Pod Insights Park Predators The Shootings (Part 1) About this episode When an entire family is nearly annihilated while camping in the French Alps, it takes a team of international detectives to search for an elusive killer. Questions about the victims’ backgrounds swirl and rumors about who the gunman could be abound. This is Part One of a two-part series detailing the 2012 Lake Annecy murders in France.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today is a crime that I think is fair to say remains one of the most violent and baffling modern mysteries in Europe. It took place at Lake Annecy, France, in 2012. But the investigation spreads as far across the globe as Great Britain, the southern United States, and the Middle East. There isn't one victim, or two, or even three. There are six. Four were murdered, and two barely made it out alive. Before I get too far ahead of myself, though, it's important to understand the geographic area where this case happened.
0:41 Speaker 00 Lake Annecy is the second-largest lake in France, and it's situated in the Hauts-Savoie region in eastern France that borders Switzerland along the French Alps. Heaven's country, as I like to call it. A lot of tourists visit the lake because it has super-clean water and lots of opportunities to enjoy recreational activities. The website for Lakes France states that the lake draws its water from several surrounding rivers that flow from nearby mountains, as well as an underwater source more than 80 meters below the surface. Because the lake is surrounded by mountains, winds that whip through the area create a unique environment for aquatic sports. Fishing is a big thing at the lake, and rowing clubs are pretty popular, too.
1:24 Speaker 00 In September of 2012, though, the area made headlines for something far less idyllic: a massacre. A nameless and faceless gunslinger unleashed horror in a forest close to the lake and nearly annihilated an entire family who was out for a scenic drive and a cyclist who was getting his daily exercise. Everyone, and I mean everyone, who has studied this case can't quite make sense of it. Which is why today's episode is just part one of the story. Part two is coming next week, because there was just too much information to cover in a single episode. I want to give you a disclaimer upfront, that there are quite a few foreign names to me in this case, so bear with me, because I've tried my very best to make sure I pronounce them correctly.
2:09 Speaker 00 Something else to keep in mind as we go is that there are still a lot of unknowns with this case. The most critical of which is: who was the target of this brutal crime? Was it the family on vacation, or the local cyclist out for a leisurely ride? You might not come out of this story with the answer to that question, but I promise you, with every bit of new information you hear, you'll think you have. This is Park Predators.
3:17 Speaker 00 Around 3:45 PM on Wednesday, September 5, 2012, a British man named Brett Martin was cycling along a narrow one-lane road in the French Alps when another man on a bicycle whizzed past him. The area Brett was riding in was fairly remote, but every now and then, it wasn't uncommon to see another person come along, whether by bike or car. It was a beautiful roadway to take your time on and just revel in the scenery. Brett was a retired Royal Air Force pilot who owned a vacation home near Lake Annecy. So I imagine he was pretty familiar with the usual comings and goings on the roadway, and having another cyclist eclipse him wasn't something that he gave a lot of thought to. Shortly after the other cyclist went around him,
4:01 Speaker 00 a BMW passed by headed in the same direction, which was further up into the mountains. A short time later, Brett stopped pedaling as he rode up to a small gravel pull-off next to the roadway. There, laying on the ground near the edge of the road was the bicycle that Brett recognized as belonging to the man who'd just ridden past him. Initially, Brett thought the guy had just laid his bike on the ground because he was resting or possibly taking a break. But as he got closer, he noticed more things that appeared out of place. A young girl stumbled out into the roadway, and at first Brett thought she was just being silly and playing like kids do. But then, he saw her collapse. When he walked close enough to get a good look at her,
4:44 Speaker 00 he saw that she was lying down with severe trauma to her upper body.
4:50 Speaker 00 A few feet away from him and the girl was a maroon BMW with its engine revving and back end wrecked into some brush. The tires were still spinning and everything, and Brett immediately became concerned that the vehicle would dislodge and lurch forward and run over the injured little girl. So he moved her body a few feet out of harms way, rolled her onto her side into a recovery position, and tried to tend to her. This whole time, though, he thought whatever had happened was just the result of some sort of accident between the driver of the car and the cyclist. However, that assumption quickly vanished when he walked toward the cyclist laying on the ground a few feet in front of the car and realized the man had been shot more than once.
5:33 Speaker 00 That's when Brett realized nothing about the scene he'd just stumbled upon was normal. Inside the BMW, he saw two women and a man, dead from apparent gunshot wounds. He later described the scene to BBC News as something straight out of a movie. Lots of blood everywhere and a bunch of people with bullet holes in their heads. Brett broke a window of the BMW, turned the car off, and reported what he'd found to the authorities. By 3:48 PM, the police were aware of what was going on, and shortly after that, French investigators arrived and eventually more than 60 officers responded to the crime scene to help address the situation. They also blocked traffic in both directions on the one-lane road.
6:16 Speaker 00 The young girl who Brett had found injured was barely clinging to life. She'd been beaten and shot in one of her shoulders. But emergency responders were able to stabilize her and airlift her to a hospital. After that, investigators began to take in the carnage in front of them and noticed that the windshield of the BMW had bullet holes in it. That made sense, considering the fact that all the victims inside had clearly sustained multiple gunshot wounds, including execution-style shots to the head. Scattered on the ground around the car were a bunch of spent bullet casings. In total, the police determined that at least 21 shots had been fired into the maroon BMW.
6:58 Speaker 00 The male cyclist, who was also lying dead near the small gravel parking lot, had been shot at least five times in his chest and head. It appeared that he'd been in the process of running away from the shooter when the first two rounds hit him, because he had gunshot wounds to the front of his body and on his back. Authorities also noticed that the chain from his bike was not on the sprockets. So that detail caused some detectives to wonder if maybe the cyclist had dismounted his bike and had been right in the middle of trying to fix it when the shooter attacked him and the people in the BMW. Because the police had so much to process in such a short amount of time and so many victims and shell casings to examine, they initially told the press that they didn't
7:39 Speaker 00 know whether one or two or more offenders had carried out the crime. Around that same time, a French prosecutor for Annecy named Eric Maillot took charge of the investigation and called in a specialized forensics team to come to the scene and help local police. Unfortunately, though, that team was located eight hours away in Paris, so for the time being, local police had to essentially babysit the crime scene and make sure no one disturbed anything. While they waited for the specialists from Paris, they worked on identifying the victims inside the car. I'm not sure if police were able to do this by running the BMW's registration or what, but whatever they did, it became clear that the man in the driver's seat was 50-year-old Saad Al-Hilali.
8:23 Speaker 00 With him was his wife, 47-year-old Iqbal Al-Hilali, and Iqbal's 74-year-old mother, Sahela. The family was from Surrey, England, a suburb southwest of London. Saad had lived there for more than two decades and been married to Iqbal for nearly half that time. Together, they had two daughters, four-year-old Xena and seven-year-old Zainab. But police didn't learn that the couple had two children until several hours into the investigation. They became aware of that fact only after the manager of a campground down the mountain near Lake Annecy where the family had been staying phoned in to report that the Al-Hilali's had a younger daughter who appeared to be unaccounted for.
9:04 Speaker 00 Now, I have to assume this campground manager must have heard about the crime from someone or something, because otherwise, I don't know how they would have known that only one child in the family had been discovered at the crime scene. But whatever the case was, the information this person provided fundamentally changed investigators' understanding of what they might be dealing with. They quickly determined that seven-year-old Zainab was the girl that Brett Martin had found shot and badly beaten, but little Xena was still missing. This was concerning to the police because they didn't know if she'd gotten frightened by the shooting and ran off into the woods to hide somewhere, or if she'd possibly been abducted by her family's attacker. So in an attempt to figure out where she was,
9:46 Speaker 00 authorities conducted a search in the woods around the crime scene, but didn't find her. It was also around this time that they got the chance to speak with Brett Martin. He, of course, didn't know anything about another child and couldn't even begin to tell authorities where Xena was. By 11:30 PM that night, the forensics team from Paris had arrived and began to slowly approach the dead cyclist and Al-Hilal's car and collect the spent shell casings on the roadway. The team sort of worked in a circle and got closer and closer to all those central elements as they slowly pressed in on the main area where the crime had occurred. After a while, it was time for them to open up the doors to the family's BMW. And when they did,
10:28 Speaker 00 they immediately saw a flutter of movement beneath Iqbal's skirt. That movement was little Xena. She was alive and had been hiding in fear amongst her parents' and grandmother's bodies for hours.
10:47 Speaker 01 My name's Jack Wagner, host of Other World, a podcast featuring real people who experience something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained.
10:54 Speaker 02 I have no idea how I got there. I don't think I've ever seen anything that looks like this. It felt like electric stars on fire.
11:01 Speaker 01 I started Other World to take a grounded approach to the paranormal, help people tell their own stories, and encourage more to come forward. I certainly don't have the answers, but maybe one day we will. Join me as we explore our world's greatest mysteries. Listen to Other World now for free wherever you get your podcasts.
11:22 Speaker 00 When police realized late Wednesday night that four-year-old Xena Al-Hilal had been hiding in her family's shot-up car the entire time, it was shocking. Journalist Tom Parry, who worked for The Daily Mirror and later wrote a book about the crime, told producers for the docu-series Murder in the Alps that law enforcement finding Xena so many hours after responding to the crime scene seemed like a huge oversight. It was almost incomprehensible that the police had not looked for her sooner in the family's car. Tom said this apparent mistake raised a lot of questions about the leadership overseeing the case. And news outlets in the UK suggested that local authorities in France were not experienced enough
12:05 Speaker 00 to handle a criminal investigation of this magnitude. In response to the bombshell update about Xena and criticism from the press, French prosecutor Eric Maillot held a press conference to explain what was going on. By that point, news of the murders had reached far and wide, and hundreds of journalists from across the world had traveled to Lake Annecy to cover the story. Eric maintained that the reason Xena had not been discovered sooner was because she'd been completely obscured from view beneath her mother's skirt. When she was found, it was obvious that she'd been traumatized and couldn't communicate well with authorities. Right after being removed from the family's car, she was taken to a different hospital than her older sister and guarded round the clock by armed officers.
12:50 Speaker 00 Zainab, who by that point had been put into an artificial coma so she could recover, was also given police protection. The girls were the only living witnesses to the brutal crime, so police knew that they had to keep them safe because the shooter or shooters were still at large and there was legitimate concern that they could come after them.
13:10 Speaker 00 The day after the crime, Saad's brother, Zaid Al-Hilay, who also lived in Surrey, England, learned about the shootings after receiving a phone call from one of Saad's friends, who'd been unable to get in touch with Saad. While Zaid processed the horrific news about his brother and his family, more and more reporters started showing up at his flat and lining up outside the family's home. To grieve in privacy, he accepted police protection and moved into a law enforcement compound where two officers stood watch outside his room. British police had also stationed officers at Saad and Nick Ball's house in the Claygate Village of Surrey to keep it secure. Residents who lived nearby expressed that they were shocked to learn that something so terrible had happened to people they knew.
13:54 Speaker 00 One person told the Evening Standard, quote, "When I realized that the family who were shot lived here, I couldn't believe it. It is not the kind of thing you expect to involve people on your doorstep," end quote. According to Stephanie Boucher's reporting and the docu-series Murder in the Alps, on Friday, the third day of the investigation, autopsies on all the victims were done and authorities formally identified the cyclist who'd been killed at the same time as the Alhilees as 45-year-old Sylvain Molié, a French native who lived in the general vicinity of Lake Annecy with his partner Claire and newborn son. Sylvain also had two other sons from a previous marriage, but according to the source material,
14:36 Speaker 00 had recently taken paternity leave from his job as a welder and lived in the small town of Huguen, France, near Lake Annecy. That's where his partner Claire's family lived and owned a lucrative pharmacy business. It's unclear from the source material why it took what seems like slightly longer to officially confirm Sylvain's ID when it didn't take nearly that long to formally ID the Alhilees. But according to an article by the Evening Standard, it was Claire, his partner, who ultimately helped police determine that he was, in fact, the fourth victim. She'd visited a French police station after he didn't come home from his bike ride on September 5th, and when she showed a few officers a photo of him, the police were able to put two and two together rather quickly after that.
15:20 Speaker 00 I have to imagine, though, that Claire went to that police station on September 5th, or maybe like the next day, not three days after the crime. But who knows, maybe the police did have Sylvain tentatively identified before Claire showed up, but they just had to wait for an autopsy to be done to officially say it was him. Whatever the case was, the bottom line is Sylvain was determined to be the fourth victim, and it just took some time for police to finally be able to publicly confirm that. The next thing French investigators did on day three was remove the Alhilees' car from the crime scene and stage a walkthrough of the roadway and gravel pull-off area to get a better sense of where the shooter or shooters might have been standing when the attack happened.
16:02 Speaker 00 They also aimed to answer the most important question that was in everyone's mind: who had been the target of the shootings? Sylvain or someone in the Alhilees family?
16:13 Speaker 00 One strong theory that emerged early on was that Saad had been the target of an assassination. And his wife, children, mother-in-law, and Sylvan had only been targeted because they were collateral damage. In that scenario, one retired British detective who worked the case explained to producers for the docu-series Murder in the Alps that the shooter could have been alone and hiding in a small gully alongside the roadway that was across the street from the gravel parking lot. This gully would have kept the shooter out of sight until they were ready to commit the crime. In that theory, it was believed that Saad had parked his family's car in the small gravel lot, gotten out with Zainab, and after the shooter had fired a few rounds, Saad
16:56 Speaker 00 had been able to get back into the car and put it in reverse, but in his haste, had left his daughter by herself outside. When the family's car lurched into reverse, the back tire had gotten stuck in some brush or slight incline, which allowed the shooter to continue firing at Sylvan, who was presumed to be just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then the shooter made their way to the Al-Hilali's car. The British investigator who spoke with the docu-series described Saad and his family's final moments as probably looking straight out their windshield toward the roadway facing their assailant head-on. The killer then fired multiple rounds into their windshield and then went to each window and delivered fatal headshots at close range.
17:39 Speaker 00 Zainab's head injury was a bit of a curveball for investigators, though, because it wasn't a gunshot. Eric Mayo had explained during one of the first news conferences about this case that she'd suffered multiple fractures to her skull and just one shot to one of her shoulders. So it was kind of odd to the police that she'd been beaten when no one else had. One expert consultant told producers for Murder in the Alps that the blows to Zainab likely meant the killer had run out of ammunition or his firearm had malfunctioned by the time he made it to her. And because he couldn't shoot her, he had to resort to hitting her in the head, likely with the butt of the gun. The last shot authorities believed had been fired was a headshot to Sylvan.
18:22 Speaker 00 They surmised that the shooter may have seen him suffering from his initial gunshot wounds or become angry at him for trying to intervene, and then simply executed him to make sure he didn't survive. In the wake of the crime, his family agreed with that suggestion. They rarely spoke publicly about the crime, but did publish an obituary for him that indicated they thought he had simply been cycling in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it seemed he either interrupted or had been caught right in the middle of a sequence of events that had nothing to do with him. Now, you might be wondering, why would the Al-Hilis have been more of a target than Sylvan? Well, I'm glad you asked, because it's a long story and kind of wild.
19:07 Speaker 00 Turns out, there were a few facts about Saad that investigators suspected might have made him a likely candidate for a potential hit. One was that he worked as a design engineer for a company in England called Surrey Satellite Technology, which dealt with, you guessed it, satellite technologies. But the business also reportedly had ties to the nuclear industry as well. Investigators and the media wondered if maybe Saad had discovered something at his job that put him in danger. This kind of thinking prompted police to consider that Saad might have been a spy. The reason for coming to this conclusion was because he and his brother Zaid had immigrated to England from Iraq, back in 1971, when they were kids.
19:52 Speaker 00 So they were not British-born citizens, and that fact alone is something Zaid, Saad's brother and some of Saad's friends, told producers for Murder in the Alps, "The media really played up." And seemingly caused police to suspect that Saad had secrets in his life that involved his family's past in the Middle East. I personally find this position police took about Saad as super prejudiced and kind of ridiculous, but even if you take that out of the equation, there were other things that police discovered about Saad that made detectives wonder if there was more to him than met the eye.
20:27 Speaker 00 For example, according to what investigators learned after speaking with friends and neighbors, the Alhili's trip to Lake Annecy had been kind of last minute. On August 29th, so one week before the crime, the family had packed up their car and tow camper and left Surrey seemingly on a whim to go on holiday. They'd boarded a night ferry that took them from England into France and then drove to the French Alps and checked into a campground near Lake Annecy. They'd spent a few days visiting different areas around the lake and on the seventh day, they'd driven up into the mountains to presumably go sightseeing. It was during that drive that they'd been murdered. At the campground where they'd been staying, authorities searched their camper and I imagine they found all the usual personal belongings
21:10 Speaker 00 you'd expect a family of five to have while camping. But they also discovered a few other things that weren't so typical. For example, investigators found troves of personal documents, legal paperwork, computer hard drives and other digital devices stored inside the caravan. A good amount of that stuff contained a lot of information about Saad and things related to his work. A few of the hard drives police collected were even encrypted. Saad intentionally packing all this stuff to go camping with his family felt off to investigators. I would give Saad the benefit of the doubt and say that he may have brought those items to make sure they stayed safe, but investigators speculated that he'd planned to deliver or sell sensitive information to someone during his travels,
21:56 Speaker 00 but had been killed in the process. Again, that theory is sort of going back to this Saad might have been a spy. But it wasn't like investigators were pulling that theory out of thin air. They'd also noticed while inventorying the family's camper and car that all of their passports were missing. It was as if they'd literally just vanished. So that detail only further fueled investigators' suspicions that the family had been killed as part of some professional hit job. To make matters even more bizarre, journalists in England got wind of this rumor and began writing salacious articles that alleged the family had been watched by the Secret Service prior to their deaths, which was later proved to be untrue. At one point, on day four of the investigation,
22:41 Speaker 00 UK police brought a bomb squad to the family's home in Claygate and claimed that potential explosive substances had been found in a shed on their property. But that allegation also turned out to be completely false. Inside the house, investigators found a taser, which reporters wrote might have suggested that Saad had been fearful of some kind of imminent attack. But again, there was no proof that was true. Police also drilled open the family's safe, which Saad's friends said he'd recently purchased to store documents in. But I couldn't find any source material that reported what the contents of that safe were. The Murder in the Alps documentary also didn't go into detail about that. But while the press continued to spin stories about the crime,
23:25 Speaker 00 the investigation at the family's home, and the victims, investigators in France shifted their focus to interviewing the one person who could give them reliable information about the murders: Zainab. Six days into working the case, police learned that she was finally awake from her coma and able to talk.
23:49 Speaker 01 My name's Jack Wagner, host of Other World, a podcast featuring real people who experience something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained. I have no idea how I got there.
23:57 Speaker 02 I don't think I've ever seen anything that looks like this. It felt like Electric Stars on Fire.
24:02 Speaker 01 I started Other World to take a grounded approach to the paranormal, help people tell their own stories, and encourage more to come forward. I certainly don't have the answers, but maybe one day we will. Join me as we explore our world's greatest mysteries. Listen to Other World now for free wherever you get your podcasts.
24:25 Speaker 00 When seven-year-old Zainab awoke from her coma, she told specially-trained police detectives that she remembered some very specific things leading up to and during the murders of her family. She said that her dad had parked their car in the gravel lot and gotten out with her, but had almost instantly seen something that alarmed him. So he yelled for her to get back into their car, and then, all of a sudden, gunshots rang out. She told investigators that she remembered seeing a silhouette of a man with his face covered, standing nearby. And she referred to this individual as "the bad man." Unfortunately, she couldn't make out his face, likely because she was running, so she wasn't able to give authorities a more detailed description of what he looked like. But even with those details,
25:10 Speaker 00 the one thing she'd confirm for police was that one person had committed the crime, not two or more. Armed with this new information, French prosecutor Eric Maillot told the press that he was more convinced than ever that the key to figuring out the entire mystery was somewhere in England, not France. So just over a week into the investigation, Eric and his team of detectives traveled to Surrey to start interviewing as many people as they could about the family. They linked up with British police officials, and one of the first people they wanted to speak with was Zaid, Saad's brother. He voluntarily spoke with the French detectives and told them that he couldn't think of anyone who would want Saad dead. French authorities questioned him for hours
25:55 Speaker 00 about his relationship with his brother and whether there had ever been any disputes between them or anybody else. But Zaid kept saying the same thing: he didn't think Saad had any enemies. However, that's not the story investigators heard when they spoke with Saad's friends. Those folks told authorities that the brothers had actually had a falling out the previous year over an inheritance and property their late mother and father had left them. Now, this bit of information really changed the way Eric Mayotte and his team viewed Zaid as a potential suspect. So about a week after their first interview with him, they asked him to come back in for a second one. That conversation took place at a British police safe house and lasted roughly nine hours.
26:40 Speaker 00 To me, it seems like because Zaid was a British citizen, French investigators couldn't conduct this formal interview with him, which was more of an interrogation than an interview. Only British investigators could ask him questions. So Eric Mayotte's team of French investigators had to just sit in another room and listen in. They couldn't actively participate. Zaid was asked to provide an alibi for his whereabouts on September 5th, and he did. He said he'd hung out with a friend the entire day in southern England, and investigators were able to corroborate his story. So unable to really go much further with him, detectives decided to circle back to a few other leads, like trying to identify the type of firearm that had been used.
27:24 Speaker 00 According to the source material, about a week and a half after the crime, investigators determined that a Luger P0629 semi-automatic handgun had fired the rounds that killed all the victims. Authorities examined all the shell casings collected at the crime scene and a shard of wooden debris that they later determined belonged to the grip of a handgun. One expert who spoke to producers for Murder in the Alps stated that the piece of grip had Zainab's DNA on it and had apparently broken off the shooter's weapon when he struck her in the head. The Luger P0629 pistol itself was sort of a unique firearm. It was described as a "non-modern gun" that was known to be extremely accurate when fired at close range.
28:08 Speaker 00 It was a standard-issue gun given to individuals who'd served in the Swiss Army or police force, which meant there were potentially thousands of them floating around in the world. That presented a challenge to French investigators trying to figure out who might own such a weapon. But the one upside to finally narrowing down the type of murder weapon they needed to be looking for was that authorities realized the shooter had to have reloaded more than once while committing the crime. You see, this particular type of gun only held eight rounds. And because investigators knew that more than 20 shots had been fired at the crime scene, that meant the shooter had to have emptied his magazine, reloaded it, emptied it again, and then reloaded it.
28:51 Speaker 00 The fact that it was described as being a war relic type of firearm, which had the tendency to jam or malfunction, sort of pointed away from the suggestion that whoever the shooter was had experience as a professional hitman. Basically, this gun just wasn't going to be a contract killer's first choice. But for the time being, French investigators still had to consider that scenario as a possibility. In addition to learning all the new information about the type of gun the killer used, authorities also spoke with witnesses who'd been driving or present along the roadway that led to the crime scene. Unfortunately, the closest CCTV camera was more than 20 miles away from the crime scene, so really no use to police.
29:33 Speaker 00 But several witnesses had come forward and reported that they'd seen a few suspicious vehicles driving toward or away from the scene around the time of the murders. However, one vehicle in particular caught authorities' attention. A forestry worker who'd been near the crime scene said that they'd seen a black-and-white motorcycle cruising in the area around the time of the crime. The rider was reported to have been wearing all black, and when detectives reviewed Brett Martin's statements, they saw that he'd mentioned a similar sighting. About 10 minutes after this first forestry worker spotted the bike, two more forestry workers clocked it, and I guess because the mountain road was one lane, motorcycles weren't permitted.
30:15 Speaker 00 So the two forestry workers who saw the motorcyclist told him that he needed to make his way back down the mountain. They described him to police as a man with a beard. At that time, the police created a composite sketch of this motorcyclist based on the forest worker's memories of him. But French and British detectives decided not to release that sketch yet to the public. The only details they put out about this were that they wanted to speak with the motorcycle rider, as well as the driver of a green four-wheel-drive car that had also been seen driving in the area. I think it's safe to say at this point investigators believed the motorcyclist could have been the shooter. The further along they got in the case, the more they strongly began to suspect that they were dealing with a contract killing, and whoever the shooter was, he was skilled
30:59 Speaker 00 with a firearm and had managed to easily evade detection after the crime. Brett Martin, the man who discovered the crime scene, had told detectives that he never heard any gunshots ring out while riding his bike. That detail caused some investigators to wonder if perhaps the shooter had used a silencer, because it seemed highly unlikely that firing so many shots in a serene landscape like the mountains around Lake Annecy would go unnoticed. Especially when you consider the fact that Brett Martin had only been passed by them a short time before stumbling upon the crime scene. If the killer was this lone gunman acting as a hitman, then, like I mentioned earlier, that's why police believed there was still a credible threat against Zainab and Xena.
31:42 Speaker 00 After a few more days in the hospital, both girls were flown home to England, given false identities, put into foster care, and kept under police protection. Meanwhile, British and French detectives continued to look closely at the relationship between Saad and his brother Zaid. Because Eric Mayotte and his team were convinced that Zaid was hiding something and had orchestrated the shootings. He, of course, vehemently denied those accusations and said that the disagreement he'd had with Saad over their inheritance and their late parents' house was not a feud, but just a normal sibling disagreement. He said it was a mistake for authorities to spend time and energy looking into the matter because it would distract them from finding the true perpetrator.
32:27 Speaker 00 But the homicide detectives wouldn't let up. According to the docu-series Murder in the Alps, 23 days after the crime, several police officers searched Zaid's flat in Surrey. When they left, they took documents, personal belongings, money, and anything they believed might contain information about the financial issue between him and Saad. After reviewing all of that stuff, though, detectives didn't find anything that linked him to the crime. About a week after searching his place, investigators diverted their attention away from England and to a city much closer to the actual crime scene. According to news coverage, four weeks into working the case, authorities learned that Saad had made a phone call to a bank in Geneva, Switzerland,
33:10 Speaker 00 about an account in his late father's name that contained, wait for it, almost 1 million euros. According to the docu-series Murder in the Alps, Saad had placed that call to the Swiss bank just two days before his family was murdered. He told staff that he would be traveling from France to Switzerland to deal with something related to the account. Now, what's super interesting is that if you look on a map and follow the road the victims were killed on, it's almost around an hour from Geneva, more or less depending on traffic or how slowly you navigate the winding road. When police reviewed the history of the almost 1 million euro bank account, they learned
33:51 Speaker 00 that Saad and Zayed's dad, Kadhim Al-Hali, had opened it many years earlier and over time dumped sums of money into it. When detectives looked into the dad's background, they discovered that before he'd moved his family from Iraq to England back in the early 70s, he'd allegedly known key leadership figures in Saddam Hussein's regime. Yeah, this Saddam Hussein who spearheaded a takeover of Iraq's government. French prosecutor Eric Maillard told the press that in light of discovering this information about Saad's father's supposed ties to such a ruthless dictator, his team was going to spend a lot of time and resources trying to figure out if perhaps someone who'd held
34:33 Speaker 00 a deep grudge against Saad's father and the family for being able to flee Iraq with so much money was behind the Lake Annecy murders. The only problem was, the Iraqi government was not willing to play ball with the French investigative team because at the time, there was too much instability plaguing the country, and Iraqi leaders were in no position to have a foreign law enforcement agency swing by for a visit. Saad's brother Zayed was not disappointed that Eric Maillard couldn't pursue this lead any further because he said that the suggestion that his brother's death was somehow related to their dad's history in Iraq was completely unfounded. He told producers for Murder in the Alps that the only reason the bank account in
35:14 Speaker 00 Switzerland held so much money was because he and Saad's dad had built up a pension in it for a long time. It was not dirty money he'd absconded from Iraq with or laundered from Saddam Hussein.
35:27 Speaker 00 While that was all being sorted out, the Al-Hilal's bodies were flown back to the UK, and Zayed helped organize their funerals. After the burials, French police really ratcheted up the pressure on him as a suspect. Eric Mayotte and his team had had some time to thoroughly examine all of the documents and paperwork that officers had removed from Saad and his family's camper. And when they inventoried all of that stuff, they noticed there were two wills from Saad and Zayed's father. Those documents spelled out two very different instructions on how his sons were supposed to divvy up their inheritance. One will reportedly ensured that Zayed would get everything from the men's parents, but the other will stated that the estate would be split between the two brothers.
36:12 Speaker 00 French investigators believed that one of the wills was a fake. Evidence that supported this assumption were online messages Saad had sent to his friends prior to his murder, which indicated he believed Zayed had falsified the will that ensured the estate wouldn't be distributed equally. Zayed clarified to producers for Murder in the Alps, though, that Eric Mayotte and his team were mistaken. There had never been two wills. There had only been one will, the original will, that their father had made before he died. Zayed said that document only had his name on it, but his dad later asked him to add Saad's name to it. Before he got the chance to amend the original will, though, Saad had made a copy of it,
36:58 Speaker 00 which meant the two documents police found were the photocopy of the will that only Zayed's name was on and the amended version that had both brothers' names on it. It seemed to me that the second will was the active one, which ensured that both men would get equal parts of their parents' estate. But Zayed's explanation didn't hold much weight for French prosecutor Eric Mayotte and his team. Those investigators were convinced that he was intentionally downplaying how bitter his relationship with Saad had been leading up to the murders. Throughout the investigation, authorities had learned that the brothers had gotten into a physical fight at Saad's home about 11 months before the crime. And as a result of that dispute, Saad had replaced all the locks at his house.
37:43 Speaker 00 He'd also changed his security system and told neighbors that he was worried something would happen to him. French investigators could not continue to ignore their growing suspicions about Zayed. So on June 24, 2013, nine months after the shootings in Lake Annecy, British police arrested him for suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. He was taken to a British police station in Surrey and booked. A British detective who helped take him into custody told producers for the docu-series Murder in the Alps that UK police went along with the arrest, but not because they believed Zayed was guilty, but because, behind the scenes, they planned to prove that he was innocent.
38:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, you heard me right. Innocent. This detective said that British police arrested him because they believed it might be their best opportunity to clear his name once and for all. I know, super wild. But like I said at the start of this episode, nothing about this case is what it seems, including two people I've not spent much time talking about, but who authorities eventually discovered had a lot of secrets and potential enemies lurking in their pasts. And those two people are Sylvain Molié and Iqbal Alhili. Come back next week for part two, because, trust me, you're not going to want to miss
39:10 Speaker 00 it. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
39:40 Speaker 03 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
40:01 Speaker 04 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
40:08 Speaker 03 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
40:18 Speaker 05 That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun. I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
40:29 Speaker 03 I'm Ava Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous The Accidents Next The Shootings (Part 2) Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated