7 ms·

Murder in the Alps

• tommyd 11y ago
  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_10_54_13.png http://s10.postimg.org/mwea5sruh/Screen_Shot_2015_10_15_at_1... 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...
  • coolnow 11y ago
    Not to mention the auto playing video ad that played in full screen on my iPhone.
    • yoodenvranx 11y ago
      Recently I got a full screen video ad on my phone which told me to turn the phone sideways because otherwise it would not work. wtf?!
    • rnhmjoj 11y ago
      The page is also reloading every couple of seconds for me. I guess it has to do with some cookie being blocked.
  • Intermernet 11y ago
    I wouldn't bother. It fluffs around with unsubstantiated theories and gets nowhere, while probably offending almost every person effected by the actual murder. It's also an example of really bad web development. Every paragraph is a separate React element, and the source has been mangled in many instances (The string "ff" being a common problem, for example "This is not a conclusion he o≠ers gracefully"). Also, there's a point early on where some frame tries to load at the bottom, but it's empty (no ad-blocking, JS enabled) and makes it really hard to read a few specific paragraphs. Honestly people, just use normal HTML for the article text. Actually, just use normal HTML wherever possible. Oh, and try to make sure your article actually has a conclusion. Personally, I'm not ever going to be clicking on any further GQ links. They not only have terrible articles, they have terrible presentation.
    • MHofman12 11y ago
      Sorry you feel that way Intermernet. -- Mike @GQ
    • brohee 11y ago
      The "ff" thing kinda looks like an attempt at ligatures gone horribly wrong on the web, but possibly OK in print.
  • detroitcoder 11y ago
    GQ's print content is 70% advertising, why would you expect their digital to be any different?
  • MHofman12 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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 11y ago
        Thanks
    • tommyd 11y ago
      Full credit for coming on here and resolving the issue Mike, thanks!
• andy_ppp 11y ago
  Interesting and tangentially related... I can't recommend Serial podcast enough. http://serialpodcast.org/ http://serialpodcast.org/
  • popopje 11y ago
    likewise The Staircase http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388644/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388644/ - it's 6 hours in full, but fascinating.
    • smcl 11y ago
      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 11y ago
        Ah, go on then - The Jinx is also incredible :-)
  • seibelj 11y ago
    I found serial interesting for a few episodes, then she started spending hours analyzing the memories and text messages of high school students and it quickly became exhausting to listen to. I hope the guy gets a fair trial but it was simply a slog to listen to.
• briandear 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
  • saiya-jin 11y ago
    story actually goes much deeper than these basic questions. nice to clearly see you went straight to comments without caring much about the article itself :)
• techterrier 11y ago
  tldr: We really have no idea.
• helipad 11y ago
  If nothing else, an interesting murder mystery.
• venomsnake 11y ago
  > 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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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.
      • MrZongle2 11y ago
        "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." I think a more likely explanation would be that the killer was a pro, and didn't care about the brass since they planned on dumping the weapon, which couldn't be traced to them anyway.
      • 11y ago
• MrZongle2 11y ago
  "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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      The fear in that child any time someone spoke or moved near her... unimaginable.
    • LordKano 11y ago
      My fiancée's son was about 6-7 years old at the time, he was playing hide and seek with some children at his grandmother's church and he hid in a small book case. When the other kids couldn't find him, he didn't come out. His grandmother and the other adults looked for him and he didn't come out. They searched the interior of the church and he didn't come out. They searched the grounds of the church and he didn't come out. They called the police and while the police were searching the church again, he came out. They had checked the book case on numerous occasions but he was in a compartment in the bottom of the book case and they had only checked the top. He wasn't allowed to play hide and seek at the church after that.
• tinco 11y ago
  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.
  • elliptic 11y ago
    Perhaps your assessment says more about you than it does the actual facts of the case
    • tinco 11y ago
      That's why I said 'from my perspective', or is there something specific that it says about me?
  • clort 11y ago
    btw they were Iraqi not Iranian
  • jmnicolas 11y ago
    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 ?
• sageabilly 11y ago
  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?
  • Rockslide 11y ago
    Actually both children survived. But considering their age at that time and the inconceivability of the event I doubt that their testimonials would be worth much.
  • jmnicolas 11y ago
    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).
• mylons 11y ago
  @longform recommended this to me as well!
• lemoncucumber 11y ago
  You see what happens when you find a stranger in the alps?!
• 6stringmerc 11y ago
  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.
• alricb 11y ago
  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.
• vatotemking 11y ago
  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/.
• sireat 11y ago
  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.
• inspectorG 11y ago
  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.