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Detectives from France’s Unsolved Cases Unit have ordered a DNA analysis of evidence in the unsolved murder of a British family and a French cyclist in a remote Alpine village 12 years ago.
Clothes belonging to one of the victims, cigarette butts found at the scene and pieces of the gun used in the murders will be tested in hopes of solving the murder mysteryqualified by the local prosecutor as a “rude savage”.
The bodies of four people – Saad al-Hili, 50, a British-Iraqi engineer; his wife, Iqbal, 47; her mother Suhaila al-Alaf, 74; and a French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, 45 – were found in an isolated retreat in Chevaline near Annecy in September 2012. Each of them has several gunshot wounds to the head.
Al-Hilis’ two daughters, aged four and seven at the time, survived the attack. The younger child hid under his dead mother’s legs in the back of the car for eight hours before being discovered by gendarmes inspecting the scene. Her sister had been shot and had wounds to the shoulder and head.
The family had been visiting the region in a British-registered BMW station wagon with the engine still running when the bodies were discovered. An examination of the vehicle suggests that al-Hili, who was driving, attempted to reverse. Moliere, a local man and father of three who was cycling in the area at the time, was shot five times. Detectives believe he was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Pieces of the butt of the weapon used in the murders, a vintage Luger P06-29 pistol, were found on the ground near the vehicle. The weapon has been identified as a model used by the Swiss Army in the 1930s, but its owner has never been found. Detectives ruled out contract killing, saying a professional killer would not have used such a vintage weapon.
Police investigated a number of leads, including interviewing members of the al-Hilli family in the UK, but the crime was never solved.
On Wednesday, French radio station RTL reported that prosecutors at the headquarters of the national cold case unit in the Paris suburb of Nanterre had been working on the case since September 2022 and had ordered “new technical assessments” earlier this year.
This included DNA tests on gun fragments, two cigarette butts found near the passage, Moliere’s clothing, including his helmet and shoes, and clothing worn by one of al-Hili’s daughters.
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