Will we one day know what happened on September 5, 2012 on this small dirt road in Chevaline (Haute-Savoie)? Following a new episode of this legal enigma, a finding seems established: the Lyon business manager arrested Wednesday morning by the gendarmes of the Chambéry research section is not the man who shot Saad Al- Hilli, a 50-year-old Briton of Iraqi origin, his wife and mother-in-law, as well as a cyclist from the region, Sylvain Mollier.
After 36 hours in police custody, this father was released without any charges being brought against him. “The explanations given and the checks carried out made it possible to rule out his possible participation in the facts”, underlines Lise Bonnet, the Annecy public prosecutor. “It is completely out of the question, this track is closed”, supports a judicial source.
The fifty-year-old released this Thursday evening was no stranger to this sprawling dossier. He had already been auditioned freely in 2015. Two guards from the National Forestry Office had thus told investigators to have checked, near the crime scene, a biker with an “original” helmet. It had taken three years to identify the famous pilot, who did not know he was wanted despite the media coverage of the case. During this first hearing, he explained to the gendarmes to have walked in the area after having carried out a paragliding baptism with several people, who confirmed his presence. He also explained that he had not noticed or heard anything suspicious during his motorcycle ride. Nothing had then come to contradict his story.
“It was imperative to definitively close this door”
So why, six years later, did you plunge this man back into the horror of the Chevaline massacre? According to corroborating sources, a reconstruction organized last September by the gendarmes of Chambéry – in his presence, as well as that of two agents of the ONF and the cyclist who had discovered the victims – would have revealed certain oddities in the employment of the time of the fiftieth birthday. After 1,500 hours of work on this situation, the investigators had come to the conclusion that the biker was necessarily in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene at the time of the murders, and that he had at least seen or heard something. Visibly fragile elements, but which pushed the investigators and the judges to place him in police custody on the day of the announcement of the creation of the cold case pole by the Minister of Justice. A “fortuitous” concomitance, assures Lise Bonnet.
At the end of these 36 hours, during which his wife was heard freely, no link was discovered between this inhabitant of the Lyon region and the victims. He also has no special shooting skills, while the Chevaline murders have always been described as being the work of a “pro”. According to a person close to the file, the father of the family held, Wednesday and Thursday, the same speech as in 2015 in front of the gendarmes and was never contradicted by the elements drawn from the reconstruction. “The mountain gives birth to a mouse, this custody was not justified and abusive, denounces his lawyer, Me Basson-Larbi. My client has always been keen to help justice, has always been at his disposal. Going from the status of witness to that of suspect made him weigh an unbearable weight, while he never saw or heard anything on the day of the tragedy. “
“For the progress of the investigations, it was imperative to definitively close this door, justifies a source close to the file. It is now done, and this will perhaps allow others to be opened. According to the Annecy prosecutor, three investigators from the Chambéry research section continue to work full time on the Chevaline massacre.