Murder in the Alps
October 14, 2015 9:01 PM   Subscribe

Four dead, an ever-expanding list of suspects, dozens of detectives on the case. Three years after the fact, a mysterious shooting in the French Alps has evolved into one of the most confounding, globe-spanning criminal investigations in decades.
posted by Chrysostom (53 comments total) 62 users marked this as a favorite
 
Jeez, almost too strange to be true. The twist at the end in particular! It's like something out of Sherlock Holmes where there's probably some minuscule clue that would untangle the whole thing if only someone could find it. It seems unlikely at this point that they'll ever solve it, which is so frustrating.

I was tempted to post a joke about what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps based just on your blurb, but decided I'd better read the article first rather than be that insensitive clod that pops into a thread and makes a crack without reading the article. Now that I've READ the article I can admit my initial, base impulse.
posted by town of cats at 9:25 PM on October 14, 2015 [4 favorites]


At this point, random homicidal loony seems to be the best explanation.
posted by orrnyereg at 9:28 PM on October 14, 2015


I thought this was going to be about Ötzi.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:30 PM on October 14, 2015 [7 favorites]


What a strange, fascinating story. Lots of interesting tidbits and twists that somehow add up to nothing.
posted by nubs at 9:42 PM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


8 head shots, two per victim, means either an astounding good sniper or someone at close range finishing off wounded.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:02 PM on October 14, 2015 [4 favorites]


While reading, I was really annoyed that that two of the adult victims were completely ignored in the story (the two women, clearly one of them could have been the intended target)- but that may have been deliberate given the ending.
posted by emd3737 at 10:22 PM on October 14, 2015 [5 favorites]


What is more improbable... a random crazy being able to manage 17/21 with a Luger pistol on a moving target, or a trained professional?

Was there any testimony from the 4 year old survivor? That would seem relevant to me, even if inadmissible.

My guess: somebody with enough contacts in the gendarmerie to be able to ensure the suppression/destruction/loss of key evidence. Which would suggest organized crime.

Still, there are lots of theories that are plausible for either the cyclist or the family being the targets.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 10:30 PM on October 14, 2015


I was waiting for someone to suggest corrupt police, just like the last unsolved murder thread.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:42 PM on October 14, 2015


How long would it have taken to fire 21 well-aimed shots? Doesn't it seem more likely that there was more than one shooter?
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:46 PM on October 14, 2015


I don't understand how, even a trained professional, expecting to shoot at a moving target, would have that level of marksmanship.

That was the key question asked about Oswald, but they pinned it on him anyway.
posted by three blind mice at 11:46 PM on October 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


At this point, random homicidal loony seems to be the best explanation.

Lover of conspiracies though I am, I feel compelled to agree.

Specifically, I think it was probably the ex-French Foreign Legion paratrooper, Menegaldo:
Investigators cross-checked military records with those of psychiatric hospitals. They found no renegade patients, no one recently released with homicidal tendencies and excellent marksmanship. But in April 2014, while working through an extensive list of anyone Claire Schutz remembered ever knowing, detectives summoned a former soldier for a routine interview. His name was Patrice Menegaldo, he was 50 years old, and he lived in Ugine. He’d been a paratrooper in the French Foreign Legion, an elite fighting force composed partly of misfits and ru∞ans running away from something else; Legionnaires are not, by temperament or training, fragile men. He was asked questions for an hour and then sent on his way.

Two months later, Menegaldo shot himself in the head.

“He wrote a letter saying the reason was ‘I could not handle being a suspect in a murder,’ ” Maillaud says. He arches an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound very believable. It doesn’t make sense that a Legionnaire would kill himself after an hour in a police station.”

No, it doesn’t sound believable at all. Especially since Menegaldo was interviewedas a tangential witness. No one considered him a suspect.

Except, maybe, Menegaldo.

But why would he feel like a suspect? The detectives did not accuse him. He was never in custody. There was no evidence connecting him to the crime or to anyone involved, except for Claire’s memory of having peripherally known him.

He did it. It was Menegaldo in the woods with the gun. That’s what we’re supposed to believe, or what we’re supposed to want to believe. “He corresponds,” Maillaud says, “with the profile of a crazy gunman.” It’s an easy leap, then, a lunatic driven to suicide by the staggering weight of his guilt. He can’t deny it now, can he?

But why wait two months after his interview to blow his brains out? And 21 months after he would’ve tried to beat a little girl to death? And there’s this: Why would he leave a seven-page suicide letter, the details of which Maillaud will not release?

Maybe he was just a depressed old soldier with seven pages of reasons. There’s still nothing tangible, or even reliably speculative, that puts Menegaldo on that mountain at that time.
Consider the details of the weapon and how it was used:
There was only one gunman. Maillaud is sure of that. The precision of the shooting, the two rounds in each head, suggests he is a professional; the number of bodies suggests he was experienced; and the attempted murder of a child suggests a hardened e∞ciency. Yet he left 21 shell casings on the ground, which a professional probably would not have, and he used an antique 7.65-millimeter Luger issued by the Swiss army more than 60 years ago, which a professional probably wouldn’t do, either. The investigators are certain of the weapon, because a piece of the butt broke o≠ when the shooter fractured Zainab’s skull with it. They think he clubbed her because he ran out of bullets, which also is not professional.
The crime was committed by a person who was very good with weapons but who had not prepared for an operation or he would have had more ammunition; he wouldn't have had such an old weapon; and it's clear the killer wasn't trained to be a peacetime assassin or he wouldn't have left the shell casings behind for forensic analysis to attempt to trace.

But the skills and the efficiency of killing are consistent with training as a paratrooper, the brutality and carelessness about evidence are characteristic of military operations -- and the motive could have been PTSD-driven compulsive reenactment. In fact, it's hard not to read PTSD into a suicide note from a soldier saying the reason for his suicide was "‘I could not handle being a suspect in a murder,’" and killing himself after two months of revived and redoubled traumatic re-experiencing is all too understandable.

But if Menegaldo was the murderer, I'd bet Maillaud could have proved it, so why wouldn't he?

Under the hypothesis that it was Menegaldo, I'd have to guess that it came back to whatever incident gave him the PTSD in the first place, and the probability that the French government might be very reluctant to have attention drawn to such an incident and a campaign it would have been a part of.
posted by jamjam at 12:38 AM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]


Odd place for a random killing, though. It sounds as if it was sheer bad luck there was anyone there.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:23 AM on October 15, 2015


Since a locally resident ex-cop or an ex-soldier are both good fits for a proficient marksman commiting mass murder, one wonders if the investigators have taken sufficient pains to compartmentalise their work.
posted by rongorongo at 2:41 AM on October 15, 2015


I don't understand how, even a trained professional, expecting to shoot at a moving target, would have that level of marksmanship.

8 head shots, two per victim, means either an astounding good sniper or someone at close range finishing off wounded.

Do fancy $17,000 computer-controlled rifles that potentially do face recognition make any difference, or is that just hype? (I ask, as someone who isn't familiar with firearms.)
posted by XMLicious at 3:18 AM on October 15, 2015


The tail of a huge speculation thread about this case on Craig Murray's forum. I think many of the contributors have been obsessing over the details of this for years.
posted by rongorongo at 3:42 AM on October 15, 2015


8 head shots, two per victim, means either an astounding good sniper or someone at close range finishing off wounded.

Since the found the shells, shouldn't this be known already?
posted by Dr Dracator at 3:53 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Fascinating and so weird. I thought at first it would be shown that investigation was botched but it seems very thorough. Menegaldo seems the most likely fit so it's weird why they didn't prove that. Perhaps he is linked to someone who discouraged it? I don't think it's implausible that he waited until 2 months after being interviews to kill himself. It feels more likely, really, that he could compartmentalise the event until the police wanted to speak to him and it then took just 2 months to unravel.

The twist at the end, yeah, probably coincidence but that make the story even weirder.

Going on the looney in the woods theory, and the uncertainty of knowing if/when anyone would come by to be a target, I've read enough creepy true crime accounts to believe that the waiting and watching could be part of the thrill. Maybe the person had sat and watched before.

I can't help but imagine an alt universe version where everyone had really boring jobs and were from elsewhere in France and so omitting all the conspiracy stuff. How would that have changed the investigation?
posted by kitten magic at 3:55 AM on October 15, 2015


.
posted by indubitable at 3:56 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


LeRoienJaune: "a random crazy being able to manage 17/21 with a Luger pistol"
That detail is weird to me as well. They suggest the reason the older daughter was clubbed is that the killer had run out of ammunition. But a Luger of the kind used by the Swiss military holds 8 rounds, so either the guy came with two fill magazines and one with just three bullets in it - which seems inconsistent with the "professional" angle - or three casings might have gone missing - which seems inconsistent with the amount of attention being paid to the scene by forensic technicians.
posted by brokkr at 4:01 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


I feel so sad for those poor children. I hope they have other family (it doesn't sound like they are in their uncle's life). The poor baby spending all those hours hidden with her dead family and what that would do to her (I'm hoping Zainab's injuries at least prevented too close a memory of the experience). My heart breaks for them.
posted by kitten magic at 4:06 AM on October 15, 2015 [10 favorites]


Ordinary soldiers might not do that, but special ops types of all kinds certainly do.
posted by pharm at 4:38 AM on October 15, 2015


kitten magic, I wondered about that too. It looks like they are living with their mother's sister and her family (sorry, Daily Mail link).
posted by lunasol at 5:13 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Geez, reminds me to stay away from strangers in the Alps.
posted by numaner at 5:22 AM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


I was trained to double-tap as an ordinary infantryman when practising close quarters combat. I've no idea how the Swiss or French military does it, though.
posted by Harald74 at 5:24 AM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


or three casings might have gone missing

Gun could've jammed as well.
posted by mayonnaises at 6:08 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Do fancy $17,000 computer-controlled rifles that potentially do face recognition make any difference

I didn't even read the article, but I at least paid enough attention in the the thread to know it wasn't done with a rifle but with "an antique 7.65-millimeter Luger issued by the Swiss army more than 60 years ago".

No rifle was used. The perpetrator used a 60 year old handgun. What the hell? That's like using a 60 year old car as the getaway car during a bank robbery.

There have not been anywhere near as many advances in firearms as in cars over the past 60 years (I would say hardly any that matter, in fact, with the possible big exception of optics), but it is still weird.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 6:20 AM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Except for sights and magazine capacity, there's not much changed since the Lugar. They work just fine. I'd guess it was chosen because it had no paper trail. In the US, it would sell for 5 or 6 times the price of a new Glock, so it was probably a black market gun. Ammunition for it would cost $5 a round.
All that makes me think that if there was a planned target, it was the cyclist.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:30 AM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Fascinating. I have heard snippets reported in the press over the last few years, but this is the first time that I've seen them in one place.

The biggest unanswered question I have relates to this passage:
In February 2014, gendarmes knocked on the door of a man named Eric Devouassoux, a 48-year-old in Lathuile, whose mobile number was one of the 4,000. He sort of looked like the motorcyclist in the sketch, and in the weeks leading up to September 5, 2012, he’d applied for a permit to carry a firearm and gotten sacked from his job as a policeman because of his temper. But there was nothing to connect him to Mollier or al-Hilli or put him on that road on that day. Unfortunately, though, he had a collection of guns, including some World War II–era weapons, which is neither unusual—the Haute-Savoie region was a center of the French Resistance, and heirlooms get passed down—nor illegal, as long as they’re declared. His were not, and there were enough of them that he was charged with arms trafficking. (Maillaud shrugs when he explains this, which translates easily into Sucks to be Eric Devouassoux. Enough so, apparently, that Devouassoux hung up on me, too. The charges, however, were later dropped.) [emphasis mine]

The murder weapon was a Luger, a WWII-era weapon. I don't know much about guns, and I accept that they may well be prevalent, even undeclared... but this connection seems ignored. Then to say that he was charged with arms trafficking. only to be let off... why?

Perhaps the arms trafficking charge was trumped up to give them opportunity to question him, and he was let off when ruled out. But that whole element seemed strange and unaddressed.

I agree that it sounds less and less like an assassination or professional hit when you hear the specifics. Mengaldo, the foreign-legion man, seems the likeliest suspect, but you'd think that would have been proven if so. Therefore I have to conclude that neither Mengaldo nor Devouassoux were responsible (or were protected by the police). How many more Luger-owning men could there be in the nearby area? I'd start with them.
posted by Acey at 6:32 AM on October 15, 2015


Mengaldo sounds very possible, but he also sounds extremely convenient. It was a lone lunatic, who happens to be dead! Nothing to see! Nothing to fear! Please come back to our lovely, deserted country roads, tourists and cyclists!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:26 AM on October 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


Oh, man. I haven't thought of this shooting in a while.
Me and my girlfriend were on holiday in Annecy around the time the murders took place, though we didn't know about them until we had returned home.
I remember feeling creeped out when I read the news, which described it as tourists being murdered, because we had been driving a rental car and might even have considered checking out the hills surrounding the lake if the mood had struck us.
posted by aldurtregi at 7:31 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


The perpetrator used a 60 year old handgun. What the hell?

That region of France was a centre of activity for the French Resistance; the fact that there are guns there - particularly WWII era guns - is noted in the article. I suspect it likely jammed on the shooter, which is why it then got used as a club.

Thinking about it overnight, it all feels even weirder. Both the cyclist and the family in the car seemed to be at that particular spot by random chance; there's no clear reason why a gunman after any of the potential targets for whatever reason would have staked out that spot on that day in expectation of their arrival. I'm beginning to think it was a series of coincidences - that these people arrived and witnessed something they shouldn't have, and this was the result.
posted by nubs at 8:50 AM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Well obviously there was an additional victim, the real target, and the shooter took that body with him/her and dumped it someplace else to avoid being caught. All the other victims are red herrings. That's what makes it the perfect crime.
posted by Mchelly at 9:02 AM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]


(Being cavalier because no matter what the motive, what a horrific crime. I hope the daughters come out okay.)
posted by Mchelly at 9:04 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


google street view ends at the murder scene though the road continues as a path for non-motorized vehicles.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:19 AM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


I suspect it was a rifle-stocked Luger. That would go a ways to explain the accurate shooting, and the splinters from clubbing the little girl (which they used to confirm the gun ID). It also, if considering a professional hit-man scenario, would provide another rationale for the otherwise slightly surprising choice of weapon.
posted by kickingtheground at 10:01 AM on October 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


Given the short range, there's probably nothing special or spectacular about the shooting accuracy described here. Take a look at quonsar's Google street view of the parking pullout to get an idea of the space we are talking about here. Anybody with military or police training is probably capable of the feat of marksmanship described here; I've seen my dad casually shoot multiple moving targets out of the air at that range with a pistol.

In particular, I'd keep in mind that the double-tap headshots were probably all done after the first round of shootings, when everybody was already incapacitated or dead, and the car was no longer moving.

Also, I think the focus on the "60 year old weapon" is misguided. Anyone from a psycopathic gun nut to a professional killer (if there is really such a thing) might well prefer a trusted old weapon, well maintained. My favorite hunting rifle was made in the 19th century, and is very accurate and effective; I don't feel the need to go out and buy something fancy and new to shoot a deer with.

Finally, I think the writer's implied contention that neither the Iraqis nor the French bicyclist were followed up the hill is not really proven or even suggested by the fact that they might have taken a wrong turn at the bottom, or that they were not visibly followed on previous days.

This was a very well written and paced article, but I think it could have benefited from allowing the French gendarme to actually describe, for a paragraph or two, his view of how the killing was actually carried out. For example were there powder burns associated with the double headshots, consistent with the killer leaning in the windows of the car and finishing everyone off?

I am glad I read this because I was one of many who had been left with the false impression that the brother did it.
posted by jackbrown at 10:18 AM on October 15, 2015 [7 favorites]


As I see it, the problem with the Mengaldo theory is that he was only interviewed because of a loose link to Claire. If neither the cyclist nor the family had planned to be in that place and both found themselves there because of a wrong turn, then we're talking a major coincidence that Mengaldo chose that spot to carry out his deranged plan, and that one of his victims would be the ex-boyfriend of somebody he knew peripherally.
posted by jontyjago at 11:29 AM on October 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Could they have accidentally run into some mob activity? Big drug transactions often happen in remote country sites and Annecy is close to the borders of both Switzerland and Italy. Mobsters might have had a gunman or several ready to kill any witnesses, and they are totally cynical.
Even though both the family and the cyclist really didn't see anything or if they tried to get away from the site, it was a dead-end, there was nothing they could do.
A couple of years ago, there was a drug landing in a tiny fishing village here, and there was a major shoot-out, which almost never happens here. But with drugs, there is just too much money, and also a gangster culture. It too was a dead-end, where neither witnesses nor gangsters could easily get out of the situation could get out, but luckily only one of the drug-dealers died.
I wonder if the police were confused by the interesting back-stories of the victims, and maybe missed evidence of some other activities in the woods which has since disappeared?
posted by mumimor at 12:55 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Except...in general one doesn't take one's family along to do a drug drop.
posted by telstar at 1:12 PM on October 15, 2015


Oh, I didn't think Saad was a drug dealer, just that he and the cyclist by complete accident came into or close to a situation and were killed on the spot. Maybe they didn't even see it themselves, but came into danger when they stepped out the car heading to the foot-path, and thus became potential witnesses.
posted by mumimor at 1:18 PM on October 15, 2015


Except...in general one doesn't take one's family along to do a drug drop.

But, if they stumbled across the mobsters performing their drug drop...
posted by jontyjago at 1:18 PM on October 15, 2015


We would have to assume that the trasactors would judge mass murder less risky than just aborting the drop and trying again later, or just laying low until Saad et. al. left. Then again, people do panic and maybe a nervous shot got fired, and it turned into a free for all. So yeah.
posted by telstar at 1:31 PM on October 15, 2015


The implication was that the police seem to believe there was a single weapon/shooter involved. Difficult to imagine a gang of ne'er do wells having only a single armed member and leaving that person to deal with so many witnesses.
posted by epo at 2:32 PM on October 15, 2015


Unless someone was up there to dump a body, let's say. And as he's opening the back doors on his panel van and getting the rolled up carpet out, a car followed by a cyclist come up...

I don't know - I don't want to make light of a tragic situation in which four people died and two young children lost their parents, but the mystery of this keeps making me want to come up with scenarios, like it was a pulp detective novel.
posted by nubs at 2:36 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


If I was one of the detectives, I'd try to find out if there are any other unsolved homicides in the area that were committed with a sixty year old Luger. Or any other old guns, really.
posted by Kevin Street at 4:26 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


I can't help but imagine an alt universe version where everyone had really boring jobs and were from elsewhere in France and so omitting all the conspiracy stuff. How would that have changed the investigation?

There's a great Errol Morris video about The Umbrella Man (a seemingly suspicious character involved in the Kennedy assassination), where the point is made that if you look closely enough at any historical event, you'll find all sorts of weird and inexplicable stuff lying under the surface. If it hadn't been those jobs and international connections that became easy fodder for headlines, it would have been something else. And, really, their jobs were pretty boring and their international connections weren't so far-fetched, at least not as much as they were made to seem by people grasping for a narrative of the crime that would make sense.

It's like how while it's unlikely that any two given people in the same room have the same birthday, you only have to get 23 people in the same room before it's more likely than not that one pair or the other will have the same birthday. If you expand your circle wide enough and go back far enough, it's easy to come up with suspicious connections between people or between people and nefarious things, just because in life people have innocent interactions with any number of people and other things without knowing what else those people get up to.
posted by Copronymus at 4:30 PM on October 15, 2015 [9 favorites]


This is interesting:
"In a further twist, it has been revealed that Iqbal al-Hilli kept in touch with her secret American ex-husband Jimmy Thompson long after remarrying, says his sister Judy Weatherly."
I mean, probably not all that interesting, but since speculation is probably all we're ever going to get on this case I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned int the GQ article.
posted by mcrandello at 5:42 PM on October 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Okay, let me wildly speculate.

A dickhead, racist, ex soldier is taking a walk along a lonely road. For some reason, he took his gun along with him.

An friendly Iraq man and his family stop nearby. The Iraqi man engages him in conversation. The ex-soldier takes offense, pulls his gun.

The Iraqi runs for his car, tries to get away. He hits an EXTREMELY unlucky cyclist in his panic.

In an impressive feat of marksmanship, the ex-soldier kills nearly everyone and takes off into the wilderness until he gets home.

When someone finally suspects him of the crime, he kills himself.

All this could easily be refuted by the children if they were/are able to recall events.

Whatever the case, what an awful, awful event. An entire family wiped out in moments.
posted by Phreesh at 10:11 AM on October 16, 2015


> Do fancy $17,000 computer-controlled rifles that potentially do face recognition make any difference, or is that just hype? (I ask, as someone who isn't familiar with firearms.)

Hype. As the person in that thread suggested, the gun would have to be modified so it could steer itself, and another computer (such as the Raspberry Pi) equipped with some kind of target recognition would have to be added. It's not clear whether RPi can actually do the job of facial recognition, but in any case, the gun as it is now doesn't do any of that stuff: no face recognition (who's face is that?), no face detection (is it or isn't it a human face) even, so that it would, say, detect and engage any or all human targets, no self-aiming (can't move steer itself), and it can't authorize itself to fire.

It's a gun with a ballistic computer only, and it can't steer itself; it only knows when it's in the right position to fire based on a human-commanded target angle, and it's up to the user to blunder into that position. It doesn't know what it's target is (I don't mean that in the philosophical sense of "machines don't understand taking a life" but in the sense that its target is just a spot with a measured distance and angles), so it relies on a human's brain and muscles to do all that. This is yet another gun that can't kill without a person doing all the aiming.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:13 AM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


I could see the veteran having PTSD triggered by the police interview and having increasing distress regardless of whether he'd had any involvement in the murders, potentially leading to suicide, though it begs the question of whether he had any mental health history prior to this event. This does not solve the mystery in the slightest, though.
posted by bile and syntax at 7:19 PM on October 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


Did the article mention whether the children were ever able to give a description of the gunman?
posted by gottabefunky at 9:54 AM on October 21, 2015


No, it doesn't say anything about them after they're found.
posted by Kevin Street at 6:21 PM on October 21, 2015


This scarier than the empty lighthouse post.
posted by Monochrome at 7:50 AM on November 1, 2015


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