Dramatic pictures of an antique pistol discovered in an Alpine lake by a British holidaymaker that could solve a 14-year-old quadruple murder can be exclusively revealed by The Mail on Sunday today.
Heavily corroded and partially covered in sand, the Luger handgun, which was retrieved from the bottom of Lake Annecy in France, could be a major breakthrough in the investigation into one of Europe’s most baffling – and violent – murders.
It was found by father-of-two Kyle, 41, from Wiltshire who was snorkelling with a friend more than 50 yards from the lake’s shoreline during a three-week family camping holiday last month when he spotted the pistol’s handle sticking out of the sand.
Forensic scientists are this weekend trying to confirm whether it is the murder weapon that was used to kill three members of a British-Iraqi family and a passing French cyclist on a remote mountain road near the lake in September 2012.
The bodies of Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife Iqbal, 47, her mother Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, and Sylvain Mollier, 45, were found near a bullet-ridden BMW parked in a forested lay-by near the village of Chevaline.
The al-Hilli’s two daughters survived the horrific attack. Zeena, then aged four, hid in the footwell of the car beside her dead mother and grandmother while sister Zainab, then seven, was shot and beaten but lived.
Speaking exclusively to the MoS, Kyle, who we have agreed not to identify, last night described his ‘shock’ at realising that his chance find could have been used in the brutal killings.
Kyle, who works in the construction industry, discovered the weapon in around 5ft 2inches of water close to the campsite where the al-Hilli family, from Claygate, Surrey, stayed before they were shot.
Exclusive pictures reveal an antique pistol that was discovered in an Alpine lake by a British holidaymaker that could solve a 14-year-old quadruple murder
Heavily corroded and partially covered in sand, the Luger handgun, which was retrieved from the bottom of Lake Annecy in France, could be a major breakthrough in the investigation into one of Europe’s most baffling – and violent – murders
The gun was found by father-of-two Kyle, 41, from Wiltshire who was snorkelling with a friend more than 50 yards from the lake’s shoreline
‘It was a horrific crime and if I have been able to contribute in any way to finding who was responsible, then that would be fantastic,’ he said. ‘I hope now that this is the right weapon and that the French police can now make some progress.’
Kyle and his wife and two sons, aged ten and five, have enjoyed holidays in their motorhome at Le Solitaire du Lac campsite in St Jorioz for the last four years. Their idyllic breaks – on the same campsite where the al-Hilli’s stayed – have been spent paddleboarding on Lake Annecy’s crystalline waters and taking picnics on beaches.
On August 20, a fellow British holidaymaker, a semi-retired teacher in his 60s, offered to take Kyle’s two sons out on the lake in a small dinghy with an outboard motor. Kyle accompanied them on his paddleboard.
At around 4pm he and the other man began snorkelling, joking that they might even find an expensive watch or jewellery accidentally dropped overboard by the wealthy French holidaymakers who sunbathe on boats that often anchor in that part of the lake.
‘I jumped in and joked to the other guy “well let’s start looking for that gold Rolex, then”.
‘The water was at about the level of my chin. I had a snorkel, mask and flippers and had been swimming around for around ten minutes when I saw a flash of gold on the bottom. I dived down but it was just a plastic clasp from a bikini.
‘I then swam for about another 15 metres when I saw what looked like a pistol grip covered in sand. I was always interested in firearms and learnt about weapons but straight away I presumed that it was just a water pistol.
‘So I dived down again, grabbed the grip and as soon as I started lifting it I could tell it was a metal object – it was extremely heavy. As I lifted it up the sand started falling off it and I could clearly see what it was and I thought: “that’s a bloody Luger”.
French police initially claimed there was nothing they could do about the gun Kyle had found
Officers eventually agreed to inform their bosses and later that afternoon a team of police arrived at the campsite
‘I swam across to the other guy and said “I’ve found this Luger” and he asked to take a look but then started pointing it in the air and working the trigger and I shouted “no, no, no, we don’t know if this is going to go off or not.”
‘My kids were still on the boat and asked ‘what have you found Dad’ and I said ‘I’ve found a bloody gun, lads’.
‘But then I was terrified because I thought ‘do I want to put it on a boat with my children?’ But we had to get it back, so I put it in a metal bucket that was in the bottom of the boat and we took the boat back to shore.’
Kyle believes the weapon was too far from the shoreline, much of which was composed of reed beds, for it to have been thrown, raising the prospect that it could have been dumped from a boat.
If so, the location of the drop, in an area of relatively shallow water, could not have been worse. Kyle says that only 30ft from where the gun was found, the lake significantly deepens. It is almost 270ft deep at its deepest point.
It may also have remained undiscovered were it not for this year’s scorching weather. The water level in Lake Annecy is believed to be around 12in lower than this time last year, which meant it would have been out of Kyle’s depth.
Kyle took the weapon back to the campsite and began messaging friends in the UK about his extraordinary discovery. Having been backpacking abroad in 2012, he was completely unaware of the Chevaline massacre and initially hoped to keep the rare gun as a souvenir.
But when one of his friends alerted him to the killings – and how French police believe that the murder weapon was a Luger – he finally understood the potentially huge significance of his find.
‘It flipped my opinion of wanting to keep the gun. It became really important that it gets handed to the right team. I wanted to find the best way to get it to the right place.’
Saad al-Hilli, 50, (left) his wife Iqbal, 47, (right) were shot dead. Daughter Zainab (centre) was shot and beaten but survived
Mr Al-Hilli’s mother-in-law, Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, also died in the September 2012 bloodbath, along with cyclist Sylvian Mollier, 45
The car at the murder scene in the forest near Chevaline and Lake Annecy in the French Alps is pictured
After wrapping the gun in a Lidl advertising magazine and placing it on the floor of a tent next to his motorhome, Kyle spent a sleepless night poring over press reports of the murders and consulting ChatGPT about the exact model of the gun he had discovered.
Indeed, his conversations with the AI chatbot became so detailed that it advised him to stop handling the weapon and directed him to the cold case unit that has overseen the investigation in recent years.
‘The more I read and the more I learned the more I thought “blimey, this gun has got to go somewhere.”‘
The next day he and the other British holidaymaker cycled into St Jorioz to alert police, only to find the Gendarmerie station closed for lunch. They eventually flagged down a police car with two officers who – to Kyle’s astonishment – claimed there was nothing they could do.
‘I said: “Okay, to be clear, there’s like potentially a live firearm sat in a tent on a really busy campsite. I’ve got two children under 10. Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?”‘
The officers eventually agreed to inform their bosses and later that afternoon a team of officers arrived at the campsite.
‘It seemed to ramp up a bit then. They came back with evidence bags, forensic gear like gloves and masks and they proceeded to remove the gun from the tent. When they sealed the evidence bag they got me to sign that.’
Both men were later interviewed and gave DNA swabs to ensure that any traces they left on the weapon could be ruled out.
French prosecutors have previously said that the killer used an antique 7.65mm Luger P06 revolver, issued to the Swiss army and police in the 1920s and 1930s. The killer fired 21 bullets, of which 18 hit their targets. Fragments of the gun were found at the murder scene.
Marie-Céline Lawrysz, the deputy prosecutor in the Lake Annecy investigation, has said the weapon found in Lake Annecy ‘appears to be a P06’, while a firearms expert shown pictures of the gun by the MoS this weekend confirmed it ‘looks like a Luger P06.’
‘Such pistols were used by the Swiss Army and others from the early part of the century until at least the late 1940’s,’ he said.
However, a second ballistics expert, who worked for the Metropolitan Police for more than 20 years, told this newspaper that the newly discovered gun appeared to be a larger calibre 9mm Luger P08.
He highlighted that the similar P06 model has a small built-in safety lever, known as a grip safety, on the back of the handle which cannot be seen in the pictures of the gun discovered by Kyle.
‘In my opinion, it is not consistent with being a Swiss-issue Luger P06/29,’ he said.
Meanwhile, a source close to the investigation has warned that the analysis of the weapon found by Kyle is ‘extremely complex’ due to the time it has spent in the water.
Police probing the massacre do not know whether the al-Hillis or Mr Mollier, who worked in the nuclear industry, was the target. In 2013, Eric Maillaud, then prosecutor on the case, concluded: ‘We are dealing with a very experienced gunman.’
The discovery of the gun so close to the Solitaire du Lac campsite, which has around 200 pitches, raises the prospect that the al-Hillis were killed by someone with knowledge of where they were staying.
Police are said to be interested in a Danish tourist who was camping at Solitaire du Lac around the time of the murders. In 2011 the same tourist was said to also have been camping a few kilometres away from the scene of the killing of Xavier Baligant, a 29-year-old Belgian holidaymaker, at a motorway rest area in eastern France.
Baligant was shot dead with a rifle issued to the Swiss army in the middle of the 20th century in an attack with no known motive. No further details about the Dane have been made public.
Meanwhile, Kyle, who returned home with his family on August 29, has mixed feelings about his discovery.
An enthusiastic – but unsuccessful – detectorist, he has uncovered nothing more exciting than a 100-year-old coin while tramping around fields in Wiltshire with a metal detector over the last five years. He therefore remains stunned to have stumbled on such an astonishing find by chance.
Sylvain Mollier, 45, the ‘mystery’ French cyclist was murdered in the Alps Killings
Saad and Ikbal al-Hilli with their daughter Zainab when she was three
People are seen walking towards the place where four people were shot dead, on the ‘Combe d’Ire’ road, on September 7, 2012
‘I don’t mind walking around a field with no one else there for hours. I normally just come back with pockets of beer bottle caps.’
But he also hopes it could lead to the eventual solving of the case – and some form of closure for the al-Hilli’s surviving daughters, Zeena and Zainab.
‘Hopefully it helps close a horrific chapter of their lives,’ he added.
‘My kids already think I am a hero for finding this gun and handing it in and it being potentially linked to the investigation. So if it does become important for the investigation, then that would be fantastic.’
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