Annecy Shootings (UK Family; French Cyclist; September 2012)

[Robbrent]

The old gun being used, that doesn't seem farfetched to me. Thousands were issued and individual ones would be untraceable. If an old gun is kept properly (cleaning etc) it'll still work.

The British police in the new documentary series now think the cyclist might have been the actual target.

I understand, but the gun was from WW1 so it was really an antique and actually given it's age not all that common

I think it's one that will never be solved, perhaps using the very old gun was to put investigators off the scent

 

[escargot]

I think it's one that will never be solved, perhaps using the very old gun was to put investigators off the scent

Yup, that was my point. There were loads of them, standard issue at one time, untraceable.

 

[RaM]

Hell of a lot of skeletons rattling about in a lot of cupboard's there.

 

[escargot]

I understand, but the gun was from WW1 so it was really an antique and actually given it's age not all that common

I think it's one that will never be solved, perhaps using the very old gun was to put investigators off the scent

By coincidence this has just come up on my recordings -

A Murder in the Family

Andrew Hooper was found guilty at Birmingham Crown Court in 2019 of murdering his estranged wife Cheryl Hooper in a shooting outside her home in Newport, Shropshire.

Andrew Hooper's gun licence and firearms had been removed after previous trouble but he obtained a rusty old antique shotgun from his parents' farm and shot his estranged wife with that. On the photo of it you'd think it was half a shovel or summat.

Hooper cleaned it up and loaded it. His excuse was that he was trying to frighten his wife by banging on the car window with the barrel but it unexpectedly went off, both barrels, and killed her.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Yup, that was my point. There were loads of them, standard issue at one time, untraceable.

Reminds me of when I was visiting a friend, who was living in digs with a lovely bloke called Steve.
Steve worked as a handyman, fixing mobile homes and caravans.
We were all having lunch together, when he showed us what he'd been given as a part-payment for his work (because the old person whose mobile home he'd worked on did not have enough cash available). It was a rifle from WW1.
I told him that it was probably illegal to own without being deactivated, and it was also unsafe to fire anyway (barrel looked a little pitted with rust). I think Steve found an antique dealer to take it off his hands.

 

[RaM]

One odd thing about the gun they say it was 7.65 mm in the film they show
9mm cases but a 7.65 mm Luger is a very rare beast, and 21 shots were fired
it would take time to reload it twice 8 rounds per mag so he would have to
have had 2 spare mag with him.

What are the chances of a killer knowing a family from England would be
on a rural French tourist road supposedly closed to normal motorized traffic
on that day and time.

Now cyclists can be beasts of habit so his rout could be known and he was
not popular with his partners family.

Then the wife's ex husband who was a suspect
is found to have died in America on the same day as the killings.

More twists n turns than you can shake a stick at.

 

[hunck]

Lots of false confessions are made for a variety of reasons. It's a well-known problem and there's a comprehensive Wikipedia page on it.

Yes - I was just wondering what happened in that particular case. Did he do it or was it a false confession?

 

[Robbrent]

One odd thing about the gun they say it was 7.65 mm in the film they show
9mm cases but a 7.65 mm Luger is a very rare beast, and 21 shots were fired
it would take time to reload it twice 8 rounds per mag so he would have to
have had 2 spare mag with him.

What are the chances of a killer knowing a family from England would be
on a rural French tourist road supposedly closed to normal motorized traffic
on that day and time.

Now cyclists can be beasts of habit so his rout could be known and he was
not popular with his partners family.

Then the wife's ex husband who was a suspect
is found to have died in America on the same day as the killings.

More twists n turns than you can shake a stick at.

It's almost like the all the evidence is pointing in different directions

As for what are the chances the killer would have known he was there, he could have been followed, or he could have been arranging to meet someone, but why leave potential witnesses alive ?

 

[maximus otter]

One odd thing about the gun they say it was 7.65 mm in the film they show
9mm cases but a 7.65 mm Luger is a very rare beast, and 21 shots were fired
it would take time to reload it twice 8 rounds per mag so he would have to
have had 2 spare mag with him…

7.65 Lugers aren’t that rare:

“With the adoption of the Luger Parabellum Model 1900 pistol in 1900, the 7.65mm Luger became the standard pistol cartridge of the Swiss Army. The Swiss Modell 06/29 pistol served the Swiss Army until well after the adoption of a SIG P210 in 1949, and remained in limited service until the late 1960s.”

Also, several submachine guns were manufactured in 7.65:

“A handful of submachine guns have been manufactured in this caliber, notably the SIG Bergmann 1920 (the licensed Swiss version of the Bergmann MP-18/1), the Swiss Furrer submachine gun, and its double-barreled aerial counterpart the Flieger-Doppelpistole 1919, the M/Neuhausen MKMS, the Austrian MP34, and the Suomi M-26.”

Both quotes from here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.65×21mm_Parabellum#History_and_usage

The SMGs would have had larger magazine capacity than the Luger pistol.

Are the authorities proceeding on the assumption that a pistol was used, based simply on the calibre of the cartridge cases that they found at the locus?

maximus otter

 

[escargot]

It's almost like the all the evidence is pointing in different directions

As for what are the chances the killer would have known he was there, he could have been followed, or he could have been arranging to meet someone, but why leave potential witnesses alive ?

The little girls were left alive because one hid in the footwell and the other appears to have been injured and possibly presumed dead by the killer.

If the killer was really after the cyclist he wouldn't expect the family to be there or how many of them there were.

 

[RaM]

Would think the rifling marks on any recovered bullets' would at least give them a good idea of what fired them,
there was a high capacity snail drum mag for the Luger, 32 rounds I think but don't know if it was used on the
7.65 cal ones,

 

[escargot]

high capacity snail drum mag

Don't try to pin this on me.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Don't try to pin this on me.

The shell won't allow it, you're safe.

 

[RaM]

The Snail did it, confess.

 

[catseye]

The shell won't allow it, you're safe.

If shelling was involved you'd have expected everyone to be dead!

 

[AmStramGram]

Slight diversion from the topic but do you know what happened to the son after confessing? Was he found guilty of homicide & jailed?

Yes he was. According to the wikipedia page of the incident (see link below in French), he was sentenced to 8 years of inprisonment, but what happened exactly that night in Louveciennes remains doubtful, especially since the boy's uncle was later murdered in Bielorussia, and the crime scene was visited twice by "robbers" after the boy's capture. On the other hand, it is said that the young man, after murdering his family, drove to Paris to spend time with a call girl, after coming back home to "discover" the crime ... Strange story.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuerie_de_Louveciennes

 

[RaM]

At least he didn’t waste the time and money on something frivolous.

 

[escargot]

One odd thing about the gun they say it was 7.65 mm in the film they show
9mm cases but a 7.65 mm Luger is a very rare beast, and 21 shots were fired
it would take time to reload it twice 8 rounds per mag so he would have to
have had 2 spare mag with him.

What are the chances of a killer knowing a family from England would be
on a rural French tourist road supposedly closed to normal motorized traffic
on that day and time.

Now cyclists can be beasts of habit so his rout could be known and he was
not popular with his partners family.

Then the wife's ex husband who was a suspect
is found to have died in America on the same day as the killings.

More twists n turns than you can shake a stick at.

Yup; latest British police thinking, at least as heard in the documentary, is that the cyclist Mollier was the target. As you say, nobody knew the family were there.

I wonder if Mollier was killed because of his involvement with the daughter of a rich family. They didn't like him. Perhaps they'd tried and failed to pay him off and become desperate?
The killer could have arrived and escaped on foot via the forest.

Also, Mollier was shot at an angle that suggests he was already off the bike and leaning on it, as cyclists are wont to do when they stop to chat. He knew the killer, or else he was stopped and ordered off the bike.

However, someone rash enough to kill the nearby family (presumably because they were witnesses) would surely have just stepped out and shot Mollier off the bike.

Perhaps anyone who left the area soon after the murders should be looked at.

 

[RaM]

There was a motorcycle rider reported by forest workers, they had words
to explain the road was not open for motorised traffic, this led to a photo
fit and the wife's ex husband being suspected but it was found he died of
supposedly a heart attack the same day in the US.

 

[escargot]

There was a motorcycle rider reported by forest workers, they had words
to explain the road was not open for motorised traffic, this led to a photo
fit and the wife's ex husband being suspected but it was found he died of
supposedly a heart attack the same day in the US.

Some of the deceased ex's relation would like him exhumed for a further post-mortem. They suspect he was poisoned.
His ex-wife had left in what seemed to be undue haste and for mysterious reasons.

It's as if several conspiracies are being played out at once.

 

[Mythopoeika]

There was a motorcycle rider reported by forest workers, they had words
to explain the road was not open for motorised traffic, this led to a photo
fit and the wife's ex husband being suspected but it was found he died of
supposedly a heart attack the same day in the US.

That must raise alarm bells, surely?
Odd coincidence.

 

[escargot]

That must raise alarm bells, surely?
Odd coincidence.

It's all getting a bit Midsomer.

 

[catseye]

Yes he was. According to the wikipedia page of the incident (see link below in French), he was sentenced to 8 years of inprisonment, but what happened exactly that night in Louveciennes remains doubtful, especially since the boy's uncle was later murdered in Bielorussia, and the crime scene was visited twice by "robbers" after the boy's capture. On the other hand, it is said that the young man, after murdering his family, drove to Paris to spend time with a call girl, after coming back home to "discover" the crime ... Strange story.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuerie_de_Louveciennes

After his release from prison (presuming he's out now...), were there any signs that the lad had - umm, suddenly come into any money, at all?

 

[Robbrent]

It's all getting a bit Midsomer.

It would have been solved in hour like most crime dramas

 

[Floyd]

What do you lot think about the ex Legionnaire Patrice Menegaldo as a good candidate?

 

[RaM]

He was a suspect and committed suicide. but if it was him why?
who payed him? someone in the cyclists partners family, if the target
was the English family there seems to be lots of possibility's.

 

[Floyd]

He was a suspect and committed suicide. but if it was him why?
who payed him? someone in the cyclists partners family, if the target
was the English family there seems to be lots of possibility's.

He'd had an affair with Mollier's sister and knew Mollier's partner, so perhaps there was some bad feeling between them and the family witnessed the shooting so had to be silenced?

I'm thinking that the Iraqi's were involved though to be honest.

 

[AmStramGram]

After his release from prison (presuming he's out now...), were there any signs that the lad had - umm, suddenly come into any money, at all?

I have no idea. Might be interesting to listen to the following French podcast for an update on this case https://www.slate.fr/audio/homeicid...t-tueur-proces-dassises-rempli-incoherences-4
However I am not in the mood to listen this. I prefer ghost stories to murder cases ...

By the way, the same website also has a podcast (4 episodes) about the Chevaline murders (in French as well) : https://www.slate.fr/audio/homeicides/75-tuerie-chevaline-crime-parfait-scene-crime-abominable

Interestingly, for 4 episodes about the Chevaline murders, there are 8 episodes about the Dupont de Ligonnes case (a man who executed his whole family before vanishing into nothingness, thus escaping justice). In France, the Chevaline murders are mostly forgotten. Now, the public is more interested by other cases.