Allowed HTML - you can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

8,070 thoughts on “Not Forgetting the al-Hillis continued”

1 … 231 232 233
  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    michael norton

    You asked Why Paris?

    Well, one answer would be that they could not use the actual scene, Le Martinet parking, because it has in the last few years been extensively re-modelled. In particular, the wooded berm that separated the upper and lower parking areas has been completely removed, leaving one unitary parking area.

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    https://www.midilibre.fr/2024/10/12/tuerie-de-chevaline-une-nouvelle-remise-en-situation-organisee-le-17-octobre-sur-une-base-aerienne-desaffectee-dile-de-france-12256552.php

    From the link above:-

    “According to information from RTL , a new re-enactment is to be organized this Thursday, October 17, at a disused air base in Île-de-France.

    Although its precise objectives are not yet known, France Info specifies that the victims’ lawyers have been summoned but that no witnesses should participate.”

    Why would the victims’ lawyers be summoned?

  • Reply ↓
    michael norton

    I do not believe that Sylvain had a mobile phone with him on that last cycle ride, he was on a mission.
    I do not believe Sylvain had a last phone conversation with his wife/ex-wife on that hill climb.
    That story was dropped in, to frame the “wanted” time line.

    Can a dead person have a lawyer, how could that dead person appoint a lawyer?

  • Reply ↓
    michael norton

    Can we imagine that the killer had a mobile phone with him, while he was preparing to be killing people.
    Imagine, he is secured, just down hill in the bushes, as Sylvain cycles up, the killer’s phone goes off, Sylvain is alerted, even if the killer does not make a move, Sylvain will know that a person of interest is hiding in the bushes.
    Imagine if the killer was shooting people, the clip runs out of ammo, so he needs to make a rapid magazine change – his mobile goes off, quite off-putting.
    For these reasons, I very much doubt that the killer, that Sylvain nor W.B.M. had mobile phones with them
    at that time.
    The other reasons they might not want mobile phones with them during this time,
    if they survive and they are “caught” by the police , then their mobile phones can show where they have been in the run-up to these events.
    They would also show who they had been in contact with, in the run-up to these events.

    • Reply ↓
      michael norton

      Remember, W.B.M. could not make a phonecall, after he had stumbled onto the scene.
      He apparently went slightly down hill, then he met people coming up hill, he got those people to make the phonecall to the emergency people.
      It was later claimed that W.B.M. could not make that phonecall, as he could not get a signal.
      I expect the reason he could not make a phonecall was because he did not have a mobile phone.

  • Reply ↓
    michael norton

    I typed this into the internet.
    “Can a dead person have a lawyer”

    the answer came up
    “No, a dead person cannot have a lawyer, but a solicitor can help with the estate of someone who has died”

    So, who would these lawyers be representing?

    What sort of reconstruction of a mass murder, would not have the people who survived the shootings?
    What sort of reconstruction of a mass murder, would not have had people who were present, at or almost at the scene of the murders?

  • Reply ↓
    michael norton

    “Although its precise objectives are not yet known, France Info specifies that the victims’ lawyers have been summoned but that no witnesses should participate.”
    This, if true, seems a rather unusual reconstruction.
    It is almost as if the French state is ochestrating the narrative?

    • Reply ↓
      intp1

      “French state is orchestrating the narrative?”

      It certainly isn’t the normal objective of a reconstruction: to shed light, for the purpose of investigation a crime. What use are lawyers, or anybody who wasn’t there?
      It sounds like this is, as you say, to give out (one way) information to said lawyers.
      A possibility is a representative of Zaid al Hilli; he has seemed the most vocal party, belligerent to the French authorities.
      Other possibilities are the children may have a lawyer. SM’s wife may also but what are such lawyers interested in settling?

      A higher altitude question though is, what necessitates or warrants paying lawyers at this point? What is at stake monetarily? Is someone being sued?

      • Reply ↓
        michael norton

        Yes intp1,
        as you say, give privileged information to lawyers.
        I wonder if they have shown a photograph of LMC to the al-Hilli children.
        I wonder if they have shown a photograph of Patrice Menegaldo to the al-Hilli children.
        I wonder if they have shown a photograph of the retired policeman from lathuile/Chevaline.

        I also wonder what that privileged information could be. Perhaps it was the history of LMC?

    • Reply ↓
      michael norton

      Île-de-France
      is over 12,000 square kilometres of land.
      I wonder why so limited in the description of the site of this reconstruction of The Slaughter of the Horses?
      The fact that it is claimed this is on a military base, albeit not fully functioning, close to Paris, hundreds of K. away from the actual site.
      This must be politically determined by the government/security services.
      They do not want information leaked to the public.
      lawyers must toe the line, whatever the line has been deemed to be.
      Perhaps the DNA reevaluation has turned up trumps?

  • Reply ↓
    michael norton

    Mobile phones, twelve years ago, I would guess about 3/4 of people would have carried a mobile phone with them.
    One motorcyclist, one killer, one near-witness, four adult victims.
    So seven adults up that combe.

    How many mobile founds found there way in to police custody?

    So at least five mobile phones should have been taken in to police custody?

    • Reply ↓
      michael norton

      What I was hinting at, was if very few or none at all mobile phones were recovered/sequestrated by police, that would be quite telling.
      If almost nobody took a mobile phone up that combe.
      That was because they were on mission.

      Of course, it could also be, that “somebody” removed all the mobile phones from the crime scene, not releasing them to the police.
      Either option, would mean – mission.

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    Below is info on some of the summoned lawyers:-

    “According to our information, no witnesses are expected to participate in this new re-enactment. On the other hand, all the victims’ lawyers have been invited by the investigating judges, namely the lawyers of the Al-Hilli family (William Bourdon and Colomba Grossi) and the lawyer of the deceased cyclist’s sister (Juliette Chapelle).”

    I had seen the names of the lawyers for the Al-Hilli family previously but did not know that there was a lawyer acting for Sylvain Mollier’s sister.

    Check out a translation of the link below:-

    https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/tuerie-de-chevaline-nouvelle-remise-en-situation-le-17-octobre-prochain-sur-un-site-militaire-7698505

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    This link below from 05/29/2024 is really worth a read, both for the impact on the life of LMC and for the gendarmes conclusion:-

    “Unless new information comes to our attention, this line of thought is definitively closed”, concludes the report. The new scenarios developed by the investigators now retain the same hypothesis, the New Zealand cyclist made a mistake in his testimony, he met the motorcyclist much further from the car park, 1.3 km from the scene of the killing.

    https://www.rtl.fr/actu/justice-faits-divers/enquete-rtl-tuerie-de-chevaline-comment-le-motard-a-ete-mis-hors-de-cause-7900389190

    • Reply ↓
      michael norton

      So do you think this could mean, that the “Authorities” have been finding a way, to get W.B.M. to change his story?
      If that has been the case, to me, that indicates, “They” could not make all the timings, “Line Up”
      What, they would not want to come out, would be that the public understood, there had been governmental involvement.

  • Reply ↓
    intp1

    Re the RTL reports:
    RTL may or may not be reputable, born out of Radio Luxembourg, now owned by a Belgian/Durch/German parent which is a Société Anonyme, providing for some obscurity for shell company owners.

    Interesting Points for me:
    * The lawyers mentioned are in two groups, representing SM’s sister plus niece and also representing Zaid, and his (victim) nieces. Implying that these clients are pressuring the French to resolve the crime and who was responsible. (Really? They are being paid privately to beat on the French authorities for over a decade?)
    * One of these reports states that the Luger handle WAS red/brown, however it also claims that the gun specifics and manufacturing batches have been established via ballistics, rather than or in addition to, the ID from that type of handle.
    IF that ballistics info is true, then my proposal that the handle fragments were dropped to muddy waters would be disproved and therefore, if so, this crime may have been on a lower professional level than a planned professional hit team because this weapon is not an efficient assassination device suitable for a planned multiple shooting.
    There is however plenty of other evidence consistent with with a more organised hit with State sponsored support so not sure how that can be squared. Can you really ID batches of weapons from ballistics? via particular rifling characteristics? I don’t know enough about it.

    • Reply ↓
      michael norton

      The implication, could be, that this niece, is the niece of the sister of Sylvain.
      That could mean, that this woman/girl, is the daughter of Sylvain Mollier.
      There does seem to be a lot of secrets in this part of France.

      • Reply ↓
        michael norton

        Quote
        The slightest match could open up new leads. “Obviously the DNA lead is the one that is essential if we hope to draw a thread that leads to the author or authors of this killing,” comments William Bourdon, the lawyer for the driver’s brother. “There has been an exceptional development in DNA research technologies.”
        Yes, that is most certainly true.

        I wonder how effective the first DNA sweep was?
        I imagine it would have happened within a couple of days?
        So the lawyer working for the al-Hilli family, has not ruled out that there could be more than one person involved?

      • Reply ↓
        Good In Parts

        michael norton

        Perhaps he was retained when it looked like the french wanted to interview him in france and basically lock him up to make him sweat. I would retain the best lawyer I could afford in such circumstances.

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    Taken at face value

    “Unless new information comes to our attention, this line of thought is definitively closed”, concludes the report. The new scenarios developed by the investigators now retain the same hypothesis, the New Zealand cyclist made a mistake in his testimony, he met the motorcyclist much further from the car park, 1.3 km from the scene of the killing.

    https://www.rtl.fr/actu/justice-faits-divers/enquete-rtl-tuerie-de-chevaline-comment-le-motard-a-ete-mis-hors-de-cause-7900389190

    Although I am unsettled by this ‘identification’ I shall take it at face value and see what the implications are…

    The main take home is just how long a time LMC spent cruising around the combe after he was believed to have departed. On my reckoning it was a good half an hour. What was he doing and where did he go?

    This represents a real challenge to vanilla ‘motorcycle theory’. The core timeline (and the motorcycle accounting) depends on LMC not exiting the combe and re-ascending thus possibly being, say the first mobylette seen by CA. If, however LMC hid somewhere and in effect ‘stayed up’ there is no problem.

    We still have the sighting by ONF1 at le Martinet parking. Could that be LMC too? My long-standing view is that this sighting was in fact the TBR or just possibly the killer. But that view was formed when it was generally accepted that LMC had left the combe by say 15:10 so now I need to re-evaluate events.

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    Unsettling problems..

    For one, the descriptions of the MC and rider seen by ONF2 at the second hairpin and the MC seen by WBM do not seem to match.

    Secondly, the location now identified by les gendarmes is at least one kilometer further down the combe than the location identified by WMB. Now that is a long distance.

    That will do for now.

    • Reply ↓
      michael norton

      My interpretation of why, Zaid al Hilli took on lawyer William Bourdon,
      depends, when he took him on.
      If he took him on, only a few years ago, that could be because Zaid believed implications of the French State having been involved.

      If he took him on at the start, you might be correct, that Zaid thought the French wanted to lock Zaid up and try to pin it on Zaid.

      • Reply ↓
        michael norton

        I suppose it is possible, that having some knowledge of the case and circumstances, that lawyer William Bourdon contacted Zaid al-Hill and offered his services?

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    Does Brett Martin know?

    That is, does he know that les gendarmes have decided that he “made a mistake” in his testimony? See below:-

    “Unless new information comes to our attention, this line of thought is definitively closed”, concludes the report. The new scenarios developed by the investigators now retain the same hypothesis, the New Zealand cyclist made a mistake in his testimony, he met the motorcyclist much further from the car park, 1.3 km from the scene of the killing.

    And does he agree? After all, the detention and interrogation of LMC which lead to the above conclusion did not involve WBM.

    I for one would feel much more comfortable if a full reconstruction were carried out involving both LMC and WBM comparing both the 1300 m and the 300 m potential meeting points.

    One interesting feature of these locations is that they are both near a bridge which allows the river to flow under the road and a cyclist riding up the combe would firstly have initially have the river on his right, then as he crossed the bridge the river would now be on his left. This particular configuration is uncommon on the combe so it is quite a coincidence. Perhaps WBM remembers events in relation to landscape features. After all, there is nothing else but trees up there.

    • Reply ↓
      michael norton

      Good In Parts, I doubt that ” les gendarmes” are making any suggestions.
      This will be being coordinated by civil servants and the secret services.
      The teteering French government need to avoid a political “cat out of the bag event”.

      “French Prime Minister Michel Barnier met with far-right National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen on Monday in an effort to forge a deal allowing approval of the government’s budget. Opposition parties have denounced the budget and the RN could join forces with the left-wing bloc in parliament to topple the government in a confidence vote.”
      https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241125-le-pen-meets-pm-as-french-government-wobbles

      Last week they were trying to get Le Pen banged up?

  • Reply ↓
    michael norton

    I suppose it is possible, each person remembers details in a different way, after all, they see and hear things from their own head, not from another person’s head.
    Quote Good In Parts
    “I for one would feel much more comfortable if a full reconstruction were carried out involving both LMC and WBM comparing both
    the 1300 m and the 300 m potential meeting points.”
    I wonder if L.M.C. and W.B.M. have previously both attended the same physical reconstruction, at Le Martinet?

    Being one K out, seems somewhat fanciful?
    Somebody claimed WBM could not remember the face of LMC.
    LMC was at the time wearing a motorcycle helmet.

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    michael norton

    You wrote:- “I wonder if L.M.C. and W.B.M. have previously both attended the same physical reconstruction, at Le Martinet?”

    Well, yes they did but apparently, according to LMC’s lawyer, WBM did not recognise LMC. As you said LMC would have been wearing a helmet when he was originally riding down the combe, so it should have been no surprise that WBM did not recognise LMC.

    For the moment I am just accepting the results ‘at face value’ and trying to work through the implications.

    However the french investigators have had around two years to work through the implications but they don’t seem to have made any breakthrough or arrested anyone, so the balance of probabilities is that there is nothing conclusive to conclude.

    One of a number of odd things is that the gendarmes have never (publicly) identified Janin’s MC nor the MC seen by ONF1. They also have not made any appeals to the public for information about those two motorcycles and their riders.

    What they have done is to double-down on their long term brute-force investigative strengths, ie re-processing DNA and fingerprints, extending their cell tower analysis and carrying out the recent ‘remise en situation’ re-enactment work.

    A face value interpretation would be that they do not have any clear avenues to persue, hence the broad-brush approach.

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    intp1

    You wrote ” One of these reports states that the Luger handle WAS red/brown, however it also claims that the gun specifics and manufacturing batches have been established via ballistics, rather than or in addition to, the ID from that type of handle.”

    I wonder it is some kind of translation ‘thing’. Perhaps the french were referring to the ‘ballistics section’ of the forensics department just as ‘ballistics’. All the research work on the Luger would thus have been carried out by ‘ballistics’.

    • Reply ↓
      Intp1

      Maybe so. Or
      the ‘ballistics’ Dept. just handle all technical firearms questions
      Or maybe there really could be such a significant change in the mechanics of the lugers at certain year and model that a distinction could be made?

  • Reply ↓
    michael norton

    Quote BBC
    “The French government has collapsed after Prime Minister Michel Barnier was ousted in a no-confidence vote.

    MPs voted overwhelmingly in support of the motion against him – just three months after he was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron.”
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxz934p56qo
    “Macron, who has returned to France following a state visit to Saudi Arabia, is due to give a televised speech to the nation on Thursday evening.”

    What a pickle, they find themselves in.

    Perhaps the new French government, can outline how the Alps Killings investigations are going?
    It is only twelve years and counting.

  • Reply ↓
    michael norton

    Good In Parts
    November 26, 2024 at 18:31
    Does Brett Martin know?
    Quote G.I.P.
    “That is, does he know that les gendarmes have decided that he “made a mistake” in his testimony? See below:-

    “Unless new information comes to our attention, this line of thought is definitively closed”, concludes the report. The new scenarios developed by the investigators now retain the same hypothesis, the New Zealand cyclist made a mistake in his testimony, he met the motorcyclist much further from the car park, 1.3 km from the scene of the killing.

    And does he agree? After all, the detention and interrogation of LMC which lead to the above conclusion did not involve WBM.”

    We said a little while ago, that either W.B.M. was not telling the truth or L.M.C. was not telling the truth,
    maybe neither of them was telling all/most of the truth.

    They can not both have been telling the truth.

    So what could this suggest?

    It suggests to me that both L.M.C. and W.B.M. were both operational, on that day.
    Perhaps we could assume that W.B.M. was, at that time, still working for the U.K./Five Eyes.
    Perhaps we could assume that L.M.C. was, at that time, working for the French Authorities.

    Perhaps we could assume that L.M.C. used to be directly working for the French Authorities but on that day was privately employed.

    Perhaps we could assume that very shortly after the killings, it came to the attention of the French Authorities that W.B.M. had been directly employed at that time or in the recent past by the British Authorities.
    Shortly after the killings, the French Authorities may not have known who L.M.C. was, so they were willing to go along with the British / W.B.M. story.

    Much later the identity of L.M.C. became known to the French Authorities, they were then in somewhat of a cleft stick.
    How to align the two, differing stories?

  • Reply ↓
    michael norton

    “the New Zealand cyclist made a mistake in his testimony, he met the motorcyclist much further from the car park, 1.3 km from the scene of the killing.”

    As far as I know that is the first time the French Authorities have spoken of W.B.M.
    as the New Zealand cyclist.

    You can see, they are starting to de-legitimize his evidence.

    They should remember that New Zealand is part of “Five Eyes”

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    intp1

    You wrote :- “Or maybe there really could be such a significant change in the mechanics of the lugers at certain year and model that a distinction could be made?”

    I sorta hope so because then there would be two independent factoids pointing at the same general conclusion.

    When I looked at this on Luger enthusiast forums I found that there were at least two visually distinct variants of the model 29 however there was no mention of any internal changes (such as rifling twist rate changes or firing pin modifications) that would leave distinguishing marks on bullets or spent cartridges.

    So, I just take on trust that les gendarmes have consulted experts and they have concluded that they can narrow it down to a ‘lot’ of approx 900 weapons. For me, this number is small enough to try to trace them from their last military owner. This sort of brute force investigating should be right up their street. Whether there will be a traceable connection to the killer remains to be seen.

  • Reply ↓
    Good In Parts

    michael norton

    You wrote “They can not both have been telling the truth.”

    True but one witness could merely be ‘honestly mistaken’ and another might be ‘deeply disingenuous’. Thus both would, legally, not be lying.

    One must not forget that it is the responsibility of les gendarmes themselves conduct interviews and to disambiguate conflicting accounts.

    It took them approximately ten years to resolve this particular issue.

1 … 231 232 233