On September 5th, 2012, Saad Al-Hilli was found murdered at the top of a mountain, near a small French town named Chevaline. He had been shot four times, twice in the head. Worse yet, his wife & mother-in-law were also murdered, suffering multiple gunshots including two in the head. His two daughters were also with him but were, luckily, alive. One, 7 years old, had been shot in the shoulder and hit in the back of the head. The other daughter, 4 years old, was unhurt and hidden underneath her mother’s legs. The final victim was a local cyclist, shot five times including twice in the head.
The shooter fired 21 total bullets, most likely at moving targets, and 17 bullets had found their mark.
By all accounts, this seemed like a professional hit.
The first phase of the investigation looked into Al-Hilli himself. Had the British engineer, born in Iraq, who worked on satellites for a living, gotten involved in some nefarious affairs. Because of the professional look of the attack, investigators hunted down any reasons for a contract killing to occur.
The second phase involved a hard investigation of family members, especially Al-Hilli’s brother, Zaid. The brothers hadn’t spoken in almost a year except through lawyers, as they were sorting out their late father’s estate. The sorting was contentious - more than a million dollars, a house near London, and a studio in Spain were all up for grabs.
But, according to the brother, “there was no feud. We weren’t riding around on horses shooting at each other.”
The third phase of the investigation started to get silly. At one point, multiple newspapers leaked a story that the Al-Hillis had been killed because of their connections to Iraq… that, in fact, they had connections with Saddam Hussein himself. This turned out to (obviously) be false. Unfortunately, this attention grabbing headline sold a lot of papers. And this hurt the case, warping it into this big global espionage conspiracy… one riddled with overt racism. Zaid was arrested… and almost immediately released.
But what about the bicyclist? Had the local just been in the wrong place & wrong time? His name was Sylvain Mollier, 45 years old, and his body was found in a strange place for a local bicyclist. He had recently been employed by a company that supplied nuclear components to the global market.
The investigators had hit a dead end.
Satellite footage, cell phone pings, you name it… all pieces of data were combed through to try and find a lead. A description of a lone motorcyclist rose to the surface. Then, connections of the bicyclist, Mollier, to his ex-wife’s inheritance. Every single possible reason for motive was brought under the microscope but to no avail. The investigators brought in anyone who could have ties to this incident- military, past psychotic breaks.
A routine interview of a soldier, Patrice Menegaldo, as a witness led to more craziness in this case. Two months after the interview, Menegaldo killed himself, claiming in a note that “[he] could not handle being a suspect in a murder.”
Lead detective, Eric Maillaud, refused to release the details of Menegaldo’s 7 page suicide letter. He does not believe Menegaldo was the killer.
7 hours after the murders in the Alps, a man named James Thompson started feeling nauseous. He left work and headed to his home in Mississippi of the great US of A. He didn’t make it. His heart had stopped. Thompson was divorced, amicably, from a dentist he had married in 1999, apparently as a favor (perhaps a green card situation). The marriage was kept a secret from all other family members. The couple split up a few months later. She moved to England and married an engineer named…you guessed it.
So on the same day, seven hours a part, both she and her ex-husband died. Coincidence? Probably. But in a case with no definitive answers even to this day, everything is suspect.
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