Pod Insights Park Predators The Shootings (Part 2) 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 Two 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 today's episode is part two of a story I started to tell you last week about the 2012 Lake Annecy murders in France. If you haven't already, go back and listen to part one. Like I mentioned before, there was no way I could cover this investigation in a single episode. So splitting it into two parts seemed like the best way to go as deep as I could on each detail without missing any ground I needed to cover. To briefly recap, it was Wednesday, September 5th, 2012, when an unknown shooter gunned down 50-year-old British citizen Saad Al-Hilly, his 47-year-old wife, Iqbal, and Iqbal's mother, Zahela.
0:43 Speaker 00 The family had left their campsite near Lake Annecy and gone sightseeing that afternoon. Saad had just parked the family's car in a small, remote mountain parking lot when shots rang out. A cyclist, 45-year-old French native Sylvain Molié, was also killed in the attack. French police initially believed he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was Saad who'd been intentionally targeted. The only survivors were the Al-Hilly's two daughters, 4-year-old Zina and 7-year-old Zainah. Because the family was from England, French authorities had to work closely with British investigators to try and figure out what exactly happened. The French zeroed in pretty quickly on Saad's older brother, Zayed Al-Hilly, as a suspect
1:27 Speaker 00 because of an ongoing inheritance dispute between the two men. However, the physical evidence in the case and witness testimony didn't point to Zayed as the trigger man. Despite that, though, nine months after the shootings, British authorities arrested him for conspiracy to commit murder. But those detectives working the case alongside the team from France weren't totally sold on that theory. They believed that the elder Al-Hilly brother was most likely innocent. In fact, they pondered whether everyone had been looking in the wrong direction the entire time. This is Park Predators.
2:45 Speaker 00 In May 2013, eight months into the Lake Annecy quadruple murder investigation, a British investigator named Mark Preston took charge of the British police's side of things. As senior investigating officer, he wasn't convinced that Eric Maillard, the French prosecutor spearheading the investigation, had made the best call by publicly labeling Zayed Al-Hilay as the alleged mastermind behind the crime. At no point during the investigation had police found a shred of evidence linking him to the murders. And even when they probed the financial dispute between him and Saad about their late parents' estate, there was nothing that rose to the level of motive, at least not that Mark saw.
3:29 Speaker 00 When he came into the investigation, he entered with eyes wide open and approached everything with a fresh perspective. His main goal was to look at the crime from all angles and look for leads that had possibly been missed, and even theories that no one had thought of. One of the first things Mark did was visit the crime scene in the mountains near Lake Annecy. And going there in person really left an impression on him because he was able to see for himself just how small and secluded the crime scene was. He found himself asking several critical questions, like, for example, how, if the shooter had laid in wait like everyone up until that point had assumed, had he known that the victims would be there in the mountains and on the remote one-lane road on the afternoon
4:14 Speaker 00 of September 5? If you remember from last episode, the Alhili's whole holiday to France had reportedly been planned at the last minute. They'd been vacationing in and around Lake Annecy for several days leading up to September 5th. So Mark wondered, why hadn't the killer struck during one of those times if Saad was really his target? Had the shooter been able to predict the family's movements? Mark didn't think that was the case. The family's drive to sightsee in the French Alps and possibly cross the border into Switzerland had seemingly happened on a whim, which kind of made it either impossible or sheer luck that the gunman had been able to target them while they were in transit. Mark's big question boiled down to this:
4:58 Speaker 00 How did the shooter know that the Alhili's or Sylvain Molié would be where they were on the afternoon of September 5th? Had he followed one of the parties there? Had he laid in wait ahead of time? If the answer to one or both of those questions was yes, then Mark's next questions were: how and why? Police's initial assumption all along had been that the shooter had hidden himself in a nearby gully and waited for the precise moment that Saad exited his family's car. But after spending time observing and studying the crime, Mark no longer believed that was the case. He told producers for the docu-series Murder in the Alps that when he visited the crime scene, he realized the nearby gully was too low
5:43 Speaker 00 and wouldn't have been a good hiding place for the shooter because it didn't have a clear line of sight of the roadway or the small parking lot across the street. He also said that there were a number of spent bullet casings concentrated in one particular spot on the ground, right in front of a section of the tree line located somewhat diagonally from the pull-off, which in his opinion had actually been where the killer stood at the start of the attack. If that was the location where the shooter had started firing first, then Marc realized the Al-Hilis would have been the furthest distance from him when he started shooting. Marc began to wonder if perhaps Saad had never been the killer's target, but instead Sylvain Molié, the French cyclist.
6:28 Speaker 00 Basically, when Marc reassessed a lot of things about the crime scene, including all the victims' gunshot wounds and where their bodies had ended up, he'd come to the conclusion that there was no doubt Sylvain had been the first person shot. And not only that, he'd been shot more times than anyone else at the crime scene. According to the source material, Saad, Iqbal, and Iqbal's mother had each suffered anywhere from three to four gunshot wounds, but for sure at least one to each of their heads. Sylvain, on the other hand, had been shot at least five times: twice in the front, a few times in the back, and then a final gunshot wound to his head, which was described as being through his eye, an execution-style wound.
7:12 Speaker 00 At least one source I read stated that he was also reported to have injuries from the family's car striking him when it spun out of control after the shooting. But taking all of this into consideration, Marc's theory that he'd been the target all along and not Saad Al-Hilayi very much went against what French prosecutor Eric Mayotte had been telling the press since day one. It seems like it was at this point in time, so roughly 10 months or so into the investigation, that the relationship between French investigators and detectives from England, like Marc, really began to deteriorate. Zayed Al-Hilayi was still maintaining his innocence and tried his darndest to get investigators from both countries to stop focusing on him,
7:56 Speaker 00 and instead, look at other avenues of investigation. After his arrest, he was questioned for a full day about his suspected role in the killings. But his lawyer advised him not to comment on anything being asked of him during that interrogation. So authorities got nothing, and ultimately, he was released on bail while their investigation continued. A few months later, on the one-year anniversary of the crime, Eric Mayode held a press conference alongside the investigating team from England, which included Mark Preston. Eric told reporters that the case was complex and probably going to take a long time to solve. He emphasized, like he'd done all along, that the key to the mystery was somewhere in the Al-Hilly family's background.
8:39 Speaker 00 He doubled down that they were the intended targets, not Sylvain Molié. He also insisted that many signs pointed to Zaid Al-Hilly as the orchestrator of the crime, despite there being no evidence to back that claim up. Eric told the press that his team had found circumstantial evidence that strongly suggested Saad had lived in fear of his brother and their relationship was much worse off than Zaid would admit. But Mark Preston believed Eric's comments at the press conference were problematic, maybe even outright inappropriate. He told producers for the docu-series Murder in the Alps that it wasn't right for Eric to state so matter-of-factly that Sylvain Molié was not the intended target.
9:23 Speaker 00 Because, in reality, Sylvain's life had never been fully investigated. Turns out, the 45-year-old had a decent amount of alleged personal drama that Mark thought could have made him a prime target for murder. According to reporting by Harriet Alexander for The Sunday Telegraph, at the time of his death, Sylvain had just taken a long leave of absence from his job working as a welder, which The Sunday Telegraph explained was actually paternity leave since he'd just welcomed a son with his new partner a few months before the murders. But what that source and others explain in more detail is that Sylvain wasn't just some guy welding pipes or doing average metalwork. The factory he worked at was actually owned by a nuclear company
10:07 Speaker 00 and produced components for the nuclear industry, a fairly unique and, I imagine, sensitive trade. So naturally, that connection made some folks wonder if maybe he'd been killed over something related to his employer. But Sylvan's loved ones, when they did briefly speak to the press, denounced such theories. One of his aunts told the Sunday Telegraph that people suggesting he was somehow involved in secret projects or knew sensitive information and that's what got him killed was nonsense. She described him as a quiet guy who lived a fairly uncomplicated life. She remarked, quote, "He had no enemies. He was very friendly and charming. There's no way that he was the cause of all this."
10:50 Speaker 00 She later continued, "The only thing we know for sure is that Sylvan wasn't up to anything strange, but I don't think we'll ever know what really happened." End quote. Despite his family's doubts that he was the intended target, rumors continued to swirl about Sylvan's employer and his personal life. For example, there was one theory that speculated maybe he and Saad had arranged to meet up and pass off secret information, you know, since both of their jobs tangentially involved the nuclear industry. But of course, that was all just conjecture. Nothing definitively backed that theory up. And according to an article by Le Parisien, that sort of conflicted with some information about Sylvan's movements and communications on the day of the attack.
11:34 Speaker 00 According to that publication's news coverage, around 3:28 PM, so minutes before the shooting, Sylvan's ex-wife and the mother of two of his sons had called him twice to discuss something about one of their boys' schools. The first call, Sylvan didn't answer, but the second one, he did. The couple talked briefly, and according to the coverage, Sylvan was said to be out of breath during the conversation. But I couldn't find anywhere in the source material where exactly Sylvan was when that call happened. Like, was he pulling over into the gravel lot where he was about to be killed? Did his ex-wife literally talk to him seconds before he was shot? I just don't know. But there was another theory, which Zaid Al-Hilly, as well as British investigator Mark Preston,
12:19 Speaker 00 emphasized to producers for the docu-series Murder in the Alps, that seemed to have a bit more teeth to it. And it involved reported beef between Sylvan and his partner Claire's family.
12:32 Speaker 00 According to the source material I read, Claire came from a wealthy family who owned a pharmacy business in the Hauts-à-Voie region. That company was reported to be worth more than 1 million pounds, which is like somewhere in the ballpark of 1.3 million US dollars at today's exchange rate, not taking into account inflation. Interviewees told producers for Murder in the Alps that Sylvain had apparently become more and more reliant on Claire's family's wealth, even to the point where he'd allegedly used money from her inheritance to purchase the expensive bike he was riding on the day he was killed. The Evening Standard reported that things had kind of been tumultuous between him and Claire's family about the fact that the family's pharmacy business was going to be transferred
13:16 Speaker 00 to her, which in turn meant proceeds from it would trickle down to Sylvain because of his relationship with her. Now, in the wake of the shootings, Claire's family was noticeably quiet, like legit radio silence. They didn't do any interviews and hired a lawyer to monitor the press. Journalists definitely noticed that the family was keeping an unusually low profile, and they wanted to know why. The family's lawyer later explained that the reason Claire had never issued a public statement was because she didn't want to interfere with law enforcement's investigation, and she genuinely wanted everyone to give her and her family privacy. British detective Mark Preston told producers for Murder in the Alps that while looking
13:57 Speaker 00 more closely into Sylvain's background, his team received the full ballistics report from the French investigative team, and it painted a profound picture of just how intentional the shots fired at Sylvain had been. Mark said that the angle of the first shots to him indicated that he had been bending down, possibly sorting something out with his bike chain, when the shooter stood right in front of him and fired two shots. After getting hit, Sylvain had turned and seemingly tried to run away, but had taken more shots to his back, which caused him to collapse in the gravel parking lot, right in the same area where the Alhilese had parked their car. The last shot Sylvain sustained was to his head, and Mark described it as an execution-style
14:42 Speaker 00 shot, like it was almost personal. Unfortunately, though, because more than 20 shots had been fired at the crime scene in such a short amount of time, it was impossible to determine with any kind of certainty whether Saad had been hit first, or if it was Sylvain who'd taken the first shot. After Mark did a thorough review of the ballistics evidence, he met with French officials and asked straight up if they were going to dig further into Sylvain's life to see if there was anyone who might have had a grudge against him. He told producers for Murder in the Alps that Eric Mayotte and his team assured him they were doing that, but Mark said he never got the vibe that was actually happening. Around this time, it was announced that Zainab and Zina Alhili would be raised in Britain
15:25 Speaker 00 by an aunt and uncle on their mom's side of the family. A judge had ruled it was in the girl's best interest to grow up with relatives by their side. BBC reported that they were both still living under aliases the government had given them after the murder, since the killer was still at large. French authorities, though, had also explored another avenue of investigation, thousands of miles away in New Orleans, Louisiana, where FBI agents were conducting their own investigation into another member of the Alhili family.
16:02 Speaker 01 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit?
16:07 Speaker 02 Where you hear a courtroom term and think, wait, what does that actually mean?
16:11 Speaker 01 I'm Eliza Orlands, career public defender.
16:13 Speaker 02 And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst.
16:16 Speaker 01 And on our brand new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about.
16:22 Speaker 02 No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
16:37 Speaker 00 According to reporting in the docu-series Murder in the Alps, not long after news broke about the Lake Annecy shootings, a woman named Judy Weatherly, who was living all the way in Louisiana, received a phone call and text from someone claiming to be with the FBI. Turns out, the person calling and texting her was a legit FBI agent, and they asked Judy if she'd heard anything about the death of her former sister-in-law, Kelly Thompson. Judy was completely caught off-guard by the inquiry, because she hadn't seen or heard from Kelly in years. In July 1999, Kelly had married Judy's brother, Jim Thompson. But after about 18 months or so together in a relationship that was described as "good"
17:19 Speaker 00 and "loving," the couple's marriage abruptly ended when Kelly left Louisiana and moved overseas. Judy told producers for Murder in the Alps that she was sad when Kelly left, because the two had become friends. Even more puzzling was that Kelly had never explained why she'd taken off so abruptly. In 2012, when the FBI agent informed Judy over the phone that Kelly had been killed in a really horrible way in France, she was heartbroken. And also kind of confused, because she was also informed that the name "Kelly Thompson" was not her former sister-in-law's true identity. Yep, you guessed it, Kelly Thompson was in fact Iqbal Al-Hilly.
18:04 Speaker 00 According to the available source material, Iqbal had moved to America from Iraq in the late 1990s and made a life for herself in Louisiana. This happened several years prior to her meeting and marrying Saad. While living in Louisiana, she'd met Jim Thompson and gotten married. During her time in the US, she'd worn traditional Western clothing and been a much different person than who her neighbors and friends in England would eventually describe her as. Apparently, Iqbal was just much more quiet and reserved while married to Saad, and her friends in England described her as more mindful of her Iraqi and Muslim heritage. But the same couldn't be said when she'd been married to Jim in Louisiana. Anyway, when British and French investigators looking into the murders
18:49 Speaker 00 found out about her prior life and identity in America, they had to at least entertain the idea that maybe someone in her past might be involved with or responsible for her and her family's murders. I mean, I imagine it had to have felt super sus to police that she'd called herself Kelly Thompson while living in the States and been essentially a completely different person for a few years. Then, all of a sudden, abandoned that life and moved to England. Detectives' first stop was looking at her ex-husband, Jim Thompson. Investigators wondered if maybe he'd stalked Iqbal after their divorce and enacted revenge for her leaving him. Turns out, Jim had a thing for motorcycles and shared similar features to the unknown
19:30 Speaker 00 man that witnesses had seen riding a motorbike in the vicinity of the crime scene. But that theory or any emerging suspicions about Jim quickly fizzled out because authorities learned that he'd actually died of a reported heart attack, get this, on September 5th, 2012. The same exact day as the Lake Annecy murders. I know, wild, right? Investigators thought that was a strange coincidence, too. Perhaps too coincidental. So authorities told producers for Murder in the Alps that they were then forced to investigate whether or not Jim's untimely death was possibly linked to the Lake Annecy case. Maybe Iqbal had been the target of the crime all along, and whoever was responsible had
20:14 Speaker 00 needed to eliminate Jim as well because of something she might have shared with him during their brief marriage. You see, Jim had never had any postmortem tests done after his death, like an autopsy. As far as everyone in his life was concerned, he'd simply died of a heart attack. A few of his friends thought that him not having postmortem tests was a bit unexpected, but they sort of just let it go. However, I assume overseas investigators really saw these circumstances as "too bizarre to believe." So they asked Jim's children, who were from a previous relationship, if they could exhume his body to have it tested for factors which may have contributed to him having a heart attack. But his kids denied that request.
20:58 Speaker 00 They didn't think Jim had been murdered and weren't about to disturb their dad from his final resting place on a "what if." So in the end, investigators couldn't probe Jim's death any further, and that avenue of investigation came to a halt.
21:13 Speaker 00 By January 2014, 16 months after the murders, things in the investigation were pretty much at a standstill. Police hadn't made any significant progress, and Saad's brother was out on bail, still suspected of being involved in the crime, despite there being no concrete evidence against him. His situation changed, though, a little over two weeks into the new year, when Mark Preston and his team of investigators in Britain officially cleared Zayed of any involvement in the crime and dropped the conspiracy-to-murder charge against him. Zayed was obviously elated by the news that he was no longer facing criminal charges, and I imagine relieved to know that authorities from Britain were officially swinging their focus off of him and onto whoever was actually responsible
21:56 Speaker 00 for killing his relatives and Sylvain Molié. The French, however, still considered him a suspect and told the press as much. Shortly before all of this was announced, French investigators had decided to publicly release the composite sketch of the mysterious motorcyclist who'd been seen riding in the mountains on the day of the crime. He was described as having a goatee-style beard and wore a motorcycle helmet that opened from the side. When French authorities did some digging into the helmet's fairly unique way of opening, they learned there had only been 8,000 of them ever made. To probe the matter further, authorities consulted with customers who'd purchased the helmets like it, as well as people in the motorcycle industry. But unfortunately, detectives were unable to track down every helmet,
22:41 Speaker 00 and thus, they were still out of luck when it came to finding their suspect. So, British investigator Mark Preston refocused his energy on trying to learn more about the alleged murder weapon, which I mentioned in Part 1, was determined to be a Luger P0629 semi-automatic pistol. Now, even though that handgun was a standard-issue firearm given to people who enlisted in the Swiss Army or police force, it wasn't a modern gun, which to Mark indicated it was probably owned by someone local who'd kept it in their family, maybe as an heirloom, and likely had prior police or military experience. A former Royal Marine who consulted on the case and spoke to producers for Murder
23:23 Speaker 00 in the Alps said he didn't think the shooter was a professional hitman, mostly because he'd made a lot of what appeared to be mistakes at the crime scene. For example, this consultant said that regardless of whether Saad was the target or Sylvain, the shooter had allowed Saad enough time to get into his car and nearly get away, which according to this expert, wasn't something a professional killer would have let happen. There was no doubt the shooter knew his way around a firearm, though, but why exactly he'd chosen to use the Luger PO629 was a question no one could answer. Still, Mark couldn't stop thinking that the offender might be much closer to home than investigators initially thought.
24:05 Speaker 00 And turns out, that's exactly what his counterparts in the French police force thought, too.
24:16 Speaker 01 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit?
24:21 Speaker 02 Where you hear a courtroom term and think, wait, what does that actually mean?
24:24 Speaker 01 I'm Eliza Orlandz, career public defender.
24:27 Speaker 02 And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst.
24:30 Speaker 01 And on our brand-new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about.
24:36 Speaker 02 No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
24:51 Speaker 00 In February 2014, several months after authorities decided to release the composite sketch of the mysterious motorcycle rider that witnesses had seen in the general vicinity of the crime scene, they got some new information which prompted them to arrest a 48-year-old Frenchman. I know, that kind of feels out of the blue, and you probably have all the questions, because I did, too. But apparently, this guy shared a remarkable resemblance to the motorcyclist in the composite sketch. And when it went out to the public, the police got a few calls about him. He had a home mere miles from the crime scene, owned a motorcycle, and had a large collection of firearms, one of which was reported to be an antique Luger pistol.
25:34 Speaker 00 When detectives looked into his cellphone records for September 5th, 2012, things began looking even worse for this suspect. The records showed that he'd been in the general area of the crime scene on the day the Alhilees and Sylvan were murdered. Shortly before the shootings, he'd left his job as a municipal police officer in a small French village, and even though the source material doesn't outright say this, I think law enforcement's assumption was that the circumstances in which he departed his prior job were not ideal, and had affected him possibly to the point where he'd lashed out in violence. John Litchfield reported for The Independent that while working as a police officer, this suspect had been accused a few times of acting violently toward foreign tourists,
26:18 Speaker 00 both verbally and physically, as well as making racist remarks. And because the Alhilees were visiting from England when they were killed, this detail was probably something investigators made note of when evaluating him as a potential suspect. Eager to learn as much as they could about this suspect, investigators searched three houses associated with him, and even used metal detectors in a garden on one of his properties. But they didn't find anything that connected him directly to the crime. There was no murder weapon, no forensic evidence, no clothing, nothing. When detectives took a closer look at his motorbike and helmet, they discovered that neither were a match for the style of bike and helmet that witnesses near Lake Annissey had seen the mysterious motorcyclist wearing on the day of the crime.
27:04 Speaker 00 This guy's Luger pistol also ended up not being the same as the murder weapon. So after a day or so of being questioned and scrutinized by police, he was released and no formal charges were ever filed against him. Interviewees who spoke to producers for the docu-series Murder in the Alps said that because this man's real name was briefly associated with the case, it pretty much destroyed his life. And I can absolutely see why. I mean, stories about this crime were everywhere. Being accused of committing such a horrible thing, even if for like a day or two, would certainly change a lot about a person's life. That's one of the reasons I'm choosing not to say his name, because it's just not appropriate to keep perpetuating the toll this has taken on his life.
27:49 Speaker 00 The next interesting twist in the case came in June 2014, one year and nine months after the murders. Peter Allen reported for the Evening Standard that a 50-year-old man who knew Sylvain Molié had been found shot dead in his home. According to the news coverage, this guy was a former French soldier and trained marksman who police had questioned several months into their investigation, but never arrested. When authorities discovered this man's body, they also found evidence that indicated some sort of violent disturbance had gone down in his apartment. And he'd left a six- or seven-page note explaining how disturbed he'd been by the police's questioning in the Lake Annecy case, because it had made him feel like a suspect.
28:33 Speaker 00 Other than that one article by the Evening Standard, though, I didn't find any other reporting about this ex-soldier's death, the police's investigation into what happened to him, or anything more than his connection to Sylvain, other than he somehow knew Sylvain's family. According to another article by the Evening Standard, on the two-year anniversary of the crime in September 2014, French prosecutor Eric Maillot told reporters that additional forensic testing had been done on evidence in the case, as well as a review of thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews. But no avenues of the investigation seemed particularly promising. He remarked, quote, "The further we advance, the less conviction we have.
29:16 Speaker 00 It lacks the element of a witness which allows everything to be opened up. We have tried everything possible, but perhaps we're in the presence of the perfect crime." End quote. He communicated in clear terms that it could take years to get to the bottom of what really happened. A few months later, in May 2015, British investigator Mark Preston and his team did what he described as a full review of the case, to see if there were any leads they could rule out. At that point, the murders were still unsolved and not much progress had been made. During this review, Mark was finally able to dismiss the theory that Saad's job in the satellite technology industry was somehow linked to the crime.
29:58 Speaker 00 Turns out, his employer had revealed that nothing Saad worked on was earth-shattering or allowed him access to sensitive information. He'd mostly been a design engineer for basic technology put into commercial aircrafts, not components of nuclear warheads or anything espionage-esque like that.
30:18 Speaker 00 Something else interesting Mark's team uncovered while doing their case review was that the Alhili's passports, you know, the ones that everyone had been told all along, had just vanished. Well, they were actually safe and sound, in custody, at a forensics lab that was utilized by the French police. Mark Preston told producers for Murder in the Alps that the family's passports had actually been in France all along, since day one, the entire time. They were discovered in Saad's jacket pocket, which had been removed from his body during his autopsy. In response to this revelation, French prosecutor Eric Maillard said that such an oversight was due to what he described as "clumsiness by the
31:00 Speaker 00 initial investigators." But I need to pause on this for a second, because if you look at all the early statements Eric Maillard made during his many press conferences, it's very clear that the French emphasized the missing passports were kind of like proof that a lone professional killer had carried out these murders. Basically, the assumption was that the shooter had intentionally taken the family's passports as some sort of trophy or receipt that he'd eliminated the correct targets. But at least some people on the French investigative team knew that the passports had never been taken. I guess there's a world in which that information just wasn't communicated to Eric Maillard, or whatever, but still,
31:42 Speaker 00 like, it's so strange to me that this narrative about the passports being missing endured for as long as it did, when, like, in the end, it was completely unfounded. Anyway, when all this was said and done, and Mark Preston's team from Britain wrapped up its review of the case, he wrote up a long report to the French that concluded investigators from both countries had been looking in the wrong direction for nearly three years. He emphasized that French police should 100% look more into Sylvain Molié's life, because Mark felt in his gut that the cyclist was the key to the whole thing. He believed that the Al-Hilayi family was collateral damage in an assassination plot against Sylvain that had gone completely off the rails.
32:26 Speaker 00 He told journalist and author Tom Parry, quote, "My view is that it was to cover and confuse any investigation that Molié was the target. That's why the gunman used so many bullets. Whoever was in that car park was going to die." He later continued, "I do think that the depth to which we delved into the Al-Hilayis got to the point where we could absolutely prove that they were not the targets. With Molié, there were still questions." End quote. However, Marc's recommendation that the cyclists be investigated more was apparently ignored by Eric Mayotte and the rest of France's investigative team. By that point, the amount of French personnel assigned to work the case had been scaled
33:09 Speaker 00 back from roughly 80 investigators to just 20. But in December 2015, more than three years after the murders, John Litchfield reported for The Independent that French authorities had launched an international search for roughly 56,000 Luger P0629 pistols. Eric Mayotte told the press that even though the task of trying to track down each one of those guns and compare it to ballistics from the crime scene was going to be massive, they had to try. French officials also announced that advances in forensic testing had revealed two unidentified DNA profiles on the Al-Hilayi's BMW. One of those profiles had come from the vehicle's front bumper, and the other was found beneath the driver's seat floor mat where Saad had been sitting.
33:53 Speaker 00 Neither of the DNA profiles belonged to the victims or anyone in the European criminal database at the time. At last check, investigators are still working to determine who they belong to. In 2016, Eric Mayotte stepped down as Annecy's prosecutor, and three years later, in 2019, Marc Preston retired from the Surrey Police Force. By 2017, French authorities had to admit publicly that they didn't have a working theory on the case, even after five years of looking at it from so many different angles. Fast forward to 2020, though. And news publications reported that British authorities intended to re-interview Zainab and Zina to try and figure out if there were any details from the day of the crime
34:37 Speaker 00 that the girls remembered, but had been unable to recall back in 2012, 2013, or closer to the time of the killings. In 2020, Zainab would have been a teenager, and Zina was, I think, 12 years old, if my math is right. An article by Le Parisien reported it took until June 2021 for British police to actually interview Zainab, though. At that point in time, she was 16 years old. Much of her memory of the day her family was attacked was the same as it had always been, but I guess now that she was older, she could recall some details with a bit more clarity. She told investigators that she remembered her and her father got out of their car, and almost right away, she saw a cyclist stopped on his bike, who we know is Sylvain.
35:22 Speaker 00 But then, just as everyone else in her family was about to exit their car, gunshots rang out. She said that her dad Saad and mom Iqbal hollered for her to get back into the car immediately, but she didn't have time to. The next thing she remembered was being grabbed from behind by a fair-skinned man, and she knew what race he was, because at that point in time, his hands were bare, meaning he obviously wasn't wearing gloves when he attacked her. The only other major detail Zainab could recall was that the assailant wore a leather jacket and pants. Another small glimmer of hope came in 2021, when authorities looked into alleged connections between a documented group of hired contract killers who had ties to Lake Annecy.
36:06 Speaker 00 This "Hit Squad," as it was dubbed, was comprised of former and active French intelligence agents, some of whom had been arrested for unrelated crimes and confessed to assaulting or spying on specific targets as part of their contract-killing work.
36:22 Speaker 00 No one in this group mentioned the Al-Hilis or Sylvan by name, but authorities definitely speculated that members of the squad could have been behind their deaths, mostly because ammunition that was compatible with a Luger 20629 pistol had been found at one of the hit squad members' houses. In January 2022, a 58-year-old motorcyclist, who the source material only refers to as Pierre C., was taken into custody and questioned about the crime. But he was later released due to lack of evidence. Apparently Pierre had actually been taken into custody once before, like way back in 2015, because it was determined that he was the motorcyclist who police had been trying to identify from their composite sketch.
37:07 Speaker 00 But turns out, he'd gone hang gliding and then gotten lost in the French Alps while riding his motorcycle on the day of the crime, and seemingly had nothing to do with the murders. A few months later, in June 2022, as the 10-year anniversary of the crime was nearing, Channel 4's docu-series Murder in the Alps aired, which is a piece of source material I've referred to a lot throughout this episode and Part 1. The series was the first time Zayed Saad's older brother had taken the opportunity to publicly give his side of the story in a vulnerable and raw way. And audiences really got what I think is the most comprehensive understanding of the details of the case from his perspective, and really all sides. He used the docu-series to dispel once and for all
37:51 Speaker 00 any suspicions that he was involved in the crime. He emphasized that he believes the shooter's target was Sylvan Molié, not Saad, not Iqbal, or anyone else. He also accused the French police of a cover-up. He told Radio Times reporter Catherine Knight, "I think they knew from day one what happened, and they have hidden it. The whole thing was a deception. It means it's very difficult to move on sometimes. I still live it every day, and my brother is with me every day."
38:26 Speaker 00 Around that same time, so summer 2022, French publication Le Parisien released a series of articles that recapped the various facts of the case and reported that the Annecy Prosecutor's Office had officially requested the case be sent to a newly-created cold case branch for serial and unexplained crimes. By May 2024, French investigators had sent off a few cigarette butts found at the crime scene: Sylvain's clothing, shoes, and bike helmet, and Zainab's clothing and shoes, to undergo DNA analysis. Authorities also resubmitted the piece of grip from the murder weapon, which had previously only indicated Zainab's DNA was present. Police were hopeful that more sensitive testing methods would deliver new results.
39:10 Speaker 00 Le Parisien's coverage in May 2024 explained that new ballistics testing that occurred in December 2023 on similar models of the likely murder weapon confirmed that the gun used to carry out the killings was one from a series of 940 that were manufactured in 1935 in Switzerland. Some of the more recent updates about this case that came out in October 2024 stated that authorities were planning to conduct a full-scale reconstruction of the crime scene at a military base near Paris. Why they didn't want to do this exercise back at the original crime scene, I don't know. But according to coverage by ITV News, several people who'd previously worked on the case
39:53 Speaker 00 were ordered to show up and take part in this reconstruction. I have to imagine that group included people like former French prosecutor Eric Mayotte, as well as retired British investigator Mark Preston, but I'm not sure. Coverage by Le Parisien from February 2025 explained that the reconstruction in Paris consisted of sending three shooters with varying degrees of shooting experience through a situation that simulated the crime scene. Each shooter was timed, and the big takeaway for investigators was that whoever the killer was, he was skilled in handling firearms, and he most likely stayed composed during the attack. Some experts agree with that conclusion, while others don't.
40:35 Speaker 00 According to the coverage, the most recent avenue of investigation has led authorities to take a keen look at a former soldier, but who that is, where he's from, anything about him is not information that's been publicly released. The Daily Observer announced in early May 2025 that a six-part limited series based on this case is going to be produced in 2026. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch is expected to executive produce the show, and a representative for the team behind the project stated "it was really only because of the recent renewed interest and developments in the case that prompted the series to come to fruition."
41:13 Speaker 00 As of this recording, the murders of Saad and Iqbal Alhili, Iqbal's mother Zahela, and Sylvain Moliere are still unsolved. Like I told you at the beginning of Part One, this case is the kind that sparks more questions than answers. Because while there seem to be plenty of theories and potential leads, what happened out there in the woods near Lake Annecy remains a mystery for now.
41:43 Speaker 00 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.
42:01 Speaker 00 So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
42:08 Speaker 00 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.
42:29 Speaker 03 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
42:36 Speaker 00 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
42:44 Speaker 03 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp. That's the one time that we called the cops, because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
42:51 Speaker 02 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
42:57 Speaker 00 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.
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