65mm calibre Lugers.
Good in Parts,
an excellent point.
The Shootist practised with an identical weapon,
thus keeping the untraceable weapon clean.
However, the shootist may have done most of his practise with the alternate weapon
but the shootist must have done some with the actual weapon?
@ James, 28 Dec, 2015 – 6:07 pm
The DNA beneath the floor mat probably belongs to the car dealer whom the BMW was originally delivered to. New cars are shipped from the factory with their exteriors and driver-side interiors covered in protective plastic sheeting. The driver-side interiors are covered so that dealership staff can move the cars around without soiling the interior. Once the cars have been moved into place, the sheeting is removed and the floor mats affixed.
@ Michael Norton, 28 Dec, 2015 – 7:35 pm
Good question. I assume that the DNA recovered from the bumper was skin, because hair and blood would have allowed for further tests, e. g., in the case of hair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_analysis
Unless somebody wearing shorts or a short skirt sat on the BMW’s bonnet, it is not easy to see how skin DNA could have ended up on that bumper – but then forensics would have recovered a posterior print, as it were, plus textile fibres. I could imagine that somebody giving that bumper a good kick whilst wearing (cycling?) shorts would likely end up leaving skin DNA on the bumper.
This story for M
to show that madness can happen in ENGLAND as easily as in France.
Care home killing: Rita King ‘shot in head with vintage revolver’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-35194293
An 81-year-old woman who was killed at her seafront care home was shot in the head with a bullet fired from a 1930s revolver, police have said.
Rita King died at De La Mer House in Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex, on Monday morning.
An 86-year-old man, believed to be her husband, has been arrested.
Police said post-mortem tests found Mrs King died from a gunshot wound to the head. The bullet came from what is a believed to be a 1934 Enfield gun.
The weapon, which was the standard sidearm of British and Commonwealth forces during World War Two, has been recovered from the scene.
The man arrested on suspicion of killing Mrs King is believed to be her husband Ronald.
The suspect is still being questioned by detectives on suspicion of murder.
Mrs King and the arrested man were both residents of the care home.
Det Ch Insp Simon Werrett, of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said: “Our inquiries are ongoing. At this time we are not looking for anyone else in connection with the investigation.”
MN it was intended to be a murder/suicide between an elderly couple, nothing to see here and it certainly isn’t anything to do with ‘madness’, quite the contrary…..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3376247/Man-arrested-woman-80s-shot-dead-care-home-Essex.html
MN
I doubt that the shootist ‘practiced’ extensively with the weapon used, certainly not in a club range. The gendarmes searched through all the local brass bins and, as far as we know, did not find any matches.
However he probably fired it at some time to test it. My guess would be in le forêt.