"This track is closed": the biker released, the mystery of the Chevaline killing remains intact

Will we ever know what happened on September 5, 2012 on this little dirt road in Chevaline (Haute-Savoie)?

Following a new episode of this legal enigma, a finding seems established: the Lyon business manager arrested on Wednesday morning by the gendarmes of the Chambéry research section is not the man who shot Saad Al- Hilli, a 50-year-old Briton of Iraqi origin, his wife and mother-in-law, as well as a local cyclist, Sylvain Mollier.

After 36 hours in police custody, this father was released without any charges being brought against him. “The explanations given and the checks carried out made it possible to rule out his possible participation in the facts”, underlines Lise Bonnet, the public prosecutor of Annecy. “He is totally out of the question, this track is closed”, supports a judicial source.

The 50-year-old released on Thursday evening was no stranger to this sprawling file.

He had already been interviewed freely in 2015. Two guards from the National Forestry Office had thus told investigators that they had checked, near the crime scene, a motorcyclist with an "original" helmet.

It had taken three years to identify the famous pilot, who did not know he was wanted despite the media coverage of the case.

During this first hearing, he explained to the gendarmes that he had walked in the area after having made a paragliding baptism with several people, who confirmed his presence.

He also explained that he had not noticed or heard anything suspicious during his motorcycle ride.

Nothing had then come to contradict his story.

“It was imperative to close this door definitively”

So why, six years later, have this man plunged back into the horror of the Chevaline massacre? According to concordant sources, a reconstitution organized last September by the gendarmes of Chambéry - in his presence, as well as that of two agents of the ONF and the cyclist who had discovered the victims - would have updated certain strangenesses in the job. in his fifties. After 1,500 hours of work on this scenario, the investigators had come to the conclusion that the biker was necessarily in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene at the time of the murders, and that he had at least seen or heard something. Visibly fragile elements, but which prompted investigators and judges to place him in police custody on the day of the announcement of the creation of the cold case center by the Minister of Justice.A “fortuitous” concomitance, assures Lise Bonnet.

At the end of these 36 hours, no link was revealed between this resident of the Lyon region and the victims. He also has no particular shooting skills, while the murders of Chevaline have always been described as being the work of a "pro". According to someone close to the case, the father of the family held the same speech on Wednesday and Thursday as in 2015 against the gendarmes and was never contradicted by the elements taken from the reconstruction. “The mountain gives birth to a mouse, this police custody was not justified and abusive, denounces his lawyer, Me Basson-Larbi. My client has always been keen to help justice, has always been at his disposal. Going from the status of witness to that of suspect made him weigh an unbearable weight, while he never saw or heard anything on the day of the tragedy. "

“For the progress of the investigations, it was imperative to close this door definitively, justifies a source close to the file.

It is now done, and this will perhaps open others.

According to the Annecy prosecutor, three investigators from the Chambéry research section continue to work full time on the Chevaline killings.