A British tourist holidaying in the French Alps has found an old Luger pistol at the bottom of Lake Annecy, and the discovery initially caused a major stir, as the weapon could be linked to one of the most mysterious mass killings in the area in 2012, a case that remains unsolved to this day.
The 41-year-old Wiltshire resident, who gave his name as Kyle, made the find on August 20 while snorkelling, at a depth of about one and a half metres below the water's surface. The weapon was so rusted and caked with sand that at first he thought it was a toy, but when he lifted it from the bottom, he realised it was a real Luger.
Kyle was staying with his family at the Le Solitaire du Lac campsite in Saint-Jorioz, where, incidentally, the al-Hilli family had also stopped before the killings. When he learned about the unsolved tragedy from friends, he immediately handed the pistol over to French police. DNA samples were taken from him and his companion to rule out their traces during forensic testing.
It will be recalled that on 5 September 2012, near the village of Chevaline, on a forest road, the bodies of Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife, 47, his mother-in-law, 74, and French cyclist Sylvain Mollier, 45, were found shot dead. The couple's two daughters survived: seven-year-old Zainab was seriously wounded, while four-year-old Zina hid in the car and escaped unharmed.
The investigation established that the killer had used a 7.65mm Luger P06, which is why the pistol recovered from the lake initially aroused so much interest. However, experts have already noted that the weapon could be a 9mm Luger P08 – a different model.
French investigators have reached a preliminary conclusion that the discovered pistol was most likely not the murder weapon, but an official forensic examination has been ordered to definitively confirm or rule out this hypothesis.
Nevertheless, the find could provide new details in the 14-year-old investigation, as the motive for the killings and the identity of the perpetrator remain unknown to this day, and the case is one of France's most famous unsolved crimes.
The discovery has once again shown just how long an investigation can drag on, even in a developed European country. The case of the murder of four innocent people has gone unsolved for 14 years, and even such a striking find may, it turns out, not lead to the killer.
For French investigators, this is yet another piece of potential evidence that must be meticulously examined, but even if this pistol has no connection to the tragedy, it is clear that the case is once again facing new leads. And for the surviving daughters of the slain family, each such find probably brings both fresh hope and renewed pain.
