RedHanded - Episode 24 - Murder in the Alps

Episode Date: December 14, 2017

On a remote mountain road, high in the Alps, a French cyclist and a British Iraqi family face an ambush blitz attack. Within a minute four people are dead. But who was the real target of this execution? What was the true motive in this senseless slaughter? What secrets lay beneath the seemingly ordinary facades of those killed? Join the girls today as they delve into this bizarre mystery - crisscrossing between international espionage and dark family secrets.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed. You guys know the drill. Yeah, you guys know the drill right now. So let's just jump in with our five star review thank yous. And the first one

comes from Savanja, who said that this podcast has become one of my favorites and the hosts work so well together and that's nice to hear and then we've got one from Katrina's El Slim you sound like a badass I like it that sounds like like a businessman like Duncan Slimline McKilty like really I think it sounds like a gangster Katrina's El Slim anyway they said quickly becoming one of my favorites great bend of facts commentary and personality thank you and alex s you gals are awesome your wit and take on true crime keeps me coming back each week which is great and we love having you back so keep coming and tell your friends absolutely and then t stewart says really good these girls are smart have done their research and except for that closet thing

are totally on their game love it that is still being commented upon a good what would you say now like how long is it in like four months since that happened oh we were in the cupboard a lot longer than four months ago oh god because we that was when we did enfield which was episode four we're now on episode 24 so that was 20 weeks ago so actually yeah it's probably been 6 months then you're right it's been 6 months also wow guys are completely blowing our minds so many more

Patreon subscriptions this week so a huge thank you to Ariel Brennan Christine Dukas Fuller The Mothership Paul Walsh Brigitte Walter Guglielmetti Ra Ra, Carla Reeves, Jenny Law. And Dana Bouchard, Carrie Wright, Dani, Cheryl N, Dina Greenfield, Kiyolani Kochi, is that what we're saying? Yeah.

Charlotte Karuba, Frank McHugh and Maggie James. Thank you guys. So we will absolutely keep you in the loop about what we're doing with it and how much of an impact it's having directly to this show. As usual, we'd like to do social media moment of the week. We've actually got two today, one that's like an honorary mention and this one we both just saw because it just came in before we started recording. Do you guys remember, did you listen to the Adam Zemanski case where we talk about Timorden up in the north of England and we said that it's a pretty weird place? Well we had a gentleman called Mark Rafferty tweet at us

saying that he loves the podcast. He lived near to modern for a while. And to quote, he said, it's a very odd place. Then today, to modern civic society replied to all of us saying, coming from someone from Sowerbury Bridge, we'll take that as a compliment. I love that we are like inciting North Yorkshire bants. Oh, we're softy southerners after all. We've got nothing to do with this. I'm pretty sure I'm still saying to Morden wrong. Whatever. An extra

rogue social media moment of the week. The gentleman who Instagrammed us telling us that he liked the episode, last week's episode, apart from the mispronunciation of Colleen. That riled me. No, don't say it riled you.

Say it made you lol at least. As a woman of Irish descent, it made Hannah feel some emotions. Colleen is the Irish word for girl. It is an Irish word. We are pronouncing it correctly. Colleen is wrong. word for girl. It is an Irish word. We are pronouncing it correctly. Colleen is wrong. I'm sorry. It's incorrect. We didn't actually hear how he wanted us to pronounce it. He just said that Colleen is wrong. So please, if you are listening, sir, do tell us how you pronounce Colleen. We'd love to know. We also had an honorary mention today. This was, this is amazing. So Ebony Barry from Down Under,

she Instagrammed us and she said, our podcast is just one of a kind and wants us to do an Aussie case because, quote, we have some sick fuckers down under. And we know. I think that'd be an interesting one to dig into because obviously there are the huge ones in Australia,

like Catherine Knight or... Oh, that one freaks me out. But kind of want to find in the last i want to dig a little bit i think we'll come back to it there's definitely stuff there fantastic so with that should we jump into the case let's jump right in so today we're discussing the case of the anisee murders or la faire de chevaline and in september, it's a beautiful afternoon in the French Alps. A British family staying on the shores of Lake Annecy pile into their maroon BMW and go for a drive. They leave their campsite

and head through the tiny village of Chevaline. Passing through this quiet community, they head further up into the mountains. And the road out of Chevaline is beautiful, but steep and potholed. And once you're on the narrow road, there's like nowhere to turn off and nowhere to turn back for miles. So they push on.

They pass a couple of cyclists on the road. And eventually, after a few miles, the path ends at a small parking spot called Le Martinet. And at 3.40 that afternoon, 50-year-old Saad al-Hilly, a British Iraqi engineer, driving the car, gets out. And his seven-year-old daughter Zainab, who'd been sat in the front with him, rushes out after him, leaving her mother Iqbal, her three-year-old sister Zina and her grandmother Salia in the car. It's a stunning day in this beautiful part of the world. The two stand for a moment, perhaps simply basking in the sun, perhaps wondering where their next move should be or maybe even speaking to the French cyclist they had passed who had just pulled into the same spot. It's hard to say exactly what they were doing, because within two minutes, four people would be dead. Gunshots suddenly blister through the air. Saad screams at Zainab

to get in the car. He runs to the driver's door, not seeing that Zainab hasn't moved. A frantic Saad slams the car into reverse and accidentally skids into the tree line. The wheels get stuck in the gravel and loose soil, spinning, and stuck, the car jerks. As the car was spinning out of control, the shooter took aim, firing at the trapped family. When Saad lost control of the car, he also struck the French cyclist and dragged him through the turn. The gunman finishes the cyclist off as he lay bleeding on the ground. Now Saad in the front seat of the car was dead. He'd been shot four times, twice in the head. His 47-year-old wife, Iqbal, was dead in the back seat,

shot four times, and again twice in the head. Zulia, Iqbal's elderly mother, was dead too, shot three times, again twice in the head. The gunman now turned his attention to seven-year-old Zainab, who never made it back into the car. He shoots her in the shoulder, but having run out of bullets, He shoots her in the shoulder, but having run out of bullets, smacks her over the head with the butt of the gun so hard that a piece of the handle breaks clean off. And thinking she too is dead, he leaves. So let's

assess what's just happened. This gunman fired 21 times at a car that was moving, and 17 of his bullets hit a person. So he's an incredible shot. Oh my god, yeah. None of the bullets struck the frame of the car or the doors or basically any other part of the car. And of those 17 shots he landed, eight of them were headshots. I mean, that's remarkable, surely. Definitely.

And whilst all this mayhem is happening, Brett Martin, another Englishman and retired RAF pilot, is heading up the same road on his bike. Remember the other cyclist they passed? This was Brett. Brett had left his house at half past two that day with no clear plan as to where he was going. It was a beautiful day and he was just out for a ride in the mountains. Brett had followed the same route as the Alhilids, passed through the village of Shevelin before joining the mountain road. On the path, Brett had noticed the other cycl as the Alhilids, passed through the village of Shevelin before joining the mountain road. On the path, Brett had noticed the other cyclist in front of him.

He was surprised to see the man on a racing bike because he thought people who ride racing bikes tend to look after them really well and the tyres are easily damaged and the potholed bumpy roads leading up the mountain were not fit for a bike like that. And like, if you've got an expensive racing bike, you're gonna know that it's not, I mean, it's not a mountain bike. There are bikes specifically for mountains. A bike like that, you don't ride it up steep hills and you don't ride it in bad roads. You ride it on flat, excellent roads. Now, as the two cyclists had climbed the hill,

the Alhilli car had passed them at 3.30. Brett says he was going much more slowly and was quite far behind the other cyclist and after the Alhilles had pulled up to the parking spot just minutes after passing the French cyclist it would take Brett at least another 10 minutes to get there. But within five minutes of the Alhilles pulling into that parking area the brutal attack had already finished and Brett Martin who hadn't heard anything as he was riding up, no gunshots, no screaming, nothing, saw a man on a motorbike pass him in the opposite direction at 3.45, heading back down the mountain.

Brett then turns the corner into Le Martinet, the parking spot, and immediately sees the cyclist's racing bike lying in the middle of the road. And then he sees a small child, Zainab, stumbling around in the road. Thinking there's been a car accident, he rushes over to help. He grabs Zainab and pulls her away from the road. And then he sees a small child, Zainab, stumbling around in the road. Thinking there's been a car accident, he rushes over to help. He grabs Zainab and pulls her away from the road. He then checks the cyclist, but clearly he's already dead. When Brett arrives, the Alhili's car is still revving and the wheels are still spinning in the gravel. He looks into the car and sees everyone inside has been shot. Hor horrified brett calls the police and within

30 minutes the road is closed and the area is swamped with uniformed police forensics teams and the gurdams a part of the french military who apparently police these rural areas so if the car wheels are still spinning and the engine is revving that means someone's foot is on the accelerator so had they been shot and they're still in there and their foot is still on the accelerator so had they been shot and they're still in there and their foot is still on the on the accelerator creepy that's so creepy it has to be otherwise the wheels wouldn't have been spinning yeah so Saad had already got into the car and versed it and then been shot maybe the weight of his foot on the accelerator had kept it going because Brett specifically says that when he gets there the car is still stuck in the gravel with the wheels churning and he could tell that's

why they hadn't been able to flee to get back onto the main road seven-year-old zainab suffering from a gunshot wound god do you imagine getting shot in the in the shoulder at seven years old also why did he shoot her in the shoulder he shot people in a moving car headshots and he shoots this seven-year-old girl who's in front of him in the shoulder. Maybe he just couldn't quite bring himself to, he just wanted to wing her do you know what I mean? But then he clubs her in the head with the butt of his gun so hard that it breaks

Yeah if it's hard enough for the gun to break surely that's like skull shattering pressure Yeah. But then if he meant to kill her why would he not have just shot her in the head? I don't know He doesn't. He shoots her in the shoulder shoulder hits her on the head and she's taken to hospital and somehow manages to survive it's it's crazy the french police and forensic teams now start to work at the scene they work so carefully and delicately photographing every

tiny detail without disturbing anything eight hours pass before they make a heartbreaking discovery. They find Zina, four years old, still alive and completely unscathed, but terrified, hiding under her mother's skirt in the back seat of the car. She had been so terrified that she had sat there, hidden, clinging to Iqbal's legs for eight hours. That's heartbreaking. It's like clinging to your dead mother for eight hours. And the police hadn't realised, I think this is a bit stupid, but I will explain why. Police hadn't realised that there were two children because there had only been one car seat in the car. If anything, that should tell you that there are two because

you're not putting a seven-year-old on a car seat so they know that she's seven and then they see a car seat in the car presumably and a four-year-old that's like a that's not like a booster seat that's a proper strap-in car seat so they should have been like why is this here when she's seven and clearly isn't using it i don't know but i feel like how big is a seven-year-old do you not still put seven-year-old in a car seat no like at the most you'd put them on a booster seat but you would not like a proper baby car seat i haven't seen what this car seat actually looks like though but that is their reason for why they say that there was just the one so we we didn't

realize and even the heat detection equipment they had used hadn't spotted xena because the dead bodies were still warm do bodies really stay warm for eight hours? But we don't know when they used the heat detection because what they did is they didn't use the heat detection to necessarily test the car. They used the heat detection as a helicopter to fly over the area

to see if they could spot anyone else like hiding in the woods or anything. When it flew over the car, it just didn't pick Xena up because they probably did it as soon as they got there because that's your best chance of tracking someone down. It is horrifying, the car it just didn't pick Xena up because they probably did it as soon as they got there because that's your best chance of tracking someone down. It is horrifying but I don't think it necessarily points to shoddy police work. I actually think it points to the fact that like we said they were

working so carefully they didn't want to disturb any of the scene and that's the reason why she wasn't found. At least both of them survive. But only Zainab had seen anything. But after such a traumatic event and giving the head wound she had suffered, she couldn't tell the police much at all. All she could tell them was there was one bad man. I'm amazed we even could string a sentence together. But who was this killer? He does seem like a dispassionate, detached killer. The way he executed all of those people, Shot a girl of seven, like we said, and then clubbed her with his gun. Yes, we're wondering why didn't he just shoot her in the head, but Jesus, that's still... And you know, coming back to what we said, he shot his gun 21 times,

17 hit a person, and 8 headshots. That sounds pretty proficient to me. He also picked the perfect spot and the perfect time. The tourist season was over and the area was quiet and it was the ideal location because the reason Brett Martin, the cyclist who was coming up the road, hadn't heard anything was because of the sound of the river had dulled the sound of shots and screams from the site of the shootings. And it was the perfect location because it gave the shooter several escape routes, even into Italy and Switzerland. Literally motorways, like, just 20 minutes from there that lead you straight into Italy. You're gone.

It sounds like a planned attack, doesn't it? A hit job. Your favourite. That's a real thing. A hit job, Joban. It does seem like a planned attack, purely because of the, like, accuracy of the shooting. Like, to shoot people dead in a moving car,

you've got to have some level of training which would indicate an assassination rather than but then he could have just been a soldier or a mercenary or an or a police officer like it doesn't necessarily mean that he was like james bond trained to kill kind of thing it just means he's good with a gun yeah all we can really say was was this a planned attack well possibly because the attack itself seems planned but it's hard to say until we know the motive and also most importantly until we know who the actual intended target of the killings was just quick side note i also came like as we're talking about hit men i also came across an interesting paper written by a British criminologist

from the Applied Centre of Criminology at Birmingham City University who claimed that hitmen are, in fact, much more boring than we make them out to be. If a hitman excels at his craft, they say he'll operate quietly and without incident. So it's not like the image we maybe conjure up in our mind from movies or books. Like, James Bond isn't a spy, he's an assassin. And look all the destruction he causes. That's not what it's like in reality, is what all of their research says. And this was an ambush blitz attack that does seem to have been planned.

But then he left casings all over the place. And he even left a bit of his gun behind after it broke off. And he just killed a fucking shit ton of people, and then left them out in the open, with a witness, Brett Martin, heading up towards the scene. Yeah, I agree. I think the more I think about it, if we're talking like an international espionage level of assassin,

there'd be no casings, it would have been over in seconds, they certainly wouldn't have been a witness. I just, I don't, i can't believe that that is but it's interesting to note also in that paper they describe four different types of hitman and we say hitman because in all of the cases they looked at for the research there was only one hit woman everyone else was a hitman they say that actually two of the types that they know are what they describe as bumbling, not as these sort of like slick assassins that we think of. And actually they said that the average price of a hitman, what do you think the average price of a, to kill someone in Britain is?

In the UK? Yeah. Average. Six grand. Oh mate. Times it by three, it's 15. All right. Yeah.

Average. So there are people, these bumbling ones that they identify who would probably do it for six grand who wouldn't know what they're doing and cause an absolute mess it's just an interesting fact that is an interesting fact and we'll see later that the family and the cyclist had no real plans to be where they were it mainly seems to have been happenstance that they happened to run into each other so how could the killer have planned for that was he stalking his targets? Yeah, it would be different if like

they had made a plan to be at this particular point in the middle of nowhere at three o'clock, but that's not the case. And this is the bit that really confuses me about this case because we can talk as much as we want about how planned it seemed and how he picked the perfect location, et cetera, but there's no way that he knew they were gonna be there.

According to like the family and the girls and what they said is that the alhillies literally just got in their car and apparently the favorite things i'd love to do is to ask the girls where do you want to go today also the bullet casings did he just know that the gun he had used still wouldn't give him away that easily because the choice of weapon is really odd and it had like i feel like it has to say quite a lot about the killer it's bonkers the police were able to identify the weapon as a 1906 7.65 caliber swiss army luger which is a gun that was once standard issue in the swiss army And isn't it in Switzerland where, I don't know whether they still do national service,

but I think it's every man in the country can be called up at any point to go to war, which is why they never go to war. Probably. I think I wouldn't be surprised if conscription was still a thing in Switzerland. And that's why a lot of people have guns, because technically everyone's in military service. I think. I don't know.

If you know about that, if you've got any listeners in Switzerland, let us know. So yeah, this gun is more than 100 years old. It's more likely to find a gun like this in a private collection or a museum. You're not just going to buy it at wherever you buy guns, the gun shop. But collectors describe it as old but accurate. And there are 30,000 of these guns in Switzerland alone. But it's not what a hitman would use, surely. It can only hold seven cartridges in the magazine and one in the barrel.

So that's only eight in total. So if you're turning up potentially to shoot an entire family with just eight bullets in one round, he's obviously a good shot, but that is... You're saying that you're not going to make one wrong move. And to fire as many shots as he did, which was 21, the gunman would have had to reload two times but the entire thing happened in just a minute or two. So clearly he's a highly experienced gunman, a soldier or mercenary. Maybe he just chose this gun because it was what he could get hold of and it didn't matter because he was such a good shot he could make anything work but it just seems why if this is a planned attack why would you use a weapon maybe it's because there's so many of them it would be difficult

to trace maybe even if it is an old gun the fact that it was one standard issue in the swiss army there were like you said there were 30 000 of them in in switzerland alone which is just across the border from where this shooting happens maybe it's just because it's it's all he could get hold of in the black market like you said or because it's just so common that he knew it wasn't going to be easily traceable back to him at the moment the questions that we're kind of left with are who was the real intended target who was this shooter and if it was as perfectly planned and executed as it seems, how did he know that they were going to be there? Because that doesn't seem to be that obvious right

now. And also when we say how did he know they were going to be there, who was the they he was even waiting for? Or stalking? So let's get back to the aftermath of the crime. So Annecy, the area that this happened, was totally unused to the immense spectacle of a massacre like this. It's a serene area, a sleepy, beautiful tourist spot, and on average, maybe like one or two people are murdered here in a typical year. And it's usually domestics, but murder like this? Absolutely never. And did it blow up? 15 different countries would eventually become embroiled in this case, but it would be the French authorities in Annecy who would lead on the investigation. So, as I said, where do we start? Who do we think the real target was in this attack? Was it the Alhilly family or was it the French cyclist? Who was even shot first? We don't really know because the two girls, the only two survivors,

can't really tell us anything. We can't even definitively say whether the family got there first and then the cyclist turned up, they chatted and then the mystery shooter started shooting, or if he was shooting the family when the cyclist turned up, his bike got caught in the wheels of the car when Saad tried to reverse out and his bike got dragged into the gravelly bank and then he gets shot because now he's a witness. Well, let's start as the French police did, saying that it was Saad who was the target. Someone was after him and he got his family killed. And the cyclist? Well, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and the poor guy just got in the way. But who would want to kill Saad, a seemingly normal 50 year old

family man from Surrey who worked as a contractor for a small satellite company and spent his spare time indulging in computers, gadgets and travel? Well let's let's dig in a little bit deeper. As we said Saad often worked as a contractor for SSTL, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited. That literally sounds like a made-up name, that sounds like a like a cartoon company. So fake name, but they have a website, everything totally legit. And their tagline is amazing. It's literally like pinky in the brain, like it's insanity. Their tagline is changing the economics of space. That's so intense. What does that mean? But if you go on their website for a satellite company, no shade, guys, but it's kind of a shit website. I find that hilarious when you, like, look at a,

like, oh, I'm a freelance website designer, and then you go on their website, and it's literally like a text page with, like, a GIF in the middle. But yeah, guys, go Google Surrey Satellite Technology Limited. It's not the best website I've ever seen. With Saad's technical skills

and his Middle Eastern background because he was from Iraq and his language skills, he was a valued asset for the pretend satellite company. They're gonna get sued for libel. They're a real satellite company. Just a real satellite company

with a real shit website. Well, like, I don't want people dealing with the satellites in actual space if they can't come company with a real shit website well like i don't want people dealing with the satellites in actual space if they can't come up with a better name than the surrey satellite technology limited priorities about priorities hannah you don't put your money into marketing if you're building satellites you just build satellites that's what they did i just don't want people to be in charge of space you can't come up with a better name than that i mean that's pretty high level stipulations you have on who should be allowed to change the economics of space. Because it's obviously up to me as well.

Like, I am in charge of the economics of space. You should get a job there. But you could argue that because of Saad having access to, like, space information, he could have been a target for foreign intelligence agencies and interestingly on his computer after his death investigators found crazy amounts of extremely important data from SSTL far beyond anything he needed or was allowed access to because you know he's a contractor he's aancer, so really his security clearance is zero. So there are theories that he was selling this data to foreign powers, but the police won't say what data he did have.

I can understand why, but all they have confirmed is that it wasn't defence related, so would it actually be of any importance to foreign agencies but it could have made him a target for like the israeli mossad iraqi agents potentially the cia but there's no way of knowing because we don't know what information he was illicitly in possession of okay israeli mossad the iraqi agents like cia don't they have anything better to do? There was also all theories out there that he was quite, he'd posted something on the internet being slightly anti-Israel. Israeli Mossad, they've definitely got better things to do than come and blow up people who slag them off on the internet.

They'd spend all their time doing that if they killed everyone that was anti-Israel on the internet. Yeah, Jesus Christ. I just don't buy it. I feel like this is a bit of a something about nothing. Personally, that's what I feel like. Yeah. Because his friends and his family,

they too kind of remain completely unconvinced that his work had absolutely nothing to do with it. They said that Saad was only brought in to solve small problems that they had with satellites. He wasn't a high up level person here, even if he had some stuff that he shouldn't they had with satellites. Like he wasn't, you know, a high up level person here, even if he had some stuff that he shouldn't have had hold of. I think maybe the data was just a coincidence.

And was Zod even the intended target? I think that the data has to be a coincidence because I think, you know, without incriminating myself, I feel like, oh, what was that guy's name? The man in the bag. Gareth Williams. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's, you know, you just sort of cut some corners because, you know, this information would really help me like oh what was that guy's name the man in the bag gareth williams yeah yeah exactly it's you

know you just sort of cut some corners because you know this information would really help me and i can't be asked to like go through all of the paperwork i need to do so and if you're a technologically minded person it's not that difficult exactly that's what i think let's turn our attention to the cyclist for a second because the mystery really deepened when the police did this and they looked into who he was. And he was Sylvain Mollier, a 45-year-old man who lived just 10 miles from where he and the Alhilly family were killed. What was he doing there? As we talked about, and as Brett Martin noted when he first saw Sylvain, what was he doing on that steep, bad road on a racing bike? Totally the wrong bike. And according to all reports, he was an ardent cyclist.

Surely he'd have known. Some say that he may have been lost. But I thought, when I read this, he lives within 10 miles of where he was killed. Lost? So, okay, if you're thinking about a 10-mile radius of your house, there's definitely places I could get lost in there that I don't know. Like, if someone just dropped me 10 miles away from my house I could easily be lost I think no that's very fair I guess why I thought how was he lost 10 miles from his house because cyclist if he goes out cycling in that area a lot like you could cycle for 10 miles and I mean it's

all very tenuous like I don't know of course he could have been lost but then on those roads it's hard for a car to turn around if you're a cyclist just turn around you immediately know this is the wrong bike for the road that i'm on that's a really good point why was he so insistent mountain bike he's on a racing bike surely if you're lost the answer doesn't lie at the top of a steep climb no just head back down to chevaline he passed passed through Chevalier as well. I don't know, I think it's weird that he was where he was on a bike like that. But, you know, other than a confused, possibly lost, definitely poorly equipped cyclist, who was Sylvain Mollier? You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that

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Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. He was a divorced father of three, two with his first wife and a new baby with his fiance. He worked as a technician in Eugene, a town near where the shooting had happened,

at a factory owned by Areva, one of the world's largest suppliers of nuclear components. It seems like the factory where they created metal alloys and forged these into parts needed for nuclear reactors. But in any case, the day he died, he was technically unemployed because he'd just negotiated a three-year leave of absence, presumably to raise this new baby. So did he know anything? Was he a target? If they're just making the parts for nuclear reactors it's quite unlikely I think

that there's going to be like top secret things going on. No, I can't buy that. But some people have thrown around the ideas that he was selling nuclear secrets to rogue nations but I just don't, I can't see him working on anything top secret because it wasn't even like a Homer Simpson nuclear plant. Like it was just a factory. There's actually a lot of argument about whether he was,

some people say he was like a top technician at this nuclear plant. First, it wasn't a nuclear plant. It was a factory that made components for nuclear plants. So made parts for them. And secondly, I've read reports that he was a welder, that he wasn't anything to do with the science of nuclear plants. That he was there to work

with the metal. What top secret things is he going to be working on? None, I think. And like I said, he's unemployed. He'd left for three months at least. What sort of dark deals could he have been running? None. I don't think. And there was even discussion at the time,

and this is why I love, we just want to believe that something like this has got to be so much more than maybe it is. There was even discussion at the time that there may have been a link between Saad, Sylvain, and maybe even Brett, because remember he's an ex-RAF pilot. Were they all working together and they plan to meet at this weird little parking spot called La Martina up a massive bloody mountain in the French Alps. Sylvain turns up on the wrong bike. Brett is so slow that he's far behind everybody else. And the Alhilles, well, Sard just decides to bring his whole family and his bloody mother-in-law to the meetup. What? It doesn't even make any sense. And they did actually investigate this pretty thoroughly and no link between the three men were found.

Maillard, the lead prosecutor, didn't put much stock in this whole espionage theory. In an interview when he's asked about it you see a smile of exasperation touch the corners of his mouth as he says, murders are either about sex or money. I mean kind of. I mean I feel like if you put if you dig deep enough into anything it's usually about money or sex revenge affairs yeah we'd kill someone for that i think he's right i think any murder it's about sex or it's about money that i genuinely think that that's the case i think that he was a very pragmatic man when you look at his interviews i i feel like he led this without any sensationalism because he said he didn't buy into all this espionage theory. So following this line of thinking that the police, that the French police had and considering other angles for both

Sartre and Sylvain. Sylvain, as we said, he was divorced with two kids and now he was engaged to a new woman, a woman from a very wealthy family. And the rumor in town was that the family her dad strongly disapproved of sylvan molye and apparently it was her dad who had recommended to him to take that route that day and some people think he got lost and that's why he was on that bike where he shouldn't have been so the dad sends him up there organiz the hit, gets the hitman to wait at La Martina and shoots him. Isn't crime usually local? Who follows a family all the way to another country to kill them?

Wouldn't it just make more sense that Sylvain was the intended target? Yes. Sylvain was also shot the most number of times. He was shot seven times. And he was already on the ground and injured because Saad had clipped him with the car. It would make more sense. To why such overkill? It would make more sense if he was the target and the family just got in the way because it's more likely that whoever the assassin was, it's more likely that he would know where Sylvain was going to be. But then why is he on a bike? Oh my God. And even if he was heading up there, because the father had told him to,

like I said, he could have turned around at any point and just been like, this was a stupid route he told me to come on the bike that I'm on. And the problem with this theory that Sylvain is the actual target, people do sort of cling onto this quite a lot. But when you actually look into what Sylvain's fiance was set to inherit,

it kind of totally falls apart. Basically, like, it falls apart because the whole theory is based on the idea that the father disapproves of him because he's not rich and they're rich. This daughter's going to inherit all this money and then this guy who's just like a sponge is just going to take all the money and he hates him for that, apparently. So yet her father, yes, he was rich and he owns this successful pharmacy but sylvain's fiancee was buying it from her dad she wasn't even being given it i would be fucking

furious so she was like buying it at a decent reduced rate from her dad you would have to be running some sort of like crack cocaine empire out the back of this pharmacy for it to be making enough money that you're really worried about your daughter splitting it with her future husband who you don't like like it just seems i mean it's a pharmacy in rural france how much money can it really be making no it made them enough that they were very rich but this is what i mean she wasn't like he wasn't inheriting all of this this these wealths and riches from. She was just buying this pharmacy. Like, how much would your dad have to hate him to go fucking put a hit job out on this guy?

And they've already had a child together. Whether you like this man or not, he's the father of your grandchild. You're going to kill him. That seems mental. That's too much. I don't put much stock in the espionage theory. I don't put much stock in the espionage theory. I don't put much stock in the pharmacy theory.

Unless, like you said, he was running some sort of fucking like selling meth or crack out the back of that place. Then I don't buy it. So what about Saad? Let's go back to him. Because aside from the data they found on Saad's computers at home, they make another crazy discovery in the caravan the Al-Hillis had taken with them on holiday. In this caravan, Saad had a number of computers, USB disks, paper documents and hard drives, detailing huge amounts of information on his life.

Why the hell would he have taken all that with him on holiday? Well, this is when the police discover the tangled mess of disputes, anger and issues at the centre of the Alhili extended family. Saad had an older brother, Saed, who was an accountant in London, and since Saed had separated from his wife, he had been living in Claygate with Saad and his family in a house that had been owned by their father. The two brothers were locked in an escalating dispute over the property portfolio that had been amassed by their father Khardim. There was property in England and Spain and even in Iraq, Khardim's home country. When in Iraq, Khardim had been a successful businessman. When Saddam Hussein fell, the country became a lawless

and dangerous place. So Khardim sold his business and fled from Iraq, leaving only a house behind. So could the murders be linked to a dispute over property? I can understand moving in with your sibling when you're like grown-ups. I, no. I just couldn't do it. Maybe it's just me but like if I, if I spend time, like too much time around my like brother and sister, I like regress to a 12 year old, like I stick my tongue out. It's intense. Siblings are hard work. So let's dig in a little bit further. Saad had gone to Iraq a few times to try and sort out the housing issue. They'd been left the house for years and so Saad had to go back and try and reclaim it because it had been taken over by squatters. Saad was dealing with it but increasingly

Zayd grew suspicious. Now after Cardadim's wife died about five years before the murders Khadim bought a flat and moved to Mijas in Spain. Zayd maybe due to his suspicion over his brother's handling of the house in Iraq because no only Saad is going out to Iraq to deal with this house that's been taken over they've lost it in that kind of lawless post Saddam Hussein regime. Zayd the reason he's growing suspicious is because he doesn't know what's going on out there. He seems like a suspicious guy. He starts to get all these thoughts,

like Saad is trying to steal it from him. And as the story goes, I wonder how much... If somebody has personal suspicions like that, don't you only have suspicions like that if you're secretly up to no good? Why be that untrusting of somebody else? Of your brother, too. I know, it's kind of like couples, you know,

when it's like, oh, you're cheating on me. You're cheating on me. I feel like you only think that if you have thought about it or you've done something dodgy. Well, it's like, it's projection, isn't it? It's like, well, no, deflection. Absolutely projection.

So Zaid, with his growing suspicions, especially with the house in Iraq, not knowing what was going on there, he then does something very dodgy and puts the flat in Mijas that his father bought and moved out to Spain to live in under just his name. So under just Saeed's name. When his father called and found out about this, he was not happy and made Saeed put it under both of their names. The house in Claygate was left to both of them, so Saad and Saeed. And even though Saad was using

it as his family home, with Saeed just now being there due to his personal issues, but again and again in interviews, Saad says, there was no tension at all. We were fine. That is bollocks. You do not put only your name on a house if you and your brother are chill. Like, no way. And we know that this isn't true because other people can confirm that. So Saad's friend said Saad was very worried because Cardamon told him that Zaid had had him sign a blank will. What? I mean, how dodgy. So Saad tells his friend everything, saying Zaid is all fraud.

And luckily, all of these conversations were discussions that took place by email so we can see it all. And it's not just Saad venting. The will was found in the house and it doesn't include Saad at all. So Saad challenges Zayd and he shows him another will

with equal division of all assets both signed by their father. Again, obviously there is tension here. Absolutely. They find the fucking will that's like just got Zaid's name on all of the assets that's been signed by the father. That's got to be the one that he made the father sign the blank will of because I can't believe that the father would have signed a will

that left everything to Zaid. I'm staggered that anyone would sign a blank will in the fucking first place i know i mean how not in control of your mental faculties must you be to be like oh i know i'm elderly and my son is like hey sign this blank will it's kind of like people who work in care homes just to get into someone's will do you know what i mean take into account like to some extent the cultural differences with like a family like this i think there is like oh my son is looking after me i'll sign this paper that's fine and then but you can see that after he has signed the will that cardam does regret it because he

tells sard your brother made me sign a blank will i'm worried about this and this is what prompts sard to look for the will he eventually finds finds both of them. And you can also see Zaid being questioned about this in a documentary that we watched. And he just keeps saying, it would be inappropriate for legal reasons for me to answer that question. That's so defensive and weird. Why would you agree to do a documentary in the first place if you're just going to be like, no comment? He said he did the documentary so that he could clear his name. He's not clearing his name, he's just evading the question.

He's clearly had a lot of legal counsel. Do not talk about this. Don't talk about this. And I think as weird as it makes him come across, Jesus Christ, it was the right thing to do. In any case, after seeing these wills and suspicions clearly rising, Saad started to investigate every aspect of their family's finances. And all the while, Zaid said that the brothers were living in the same house, not rowing, but just in silence, communicating purely through lawyers. That sounds like a living hell. And it's not even true. It's not even true. There was like total open conflict in the house because even the police were called once. Eventually Saad found another house in Chessington with no mention of his name on the papers. So once again we see an email from Saad to his friend saying I've been gathering information on Zaid and I'm shocked. Can he really be my brother? And

there was even more weird findings. The police find locks and extra security cameras and even a taser. Was he scared of Zaid? There's even more dodginess as the police make a fresh find. Cardam had another bank account, a secret Swiss bank account nonetheless. Cha-ching! In 1988, Cardam Al-Hilly had put £680,000 in this Genevan bank account and didn't touch it again after that. I feel like people who have £680,000 sitting in a bank account do not sign a blank will. I just don't believe that. A year before Cardam died, imagine his surprise, considering he hasn't touched it since 1988. That's older than me.

Imagine his surprise when he gets a note from the bank saying they had a request from England for a credit card to take money from that account. For a start, by this point Cardam is living in Spain. So why is somebody from England writing a letter to Geneva asking for a credit card so that they can access that bank? And they showed him the signature and it's so dodgy. But Cardam knows immediately it's zade zade had forged the signature written the letter to that bank asking for access to that bank account and again when questioned on this zade simply says it would be inappropriate for me to discuss this for legal reasons he's such a prick uh so two million pounds worth of assets is that worth killing your brother and his entire

family for some might say yes, I guess. He seems like a weird enough guy that that would be his decision. Because if he's living in a house with his brother and his family, his brother keeps digging into stuff and finding all of these things that he's been doing nefariously, I can kind of believe that he would want to pick him off. I think Saad was onto Saad, like you said. He uncovered his forgery, maybe found even more, and Saad killed Saad to cover up his crimes. So not just for the money, but for self-preservation. Why did he have all of this information on him? I think he went on holiday and took everything with him, maybe because he was worried Saad

would destroy it. It does make sense. That does make sense. I guess the question you could ask, why did he go on holiday in the middle of all of this stress? Well, apparently he wanted to go to that bank in Geneva. So let's consider the timeline. Saad calls the bank on Monday, telling them he's going to come there. And on Wednesday, he's dead. I really think this has to be it, doesn't it? It has to be. And I think when there's some sort of dispute of, you know, a fraudulent signature on a Swiss bank account that's just that amount of money, you have to go and sort that out in person. You cannot do that over the phone. So I can completely believe that he would just be like, you know what, like, I have to go to Geneva anyway. Everyone's so stressed. Why don't I just take, oh, the whole

family will drive through the mountains. I'm going to take all the shit with me so Zaid can't fuck with it. And we'll just reassess and like take a breath i can completely understand that and sad also put a block on the will while he was gone so nothing could be done while it was happening so zayd could have felt like all of this money is trapped we're just going to be trapped up in litigation for years we're going to go through the courts the money will get dwindled away just paying legal fees let's just kill him and i have to kill us our family because otherwise they could stand a claim to get that money. Exactly. It really feels like this is what it could potentially be. I'm heavily leaning towards

this one. Especially because, yeah, like the police investigated Mollier. There's nothing there. I think that Mollier was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can't really understand, I can't explain why he wouldn't have just turned around and cycled back down the mountain if he was lost and on the wrong bike. Zaid doesn't help because he just keeps adding to the suspicion. For example, he refuses, flat out refuses, to go to France and be questioned. And he just kept saying, I don't trust them. They were killed there. I wouldn't risk it. Anything can happen. I just feel like if you are under suspicion for murdering your brother's whole family and you didn't do it, you would be like, I will go anywhere. I'll speak to anyone. I will do

anything to clear my name on this. And what else is pretty odd is as soon as Zaid found out the family were dead, he went to the police and told them he was with a friend in England during the time of the killings and that him and Saad were totally fine. That is weird. To give like an unprompted alibi immediately, that's a guilty mind. And now all of this fraud and the resulting fallout was discovered, but nothing was released on it for nine months, which seems very suspect. The Swiss passed all of this information, absolutely everything, to the British and they didn't act on it for nine months. They could have done so much with that in nine months. They could have destroyed all of it, could have been tampered with, and the French were pretty pissed off about this because he's the number one suspect. Also, despite all of this,

eventually Zaid was arrested on conspiracy to murder, but he was never charged. Is this some sort of international diplomacy issue? Think about even in this country, we've talked about it before, like just crossing agencies, just crossing constabularies, just crossing districts and counties, like information sharing is poor in general. I don't think this was a conspiracy. I think it was poor information sharing. I think it was not a case that was handled very well. But the minute you do cross borders, you cross countries, it infinitely just becomes more difficult for things like this to run properly. And the frustrated French police, like you said, they put it. He was the only one with the motive. But if we took him to court tomorrow, he'd be acquitted. But he's the only one with the

motive. And this is the annoyance they felt because despite everything only coming out much later than when the Swiss had handed all this information over to the British, the fact of the matter is like, they just didn't have enough. Even if they'd taken him to court with all of that information, they felt convinced that he would still be acquitted. And Zaid's response when they say that he's the only one with a motive? You are the only one with a motive for killing your brother that's been established so far, and the suspicion rests on you. Well, what is a motive?

I mean, motive is one thing. Prove it. You don't prove a motive. You propose a motive. That's such a weird thing to say. You can't prove a motive. You just suggest one and then it helps with the, like, how the crime all falls into place. That's such a stupid thing to say.

Oh, prove my motive. I don't have to. It is a stupid thing to say, prove my motive. But when you think about legally, the burden of proof does lie on the prosecution they have to prove that that they did this and they couldn't and the french prosecution prosecutor was smart i take him to court now with what we have he will be acquitted and he'll go free and then they'll never be able to get him again so i think they let him go they continue to work on this case it's still being worked on

like right now they have enough to keep 70 detectives busy for a year Jesus Christ they're still following that many leads when he says I'm the only one with a motive I say to them prove it they're not proving the motive they need to prove that he did this and they can't

you know they do what they have to do and they let him go and Sade is so annoying he keeps saying he doesn't just lie low he doesn't just shut his mouth and get on with his life. He keeps saying that the French police are covering up for someone in France. But why would they do that? Like, it doesn't make any sense. Like, it's such a weird conspiracy. Despite the fact that they were still

after Zaid, they're still convinced that he's the number one priority for them. Three years ago, the police finally made a breakthrough. And stunningly, it seemingly had nothing to do with Zaid, unless we say that the person they find was potentially a hitman and Zaid had hired him, whatever. But to make sense of this lead, we have to go back to the day of the shootings, because that day, a forestry worker just minutes before the shootings saw a motorbike was pulling into the parking area. And it was a distinctive white and black bike, with a rider dressed all in black, wearing an unusual helmet with the visor down and crucially he saw this man arrive just before the al-hilis did so he's got to be the killer and then he also saw another car and this

is when it gets really interesting because that car it was a british car because it had a right hand drive and it was a gray 4x4 BMW being driven by someone who seems to have been an accomplice. And this forestry worker described the driver as slightly bald, dark skin, no glasses. That could be said. And I also think his alibi is bullshit. It's total bullshit.

And there are two colleagues who can back this story up because in a time frame that fits post-shooting these two colleagues see the biker two bends further up the mountain so he's fleeing the scene of the crime in the opposite direction and these two forestry workers actually even spoke to him because bikes aren't allowed to pass the parking spot so they told him to head back down and crucially they saw his face. But they didn't see the car. But there are several routes off the mountain.

So there's even a motorway nearby that leads you straight to Italy. But the police were also never able to trace the BMW. So just where is it? A bike, like they said, they weren't even allowed past Le Martinet, that little parking spot. That BMW is a 4x4 drive. There are routes on that mountain that couldn't be taken by another bike, couldn't be taken, you know, even by the forestry workers on the bikes they were on. But a 4x4, whoever was in that BMW could have gone anywhere. And also, if it's a British car, it's not going to be registered in France.

And the way they saw that biker two bends up, it was just by pure chance that they happened to be there. They're not monitoring all of the routes off that mountain. What's interesting is, when they asked Zaid about the BMW in the interview, he seems really nervous about it. And like I said, the description could have been him. But would he be that brazen? And now, as for the forestry workers who saw the biker's face. Firstly, if this guy was the killer, why is he taking his visor off and showing his face to these forestry workers?

Just like minutes away from where he's just shot a bunch of people it does i do quite enjoy though that like potentially this guy has just killed four people and then he gets stopped on the road for like a traffic violation by some forestry workers not even by like the army or the police that are not there it's like by some forestry workers for some reason if he is the shooter he shows his face to these guys and they help the police make an e-fit and it looks like and we'll post it on the instagram and facebook whatever like it looks like an older white man with a goatee wearing an unusual helmet this happened immediately immediately why did the police only release this photo a year after the murders that's crazy and it's the british police turn to be annoyed now

because they said that the french police went question why the hell didn't you release this until a year after they said it was because they were feared that the criminal after seeing his face all over the news would have gone into hiding what you don't want people to see the face in case he goes into hiding if it's a highly trained hitman who's on like a high level he probably doesn't care if people see his face because he's just that good at his job maybe maybe and it's more suspicious if someone stops you because you're going the wrong way to just drive off or keep your helmet on or like but they were just forestry workers they weren't like police what would they even been able to do he just turned back down and go back down the way he came well then he probably was just like they're just forestry workers. They weren't like police. What would they even have been able to do?

He'd just turn back down and go back down the way he came. Well, then he probably was just like, they're just forestry workers. It doesn't matter if they see my face. Maybe. But also, with the thing of him being a high-level, highly trained assassin. Say it sounds like the fucking cheapest man in the world. He's so petty and stingy. Would he have spent all that money killing Saad and his family?

I reckon he'd have gone for the cheapest option. Someone who was shit. I also think if a hitman has properly researched the crime scene, he's gonna know that he can't go up a certain road. Exactly. They eventually release it and it matches a former police officer, Eric DuVersault, who lived in a town called Latweel,

not far from the shootings. The police are very interested. He matches the biker at the scene and the unusual helmet was actually an old police helmet. So is this guy an ex-policeman? Yes. And what's more there was also a shooting in a campsite in Lutwil in November 2013, a year before they got him. And remember the Alhillies had also been staying at a campsite. However, since the arrest, he's been released without charge, despite his phone showing that it was indeed him, because he was in the exact right area.

Yeah, they matched him with the EFIT, the forestry workers can place him there. His phone data shows that he was in the area, but they cleared him and said he had nothing to do with the shootings. And he's a policeman, so he could have been a keen shot. He would have had training. Anyway, this case remains very much unsolved. And the seasoned French lead prosecutor who handled this case said it was the most complex case she had ever worked on. It makes absolutely no sense. It's curious. And I think we got quite obsessive while researching it. But it's's sad there's just been no justice and all

we can say is that the police are still looking into this and there is some good news i guess kind of the two daughters have since been given new identities given the circumstances and both are reported to be doing well but there's no closure in this case no absolution no justice we don't know who did this who do you think i think zade i think it was zade justice. We don't know who did this. Who do you think? I think Zayd. I think it was Zayd. I think, I don't think the man on the bike was anything to do with it. I think it has to have been Zayd. Like with that much, like if you were trying to like fuck things up for your brother that much, there's got to be a huge level of animosity there.

Oh, absolutely. It's just quite like an unsatisfying answer because he's still free and he's such a piece of shit. And there are still things that I can't quite make fall into place. And I'm just not sure how much of them I can write off as wrong place, wrong time. Yeah, how would Zaid have known, even if he had planned this, that they would be where they were? That's what doesn't make any sense. They seem to have been in such a random place where the shooting happened. The only other thing I can think is that this guy was there doing something

dodgy. They come across him and he kills them all. What would you have to be doing that's that bad to kill four people and brutally injure a child? I don't know. But please, as always, let us know what you think on the Facebook group. This is a really

difficult one. We love hearing your theories. Let us know and we'll see you next time. And you can follow us on everything at Red Handed The Pod. Bye. See you later. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983,

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