A weapon discovered at the bottom of a lake is currently being analyzed to determine whether it is linked to the quadruple murder of Chevaline in 2012, one of the biggest criminal mysteries of the 21st century in France, the Nanterre prosecutor’s office told AFP on Monday evening, confirming information from the weekly Marianne.
On August 20, a Luger pistol was brought to the surface by British tourists who were swimming in Lake Annecy, in the department of Haute-Savoie (southeast), according to Marianne.
The weapon has similarities with that used in the Chevaline killing, a Luger P06 automatic pistol manufactured in Germany and Switzerland from the beginning of the 20th century, of which fragments of stock were found at the crime scene.
Requested by AFP, the prosecution of the serial or unsolved crimes center (PCSNE) of Nanterre, in the suburbs of Paris, which has been investigating this case since September 2022, confirmed that investigations were underway in order to establish a possible link between this discovery and the quadruple homicide.
On September 5, 2012, a 50-year-old British man of Iraqi origin, Saad al-Hilli, his 47-year-old wife and his 74-year-old mother-in-law were found dead in their car, shot several times in the head, on a country road near Chevaline, not far from Lake Annecy. A cyclist from the region, Sylvain Mollier, 45, was also shot.
One of the al-Hilli couple’s little girls, aged 7, was seriously injured while the second, aged 4, curled up under her mother’s legs, escaped physically unscathed.
The motive of the killer, who fired 21 times in a few minutes, has never been established. Several avenues were examined during the investigation: conflict over an inheritance, industrial espionage or a lone shooter acting on his own.
