Detectives from France’s cold case unit have ordered DNA analysis of evidence in the unsolved killing of a British family and a French cyclist in a remote Alpine village 12 years ago, reports The Guardian.
Clothes belonging to one of the victims, cigarette butts found at the scene and pieces of the gun used in the killings are to be tested in the hopes of solving the mystery of the murders, described by the local prosecutor as “an act of gross savagery”.
The bodies of four people – Saad al-Hilli, 50, a British-Iraqi engineer; his wife, Iqbal, 47; her mother, Suhaila al-Allaf, 74; and a French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, 45 – were found in an isolated layby at Chevaline near Annecy in September 2012. Each had several gunshot wounds to the head.
The al-Hillis’ two daughters, then aged four and seven, both survived the attack. The younger child hid under the legs of her dead mother in the rear footwell of the car for eight hours before she was discovered by the gendarmes examining the scene. Her sister was shot and suffered a shoulder and head wound.