French investigators are "
not very far
" from solving the quadruple murder of Chevaline, in Haute-Savoie, in 2012, estimated the public prosecutor of Annecy, Line Bonnet, in an interview with the Tribune de Genève.
“
I think we are not very far away.
We will succeed thanks to scientific evidence
, ”said the prosecutor in this interview published on Thursday February 17.
Read also Chevaline killing: custody lifted for the witness, "no charge" against him
On September 5, 2012, a 50-year-old Briton of Iraqi origin, Saad al-Hilli, his 47-year-old wife and his 74-year-old mother-in-law were found dead, with several bullets in the head, in their car on a mountain road near Chevaline, on the heights of Lake Annecy.
One of the al-Hilli couple's daughters was seriously injured while the second, curled up under her mother's legs, emerged unscathed.
A cyclist from the region, Sylvain Mollier, 45, a probable collateral victim, was shot dead during the shooting.
Not a “cold case”
“
For us, it's not a 'cold case' at all!
“, these closed or neglected cases, insisted the prosecutor, who took up her post in September 2021. She specified that three investigators were working on this file full time.
“
They decided to start everything from the beginning, to check all the seals
”, she explains, adding that “
there are regular police custody in this file, in order to close the doors one after the other.
".
In mid-January, a witness was taken into custody before being quickly released and exonerated.
The prosecutor also explains her use of the social network Twitter to communicate, which is not yet so common in France.
"
It's the only way to reach everyone, in an equitable way
", she underlines.
“
But it's also to communicate a little more positive information.
I am exhausted by the “justice bashing”
, the virulent criticism of justice, adds the prosecutor, listing initiatives to propose alternatives to legal proceedings, such as for example the writing of letters of apology in the event of damage or outrages for first-time offenders or awareness courses for domestic violence.