The Road to Chevaline
5 September 2012. A remote forest road near the village of Chevaline, in the French Alps above Lake Annecy. A French cyclist discovers a BMW estate parked on the road. Inside are three bodies: Saad Al-Hilli — a British-Iraqi satellite engineer from Guildford — his wife Iqbal, and her mother Suhaila. All three have been shot multiple times in the head with a Luger pistol. Beside the car lies a fourth body: Sylvain Mollier, a French cyclist. Wrong place, wrong time — or possibly the intended target.
Inside the car, two survivors: the Al-Hillis' daughters, aged seven and four. The older girl had been shot and beaten. The younger had survived by lying still under her dead mother's body for eight hours, until someone finally came.
The investigation became one of the largest in French history. A Luger-collecting local man was held for months in 2014 and released without charge in 2017. French magistrates have, since 2020, formally broadened the inquiry to include the possibility of state-actor involvement linked to Saad's satellite work. Thirteen years on, the case remains open and unsolved.
Ellis and Maren on the cases that do not end with a verdict.
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