
Murder in the Alps - dogecoinbase
http://www.gq.com/story/alps-murder-chevaline
======
MrZongle2
_" Uniformed officers closed off the road, the Route de la Combe d’Ire, and
forensic technicians gathered shell casings and marked where they fell and
photographed the blood and studied Saad’s BMW without disturbing any of the
bodies. They did this with such delicacy that they did not notice for almost
eight hours that Saad’s younger daughter, 4-year-old Zeena, was alive and
physically unharmed, hiding beneath the folds of her dead mother’s skirt."_

I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there,
Lou.

~~~
notdonspaulding
When I was around 6 years old, I was playing hide and seek with my sister. I
fell asleep underneath a folded-up roll-away bed in a spare bedroom of our
small house (~1000 sqft).

When my sister and my parents couldn't find me, they feared the worst and
called the police who came and searched the house and couldn't find me. I woke
up, walked out into the living room and everyone stared at me in disbelief.

All that to say that I can very easily see a small child hiding under a skirt
remaining unnoticed for several hours. How the child stayed _quiet_ for that
long would be surprising to me, but stranger things have happened.

~~~
deskamess
The fear in that child any time someone spoke or moved near her...
unimaginable.

------
6stringmerc
Fascinating piece of long form journalism. There's no gotcha, big reveal at
the end. And because it was so thorough and balanced throughout, that didn't
take away from the effect.

Often I've said "You typically hear about criminals who get caught, not the
ones who got away" because there doesn't seem to be a good case for
glamorizing successful crime...but wow. Terrible loss of life. Looking for
answers is in our nature - as this story shows, we can go to great lengths.
There's no guarantee we'll ever find out though.

------
sageabilly
Did Zeena die or is she still alive? In all of this article, I kept wondering
if she saw anything or anyone and could serve as a witness or if there's a law
against kids serving as witnesses in France/Britain. Wouldn't she have
seen/heard _something_ that could have been used as a lead?

~~~
jmnicolas
They're both alive and live in with their family (something like their father
uncle) in England.

The investigators questioned her for about 30 minutes I recall. Even before
her interview they explained that she would probably be of not much help and
they didn't want to add to the trauma.

The only thing that got out in the press was that she saw one bad guy (at the
time it was thought there was more than one shooter due to the number of shell
casings found at the scene).

------
andy_ppp
Interesting and tangentially related... I can't recommend Serial podcast
enough.

[http://serialpodcast.org/](http://serialpodcast.org/)

~~~
popopje
likewise The Staircase
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388644/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388644/)
\- it's 6 hours in full, but fascinating.

~~~
smcl
While we're at it, Criminal podcast is a little less obsessive about one case
and takes an look at a number of interesting\quirky\old cases
[http://thisiscriminal.com/](http://thisiscriminal.com/)

~~~
andy_ppp
Ah, go on then - The Jinx is also incredible :-)

------
lemoncucumber
You see what happens when you find a stranger in the alps?!

------
sireat
Fantastic writing (Full Disclosure: using uBlock origin I had none of the ad
distractions that some mentioned).

Why this case is so puzzling is that it mixes the seemingly pro level like hit
with the unpredictability of the location(it took a few coincidences for the
car to get up that hill) and seemingly unneeded extra kills.

I was thinking that one explanation would be that someone(individual or state)
outsources the killing of the engineer or the cyclist (or both).

This hired gun is a pro but also a loose cannon who enjoys killing just
because. So he is no Golgo13.

The other explanation is that it is a completely nonsensical crime, ie someone
with military training camped up in those hills with the intention of killing
whoever came up there and then left the area. This seems so unbelievable yet
it is possible.

------
alricb
A lot of murders get solved not because of great forensic work, but because
someone comes forward with information; here, nobody has, or at least not with
good enough information.

Also, it's not just sex or money that lead to murder. Anger and stupidity are
huge factors. Every day, people get into fights over the stupidest stuff and,
given the right circumstances, kill other people just because they can.

------
inspectorG
Zaid appears to be guilty not only because of the money but because of the
physical altercation in 2011 a year before the murders. I suspect Saad
seriously threatened Zaid during the altercation to the point revenge never
left his mind. And since there was so much built up rage/hate in Zaid, he
hired a hit-man to take out all of the heirs to provide a clean sweep to the
mula. The heirs had to go because I suspect Zaid had to pay or payoff big for
an undiscoverable hit! The cyclist was in the wrong place at the wrong time
and aggressively targeted to throw off the investigation. But it is very clear
who the mastermind is. I'm just wondering why he is being treated so kindly?
And who does he know that may be protecting him? Hopefully Zaid doesn't have
access to Saad's children.

------
vatotemking
Excellent writing, I read the article in its entirety. This reminds me of the
film Memories of Murder -
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0353969/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0353969/).

------
helipad
If nothing else, an interesting murder mystery.

------
mylons
@longform recommended this to me as well!

------
tommyd
Wow that's a ridiculous amount of advertising on page load, can't actually see
a word of content!
[http://s10.postimg.org/mwea5sruh/Screen_Shot_2015_10_15_at_1...](http://s10.postimg.org/mwea5sruh/Screen_Shot_2015_10_15_at_10_54_13.png)

Can't really blame people for using ad blockers on pages like that. That said,
I'm quite interested in the story so I'll give it a read regardless...

~~~
MHofman12
Apologies tommyd. We try to prevent ads from intruding on the content like
this, but some times things slip through in the QA.

\--Mike @GQ

~~~
reitanqild
It is not considered good form to use signatures on hn and I'd recommend
against it.

Rather just make a top level comment : Mike @GQ here,...

~~~
MHofman12
Thanks

------
techterrier
tldr: We really have no idea.

------
venomsnake
> Saad screamed at Zainab to get in the car. He quickstepped to the driver’s
> door, twisted into the seat. But Zainab hadn’t moved, just stood there,
> frozen. Saad probably didn’t realize that. What man leaves his daughter to
> get shot? He slapped the gearshift into reverse, cranked the wheel hard to
> the left, stomped on the gas. The BMW skittered backward in an arc, a
> jittery half circle.

No ordinary 50 year old engineer does that. That guy had training. And not in
STEM.

~~~
jmnicolas
I'm French and I've almost read all the articles related to this murder and a
lot of the comments associated with these articles (it was quite surprising to
find this on HN btw).

They all think that something don't add-up, they all have their favorite
theory and they always know better than the investigators.

Take the shooter for instance : sometimes he's a pro (2 to the head, mosts of
the shots were hits) sometimes an amateur (didn't pick-up the brass, used an
antique gun) and on and on.

I think the only thing safe to say is that we don't know sh.. (pardon my
French ;-).

~~~
msandford
Or he/she was a pro and left the casings and a chunk of the gun on purpose to
cast doubt on the idea that he/she was a pro.

Once you go to the level of "this was state sponsored in some way" all normal
investigation and inference goes out the window. State sponsored folks would
know how normal police investigations are conducted and have plenty of ways to
counter them.

Why a particular state would want these people dead is another matter entirely
though.

~~~
jmnicolas
Let's be frank : the probability it's a "she" is so close to 0 that we can say
"he" without passing for horrible misogynists ;-) And I think that the older
girl (the one that was shot and beaten) talked about a "bad guy" in her
statement btw.

I think not picking-up the brass doesn't mean anything : you can find the
imprint of the barrel's grooves on the fired bullets (unless they are too
deformed by the impact, but would you bet it on all 21 bullets ?) so the gun
will be identifiable even if they don't have the brass.

~~~
msandford
> Let's be frank : the probability it's a "she" is so close to 0 that we can
> say "he" without passing for horrible misogynists

Not really. And that's not because I'm some PC-police kind of person, either.
Women are being allowed into more and more places in the military (in the US,
other countries are far ahead of us on this) and I suspect that there are tons
of them in the intelligence community.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Israel_Defense_Fo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Israel_Defense_Forces)

Finally given that it's "always" "bad guys" that do this kind of thing if
you're playing a strategic game at some point you have to realize that women
have a huge advantage; since it "can't" be a woman who does that, women can
absolutely get away easier and more cleanly than men can. And if you really
are doing stuff at a national security level where it never becomes public
anyhow then there's no reason not to use women to their full potential aside
from squeamishness on the part of the people giving the orders. I suspect that
isn't a huge roadblock; either you're a sociopath who's fine with sending
people to their death because "who cares?" or you're a true believer in which
case everyone can fight for the cause.

Now I'm not suggesting that women commit violent crimes at the same rate that
men do by any means. The statistics bear out that they don't. But at a state-
sponsored level I would imagine that a lot of bets are off.

~~~
jmnicolas
These kind of women are very rare (much more than men which are more prone to
be sociopaths and as sociopaths are more prone to use direct violence), why
would you risk this "rare asset" on a "simple shooting" that can be done by a
man ?

If a woman had been seen the investigator would have still tried to find her
even if they thought she was just a witness.

I'm not even aware of one known instance of a pro killer that was a woman in
the last 10 years. I don't say they don't exist but they're in "black swan"
category.

BTW the investigators know exactly the sex and probably even the ethnicity of
the killer. It's not clear in this article, but it was said in several others
that they have his ( ;-) ) DNA, I think from the piece of the gun that was
left on the crime scene. I think there's even some tech that allows you to
make a mug shot of someone from her DNA, I doubt it's really accurate though.

~~~
msandford
They're rare that we know of. If the various intelligence/security
institutions know how to find/train them, surely they wouldn't tell everyone
as it then destroys their tactical advantage.

I'm not suggesting that I _know_ they're common by any stretch of the
imagination. But to say that you _know_ they aren't is intellectually
dishonest.

------
tinco
This case bums me out so much, so much mystery! From my perspective only one
who has dehumanized the family could have done this. I am not sure how
effective training is for dehumanizing little girls. But what certainly is
effective is hate (racism, religious judgement). A semi-pro murder of a
wealthy Iranian family with a WW2 era german pistol (it might be Swiss issued,
but I bet it looks just like the one the Nazis used) just reeks of hate crime.

I really love all the intriguing stories around it, but they just stem from
the fact that beautiful/successful/rich people have interesting things happen
to them. It's like red herrings in a British detective show.

If I had to be a rational serious detective on this case I'd certainly be
looking for a Nazi gun nut with a good shot and social issues either locally
or one that could've met the family somewhere along their trip.

~~~
jmnicolas
A Swiss gun used near (40 minutes drive) Switzerland but yeah let's look for a
Nazi ...

And how do you justify the cyclist murder : judging by his photos he was white
(yeah I know, embarrassing witness whatever).

Like I told in another comment, everybody and his dog has its own theory and
knows better than the investigators.

You can say a lot of bad things on the French police (Gendarmerie in this
instance) but on big cases like this one their track record is pretty good. So
if they didn't find the killer there are only 2 options imho : they were
ordered from above to not find anyone (possible in the case of a state
sponsored murder) or the killer simply didn't leave enough clues to be found.

If the guy is not local, not in European fingerprints / DNA databases and was
not seen, explain me how can they find him ?

~~~
tinco
I never claim I know better than any investigators. I poked a bit at the media
that hype the intrigue stories, but I am sure the investigators are doing
their work proper.

My theory is just what I thought of in 5 minutes for fun. Is it really so bad
it deserves to be downvoted?

I totally agree with your options, I even think it's rather unlikely they were
ordered not to find him. Shooting someone in the woods is just a very
difficult to solve crime.

------
briandear
What Iraqi engineer has a million dollars in a Swiss account? Even if it were
legitimate, it certainly isn't the norm. Also to get that many head shots at a
distance, obviously professional. Then one must ask, why did this man warrant
the expenditure of a professional hit? Certainly not just some local random
violence -- French hunters can barely hit the side of a barn let alone
multiple head shots and common thugs are very rare in Annecy. Motive is the
key here. If this were in Marseille, then I'd suggest drugs or smuggling, but
this kind of hit on a person with that sort of background? The killers had to
have intelligence, funding and logistical help. Perculiar.

~~~
smcl
This is explained in the story - the sort of Iraqi engineer whose father was a
deceased and successful businessman. It sounds like you're familiar with the
case but haven't actually read the story as you're asking exact same questions
which are (attempted to be) addressed by this very article.

