Speaker 1 [00:12]
Pack your body bags. We’re going on a slaycation! These are murders and mysterious deaths that happen while you’re on vacation. I am your co-host, Adam “Tex” Davis, and I’m joined by my wife, Kim, and my buddy, Jerry.
Speaker 2 [00:30]
Our buddy!
Speaker 1 [00:32]
Getting that you guys like each other.
Speaker 2 [00:37]
What you always say! So we are in a two-parter. If you have not heard the first part, go back to last week’s episode, listen to it, and then come back here to get the rest of the story.
Speaker 1 [00:51]
Or like a lot of people, you just skipped last week’s episode because you saw part one and now you’re listening to both of them, doing it Netflix style. We know, we know.
Speaker 1 [01:01]
Which is great!
Speaker 3 [01:01]
We do that too! Yeah, it’s a great way to do it.
Speaker 1 [01:03]
Anyway, let’s jump right into it. So when we left off, a family was massacred. There was another guy as well on a bicycle. They were all in this campground area, and gunshots rang out.
Speaker 1 [01:19]
Yeah, three adult family members are dead. There was a hurt girl who was in a medically induced coma. There’s also a bicyclist who’s been murdered, and then there was an unharmed four-year-old who had been hiding in a car with her family, cowering for over eight hours.
Speaker 1 [01:39]
Now we’re trying to figure out, was this a professional hit? Could this be somehow linked to espionage or spying? The last thing I think you guys said was that both Saeed, the father, and Sylvain, the bicyclist, had murky pasts of some sort?
Speaker 2 [02:00]
Well, not so much murky…
Speaker 1 [02:04]
I wanted to say murky!
Speaker 3 [02:06]
You got to say it, but we’re going to say not really murky. Yeah. So, of course, the police are like, “All right, this is so unprecedented for this area and so violent and horrible.” The first question is, is someone being targeted?
Speaker 3 [02:18]
And if someone’s being targeted, was it Sylvain, the bicyclist, or someone in the car, most likely Saeed, the father?
Speaker 1 [02:26]
Now, there was no connection between the bicyclist and the family, right? None that anyone could find? He didn’t drive by and say, “The password is balloon.”
Speaker 3 [02:37]
Okay. Oh my God. Nice old game show reference. Thank you for that! So, they start looking, and one of the other questions that police have, as we talked about in the last episode, is if this was a targeted hit, why would a professional assassin be using the Luger P08, which was last used in like 1941?
Speaker 3 [02:56]
Because it’s really effective, right? Apparently. Right? I mean, holy shit. So they start looking into Saeed al-Hill. He was born in Iraq, but he’s a British national. They realize that he does have some potential connections to the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 3 [03:18]
They note that he’s an engineer, specifically a satellite systems engineer, which obviously can involve access to sensitive information. They discover that there are—Kim, can you say whether these were confirmed or not?—but there were rumors of a Swiss bank account.
Speaker 3 [03:39]
Yes, so there were.
Speaker 2 [03:41]
And interestingly enough, the trip that he was on was to address that Swiss bank account.
Speaker 2 [04:09]
So the family trip was sort of put together last minute, and really, it was a trip that his family joined him on because he had business to take care of in Switzerland.
Speaker 2 [04:20]
But they’re in France?
Speaker 2 [04:22]
Yes. But—
Speaker 3 [04:20]
Oh, they did a stop in Switzerland?
Speaker 2 [04:28]
Well, the thing is, France is on the border with Switzerland and Italy, so it’s easy back and forth.
Speaker 3 [04:20]
The Alps straddle all these kinds of things.
Speaker 1 [04:22]
Sure. So they stopped in Switzerland before they went to…
Speaker 2 [04:28]
Okay, so if you listen…
Speaker 1 [04:32]
It was like… oh, the campsite wasn’t the final destination?
Speaker 2 [04:40]
No, they were just on a family trip. This is just part of the trip. That’s what I’m saying!
Speaker 3 [04:46]
Got some business in Switzerland.
Speaker 2 [04:55]
Gotcha, gotcha. And so the Swiss bank account question was linked to, was it the Baath party?
Speaker 2 [04:55]
So, the Swiss bank account actually belonged to his father.
Speaker 2 [05:22]
Saeed’s father.
Speaker 2 [05:22]
Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2 [05:22]
Still alive?
Speaker 2 [05:22]
No, his father was actually deceased. And another layer of this is Saeed’s brother and Saeed were in conflict and actually fighting over their father’s estate.
Speaker 2 [05:58]
Father was wealthy?
Speaker 2 [05:28]
His father did all right.
Speaker 3 [05:28]
Yeah.
Speaker 2 [05:28]
Yeah, his father actually had money and property that he has left to both his sons 50-50.
Speaker 1 [05:37]
I leave you money, and I leave you my rare Swiss gun.
Speaker 2 [05:43]
In any case, that was the business that he was there to tend to. And there was an issue between him and his brother. In fact, at the time of Saeed’s death, he and his brother had not spoken for over a year.
Speaker 2 [05:58]
And where was the brother?
Speaker 2 [06:05]
Well, the brother was in England, or the UK rather.
Speaker 3 [06:05]
They were all in the UK.
Speaker 3 [06:05]
But just to… so their father was a diplomat and had actually worked for Saddam Hussein and was part of the Ba’ath Party. However, they…
Speaker 3 [06:18]
Yeah, however it said.
Speaker 3 [06:18]
He had a falling out with Saddam Hussein and I believe was jailed at one point. Right. And then left the Saddam Hussein regime. But there were these theories that Saeed’s father was actually a money launderer for the Iraqi regime.
Speaker 2 [06:40]
Right. Apparently, the dictator, Saddam Hussein, prior to his execution, had withdrawn over $775 million from the Iraqi Central Bank and deposited funds in secret bank accounts around the world, including Switzerland.
Speaker 2 [07:01]
And the funds were reportedly smuggled by Iraqi nationals who lived abroad.
Speaker 3 [07:11]
Saeed and his brother were feuding over homes in Iraq and money, and Saeed actually blocked his father’s will at one point, which I don’t know how he was allowed to do that, but somehow through some mechanism he blocked his brother out from the family inheritance.
Speaker 2 [07:34]
Right. Well, they had each lawyered up. They had each gotten a lawyer to deal with their respective interests.
Speaker 2 [07:34]
Why couldn’t they just split it?
Speaker 2 [07:34]
Well, it was messy. It was messy because the house that Saeed and his family lived in was actually the father’s house.
Speaker 2 [07:54]
And when his father died, he wanted everything, and he had willed everything 50-50. The brother had wanted him to buy him out.
Speaker 3 [08:09]
Okay.
Speaker 3 [08:09]
So it was just like a classic money feud inside the family. So I do want to say that all of this stuff, like the rumors about the father being a money launderer for Saddam Hussein, the authorities did look into that, and they said they couldn’t find evidence of that.
Speaker 3 [08:26]
But there’s no…
Speaker 2 [08:27]
Nothing to corroborate.
Speaker 3 [08:28]
No corroborating evidence, but it is something that a lot of Iraqi people claim. But when the authorities figured out that there was this connection to Saddam Hussein and Iraq and all of that, and his work as a systems engineer, there was sort of suspicion that maybe someone had put a hit out on him because of some access to information.
Speaker 1 [08:52]
Right. Was the father like a known person? Like, was he on that deck of cards? Remember during the Gulf War, they put out a deck of cards?
Speaker 3 [09:09]
I don’t think he was. He wasn’t…
Speaker 3 [09:09]
He didn’t make it to the ace of spades.
Speaker 3 [09:09]
So let’s just put a pin in that because I do want to come back. There is a little more to talk about with him, with his work and some of those connections. But let’s jump over to Sylvain Muller, the bicyclist, because we also want to talk about how he might have been connected to this espionage.
Speaker 3 [09:28]
So this theory proposes that Sylvain Muller, the man on the bicycle, was the intended target of the professional assassin who used a gun from 1940, and that the family was collateral damage.
Speaker 1 [09:42]
I love that you keep shitting on the gun that was so vastly effective.
Speaker 3 [09:47]
That’s the weirdest… it’s like some of you are doing a—it’s such a weird choice.
Speaker 1 [09:51]
It wasn’t like it was revolutionary.
Speaker 3 [09:54]
It’s almost a musket! But it’s not. It shoots like all these… It’s like going into an aerial battle in a biplane, like Snoopy’s plane.
Speaker 3 [10:07]
Right. You know, that’s how you shut down the Red Baron.
Speaker 3 [10:07]
Exactly. The theory that has Sylvain Muller as the target of an assassin looks at a couple of things. First of all, he has a job at a nuclear materials plant. He works as a metal worker, though. He’s not like a…
Speaker 2 [10:21]
Right. He’s not the one interacting with sensitive information. He’s a welder.
Speaker 3 [10:26]
A welder, basically. Yeah.
Speaker 1 [10:28]
You say that like looking down… well, no, no…
Speaker 2 [10:31]
No, but the point that I’m making is that when they—
Speaker 2 [10:31]
Welders make a lot of money an hour. Skilled welder? Yes. But that—
Speaker 3 [10:41]
I didn’t know you were so into welding.
Speaker 1 [10:41]
Well, you know, I worked in a factory.
Speaker 3 [10:51]
He didn’t have access to, like, the central information about the nuclear plant.
Speaker 1 [10:51]
Well, there’s no… everything…
Speaker 2 [10:55]
Guys keep it all together. Yes, which is why it was investigated, which is why the authorities looked at it.
Speaker 3 [11:01]
Right, because welders are making connections.
Speaker 3 [11:01]
They really are. So they were looking at him on that front, and also he was shot considerably more times than the other victims, which is usually a telltale sign that you are a target.
Speaker 3 [11:18]
And there were rumors that he was involved with a woman from a wealthy family that—
Speaker 2 [11:24]
That was not psyched about that union.
Speaker 3 [11:28]
with a welder. It was a hot connection.
Speaker 1 [11:32]
It was. Wait, okay. So this welder worked at a place that could potentially have an aura.
Speaker 3 [11:39]
of, because it’s a nuclear plant, they pretty quickly decide. It’s not it. He probably saw. Right. So he was biking and he saw whoever was doing the shooting. Yes. So he was.
Speaker 1 [11:51]
Yeah, it’s a loose end. You got to take care of the right end. But it does seem like a professional hit.
Speaker 2 [11:55]
now. I mean, it definitely was giving that or at least it seemed like they targeted what also gave was this sense of somebody was after somebody in that.
Speaker 1 [12:07]
Right. And we’ll find out who right after this quick break and a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 4 [12:14]
Most people aren’t interested in just one topic.
Speaker 5 [12:17]
podcast about just one subject. That rhymed.
Speaker 6 [12:20]
Greetings, we’re technically a conversation, a podcast for curious people by curious people.
Speaker 4 [12:26]
On our podcast, we do things just a little bit different.
Speaker 5 [12:28]
Every week we share a new topic and the other hosts have no idea what the topic will be.
Speaker 6 [12:33]
Our topics are all over the place from light and funny to dark and sometimes spooky.
Speaker 4 [12:38]
We’ve covered everything from true crime, historical events and people, the supernatural and the occult. I like that. Urban legends and folklore.
Speaker 5 [12:46]
Thanks for watching!
Speaker 6 [12:46]
My favorite.
Speaker 5 [12:47]
No matter what we cover, we try to make the episodes interesting and funny. Ehh…
Speaker 6 [12:52]
Don’t mean to be the bad guy, but our lawyer said we legally couldn’t call her so funny.
Speaker 4 [12:55]
If we have a lawyer, let me tell you what I told our lawyer. Come here so I can show you how far I can legally stick my high-heeled boot up your—
Speaker 5 [13:02]
Check us out at TechnicallyAConversation.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6 [13:09]
Technically a conversation.
Speaker 4 [13:10]
We’re like a lifestyle brand. Yeah.
Speaker 2 [13:15]
And we’re back, and, well, we’re worried.
Speaker 3 [13:20]
So we were just talking about the different theories about why someone in this group might have been targeted by a professional assassin. So have we written off the bicyclist? They’ve pretty much determined at this point.
Speaker 2 [13:33]
Here’s the thing, too. Wrong place, wrong time. So that was initially what they thought. Then they got on the, they went down the rabbit hole of just, okay, let’s just rule that out. And while sort of exploring, okay, whether or not this was a professional hit, other things that they had to contend with was, okay, maybe not a professional hit in the sense that, you know, espionage, maybe somebody has a personal vendetta.
Speaker 2 [14:05]
Maybe somebody got pissed off.
Speaker 1 [14:08]
Like a brother who got cut out of a will, for example.
Speaker 2 [14:10]
Exactly. Well, a family member who’s not psyched that their daughter is with somebody that they are not psyched about. Apparently, Sylvain Muller was the father of three. And he and his partner, Claire, had recently given birth to a baby boy.
Speaker 2 [14:36]
And he, at the time, was on paternity leave at his job.
Speaker 2 [14:51]
Yes. Well, this is—
Speaker 3 [14:53]
In France, it’s in Europe.
Speaker 2 [14:57]
Yeah, exactly. That’s what I was going to say. Good for them.
Speaker 2 [15:01]
Yeah, good for them is right.
Speaker 3 [15:03]
Quality of life is a thing that employers do.
Speaker 2 [15:07]
Even at one point, given Sylvain’s work with the nuclear company and Saeed’s work in satellite, they even had to rule out that somebody was coming after them or that they were together.
Speaker 3 [15:16]
Right, because there had been a plot that they were both involved in. Right.
Speaker 1 [15:20]
Also have to like, let’s have a good James Bond movie, the satellite guy and the nuclear guy are plotting something.
Speaker 3 [15:26]
This is where you get into the question of how would someone know, like these guys, like one’s on vacation, his daughter chose to go hiking that day, right? So that was random. And this guy on the bike just chose this path.
Speaker 3 [15:40]
So you start to, it starts to all sort of fall apart that they could be connected when you think of how randomly.
Speaker 2 [15:47]
And all the moving pieces at that exact moment. Yeah. I mean, Sylvain’s partner had reportedly, as we had stated, come from a well-off family. She had recently come into ownership of her father’s pharmacy, which had been valued at just under 1.3 million.
Speaker 2 [16:09]
Wow.
Speaker 2 [16:09]
And her family was not pleased with their union, and not happy that he was going to be taking a paternity leave of three years.
Speaker 1 [16:28]
Three years? Yes. Wait, what?
Speaker 2 [16:28]
Yes.
Speaker 1 [16:30]
Is that normal?
Speaker 3 [16:32]
It seems to me. I didn’t think it sounded normal.
Speaker 2 [16:35]
I’m presuming that there’s a certain allotted time where you are paid for.
Speaker 3 [16:41]
That’s a lot of welds. It’s not getting done.
Speaker 2 [16:43]
And perhaps he had enjoyed, you know, job security. And, you know, I’m not sure how it was worked out, but he was planning an extended paternity leave.
Speaker 1 [17:04]
Yeah, I’m just going to be taking that paternity leave, and there’s a pharmacy in my future.
Speaker 3 [17:11]
Down the nuclear plant to allow him to take paternity leave. But the cops pretty quickly also realize, okay, even if someone from the family was crazy enough to go shoot him, the idea that they would then start murdering the family, it just doesn’t, it just defies logic.
Speaker 1 [17:29]
Like, I don’t like that theory.
Speaker 3 [17:31]
So then, you know, attention really shifts to the brother, right? Because they stay… What’s the brother’s name? Uday?
Speaker 2 [17:33]
The brother’s name is Zaid.
Speaker 3 [17:44]
Zaid. Yeah. And, you know…
Speaker 2 [17:49]
He’s the older brother.
Speaker 3 [17:52]
All the brother angry energy.
Speaker 3 [17:52]
It’s bad. They realize these guys literally only speak through lawyers. There’s this dispute over assets worth millions of dollars, including properties, the Swiss bank account that they’re trying to deal with.
Speaker 2 [18:07]
Yeah, a property in Spain where the father lived.
Speaker 3 [18:11]
Yeah. So Zaid really comes under the microscope at this point. Because—
Speaker 1 [18:16]
Where his whereabouts or it wouldn’t be him. He would have hired someone.
Speaker 2 [18:19]
Yeah, I mean, they had ruled out him having committed the crime. He had had an alibi as he was with a friend vacationing.
Speaker 3 [18:30]
Like he was very well accounted for. So he couldn’t have been there. And then, and then the police also are like, there’s no, they couldn’t find any evidence linking him to the crime scene, and, and sort of like they did with the Sylvain Muller, you know, family theory, they’re like, this is so extreme.
Speaker 3 [18:47]
Like you wouldn’t eliminate your, you know, this entire family. If you were going after one person, I don’t know. It’s so extreme. It’s so, it’s so over the top.
Speaker 1 [19:01]
Yeah, well, I mean, if you hire someone to kill somebody and they don’t have a connection to these people, right? It’s just as easy to kill five people as it is one when they’re all fitting together in the same car.
Speaker 3 [19:15]
Doesn’t seem likely to me. I mean, I’ve never—
Speaker 1 [19:20]
Either.
Speaker 2 [19:21]
Is that there’s nothing to substantiate that that’s what it is. Like, it’s not.
Speaker 1 [19:27]
It’s crazy that all this happened pretty quickly and then the person just made a clean getaway. Was there any evidence? Like footprints, tire tracks, did the little girl see or hear anything?
Speaker 3 [19:40]
Let’s come back to that. Yeah. Okay, let’s come back to that in a second.
Speaker 2 [19:43]
The interesting thing, too, that raised suspicions regarding the brother was when he was questioned, he had contradicted himself. He had said to authorities that he and his brother had a good relationship.
Speaker 2 [19:57]
Oh.
Speaker 2 [19:57]
Which raised suspicion when it was discovered, oh, no, you guys are not even speaking.
Speaker 3 [20:05]
Well, that’s what makes it so good. Right. And this inconsistency raised suspicion.
Speaker 1 [20:12]
That was a stupid own.
Speaker 3 [20:14]
So, so the cops then are like, okay, let’s look at Said a little more closely in his work, right? Because maybe there is some connection to his work and what’s happened. Right. And one of the reasons they start looking back at him is they notice something curious, which is that Said works for—
Speaker 1 [20:34]
You got satellite, you got nuclear, what is this guy? Defense contractor? What other suspicious—
Speaker 3 [20:40]
He works for a company called Surrey Satellites Technology.
Speaker 1 [20:47]
Another satellite guy.
Speaker 3 [20:51]
Mm-hmm. No, this is the dad.
Speaker 1 [20:51]
Oh, I’m sorry. Right.
Speaker 2 [20:51]
Is that the victim in the crime?
Speaker 3 [20:51]
Yeah, the victim. Gotcha.
Speaker 3 [20:53]
My mistake. So they decide, you know, after they’ve eliminated the Sylvain Muller theory and the brother, they look back at Said and say, let’s look at his work and see if there’s anything we can figure out.
Speaker 3 [21:04]
And he works with this company that does, you know, satellite work, map-making work with aeronautic defense. And they noticed something very curious, which is that there was a Facebook page set up in Said’s memory.
Speaker 3 [21:21]
And absolutely nobody from his job ever posts condolences or goes to the page. They never make any mention of it. They never even are able to reveal exactly what he did at the company. And so this causes the police to wonder, like what kind of information did he have access to?
Speaker 3 21:39
So they know that he was a Shia Muslim who was very, very strongly anti-Israel, very supportive of Iran and Hezbollah. Like, he was known to have these were his known politics.
Speaker 2 21:52
And he was very open about it.
Speaker 1 21:56
Well, Iraq by birth.
Speaker 3 22:02
Yeah. Well, he ran because of its anti-Israel policies. All strange bedfellows.
Speaker 2 22:11
And he would go on Arabic forums and be very vocal.
Speaker 3 22:17
Very vocal about being anti-Israel, like the most extreme version of anti-Israel.
Speaker 1 22:22
Well, maybe that’s why nobody went on his Facebook page.
Speaker 3 22:26
Well, the investigators said they were shocked at how openly radical he was—very supportive of Palestine, Hezbollah, and Iran; very anti-Israel. And so they started to wonder, could he have access—because the company he was working for does map-making and satellite technology—could he have access to information about Israel that he was providing to Israel’s enemies? Was Israel, or the US, or France, or somebody like, “We’re going to take this guy out”?
Speaker 1 23:04
Right. Ooh boy. The plot thickens.
Speaker 3 23:08
Right? Yeah. Like, what? Yeah. Yeah, that’s a lot going on here. Not like the Schumuck guy who’s just clearly nuts.
Speaker 3 23:16
There are theories like Saddam Hussein, Israel, you know, nuclear plants—the web of intrigue around this case. And at the core of it is this horrible thing: this whole family has been wiped out. These poor kids—you’ve got these two, the one girl survived.
Speaker 1 23:35
No one in the coma did whatever happened.
Speaker 3 23:37
She survived. She survived, yeah. So the two daughters did survive, but the parents are gone, the grandmother’s gone, Sylvain, the biker is gone. And so he’s got kids that are now fatherless. I mean, this is terrible. But they can’t figure this out, right?
Speaker 3 23:51
So then they’re like, okay, maybe this was, you know, maybe that’s what happened. You know? The problem with that line of reasoning is you have about a negative 3,000% chance of ever figuring out if that’s true.
Speaker 1 24:04
How did you figure that out, that percentage?
Speaker 3 24:06
Um, I actually asked ChatGPT.
Speaker 2 24:14
3.0, not 4.5. Going back about the Swiss account that was set up by the father, Said’s father, the account was set up in 1988 and was now valued at over a million dollars.
Speaker 1 24:32
Right. I think you had said, I think like 1.1 or something.
Speaker 2 24:36
And that account went untouched for years but was flagged when an application for a card linked to that account was submitted about a year before Qadim’s death. And bank employees had noted that the signature had differed from the one they had on file.
Speaker 1 25:01
Someone was trying to forge, potentially.
Speaker 2 25:03
Right. So when the bank contacted Khadim to say basically, “We think somebody’s trying to, you know, get into your account,” they just wanted to follow up and make sure that he was not the one making that request. He confirmed that, no, it was not him making that request.
Speaker 2 25:23
And the Swiss prosecutor would publicly point the finger at Zahid, who fraudulently tried to gain access to those funds. Zahid, of course, emphatically denies that and just said no; it was his father.
Speaker 2 25:42
Right.
Speaker 1 25:45
That raised… Look, these are my forged father’s signatures; they look nothing like this forgery. My forgeries look nothing like it.
Speaker 3 25:53
Okay, so now we’re at a point where we don’t know what the motive is. We know that there was no one out… We don’t think it’s the cops; don’t think anyone was after Sylvain. They have the only thing. How far along are we?
Speaker 3 26:04
Are we years later? Say 2014, so about two years later, right? And this is obviously now becoming a multinational investigation. The one place they’re not getting a lot of cooperation is Iraq.
Speaker 3 26:18
Well, it is not shocking. And the problem with Iraq is that at this time, there were as many as a hundred killings a week happening in Iraq for political reasons. And so trying to get cooperation for this case—it’s happening in the Alps—it’s like, you know, not prioritized. It’s not happening.
Speaker 3 26:34
So then you asked a question earlier, like, were there footprints? Were there clues? And there actually was this one mysterious thing that had happened.
Speaker 1 26:51
All right, we’ll find out what this clue is right after this quick break and a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 27:00
So, yeah, there was one mysterious clue. It was actually a person. Kim, what did you think about the reports of this motorcyclist that people saw? That was very strange that they never quite figured out who that was, right?
Speaker 3 27:15
Yeah.
Speaker 2 27:15
Yeah, they were never able to.
Speaker 1 27:17
When you say that motorcyclist, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 27:21
Well, there was a motorcyclist who—remember Brett Martin, the British Air Force guy? He came upon this horrible scene and noted that he had seen a motorcycle.
Speaker 1 27:37
I don’t recall you saying he saw a motorcycle.
Speaker 3 27:41
Well, when he was interviewed, he later recalled that he saw a person wearing a helmet. He couldn’t see their face on a motorcycle.
Speaker 1 27:51
Oh, but wait, at the crime scene or just en route?
Speaker 3 27:55
On route.
Speaker 1 27:55
Okay, so he was headed to the crime scene, and this guy was going the other way on a motorcycle.
Speaker 3 28:01
Is that right? Were they going the other way?
Speaker 2 28:05
Yes, they must have been going the other way.
Speaker 3 28:14
And forestry workers were also questioned and also said that they saw a motorcycle. That there was a motorcycle.
Speaker 3 28:21
I don’t know whether it was from some sort of camera they had installed permanently, but there was an image, a very grainy image of this motorcyclist.
Speaker 3 28:33
And so they were like, okay, we need to figure out who this person on the motorcycle was.
Speaker 1 28:38
Right. But were there motorcycle tracks or anything near the car?
Speaker 2 28:44
Just in the surrounding areas.
Speaker 1 28:46
Okay. The bike, the motorcycle was just on the road.
Speaker 1 28:57
By the way, where the car was in the caravan and the bike, was that like a dirt road, or was that a regular paved road? Or like what was that scene? Was that woods? Was that isolated or was that more like a highway?
Speaker 2 29:01
Like around in and around a campsite.
Speaker 3 29:05
Yeah, but I think the road was paved from the photos I saw; it was, yeah.
Speaker 1 29:09
The road was paved. No, because usually there’s some kind of… I mean, if a motorcycle screeches out, there’s a shooting and takes off, there could be some kind of tracks. There could be some kind of something, right?
Speaker 1 29:19
Yeah. But there’s nothing.
Speaker 2 29:21
There was no evidence of tracks near the scene per se, but in the surrounding areas, the motorcycle was observed, and then there was a vehicle that was observed.
Speaker 3 29:35
Oh, yeah, there was a gray BMW also.
Speaker 3 29:37
Another BMW. Yeah, that drove by. But they don’t know who these…
Speaker 1 29:39
Right. So yeah, so they’re looking for someone on a motorcycle. They don’t know whether it’s a man or a woman, but they have enough description and information from the forestry rangers to eventually match the description of the motorcyclist to this guy named Eric Dee, who is a former police officer living in the Anse region right near where this happened.
Speaker 3 30:03
Okay. So in February, this is in February 2014, almost two years later, they realized that because he’s a former cop, he would have had firearms training, so he could have totally done this murder. And they search his home, and lo and behold, they find a ton of weapons from World War II.
Speaker 3 30:22
No!
Speaker 1 30:24
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3 30:24
Yep. World War II weapons, including just guns and all kinds of stuff. Swiss Luger.
Speaker 3 30:31
Well, they didn’t find that Luger, but they found a lot of weapons from World War II. And so they’re like, this is the guy.
Speaker 1 30:40
Yeah. And when they find a Zodiac Killer guy and they’re like, “And all those things are in that basement or whatever…”
Speaker 3 30:46
They got the guy. They hold him for three days and question him, question him, question him, and he has a solid alibi. None of the weapons match the murder weapon, and they can’t come up with any motive.
Speaker 1 30:59
Well, what’s his alibi? I’m driving my motorcycle; I couldn’t possibly have killed people?
Speaker 3 31:04
No, he claimed it wasn’t him on the motorcycle.
Speaker 1 31:05
Oh.
Speaker 3 31:06
Right, because they don’t have it.
Speaker 1 31:07
Right, it was in Heather.
Speaker 3 31:08
Oh, they don’t know necessarily. They just say he seems to match the description of the guy. And he has a motorcycle.
Speaker 3 31:13
And old guns.
Speaker 3 31:13
And old guns. Right. They didn’t even know he had old guns until they got to his house. Right. But as soon as they found the old guns, they’re like, “This is the guy.”
Speaker 3 31:22
Right. You know? Right. But it turns out, not the guy. There’s no motive. There’s an alibi. He’s cleared.
Speaker 1 31:34
Right. Then they find another guy.
Speaker 3 31:34
Another guy. Who matches the motorcycle description.
Speaker 3 31:36
In February 2015, they bring him in. And they decide to question this guy. Turns out he’s just a businessman from Lyon, France. No connection whatsoever.
Speaker 3 31:52
They even look at Brett Martin.
Speaker 1 31:52
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3 31:52
The guy who discovered it. Right. To see like, maybe he didn’t just discover the scene, but he just discovered it. He’s just a great guy who was trying to be helpful. So they can’t find anyone, but in the meanwhile, they do find this guy named Patrice Menegaldo.
Speaker 3 32:14
Yeah. And this guy is a former member of the French Foreign Legion. He’s an older gentleman. And he was also questioned.
Speaker 2 32:22
Questioned.
Speaker 3 32:23
Yeah, questioned intensely because he lived in the area. But these are locals. These are locals, and this guy’s questioned as a witness. By the way, I want to be clear, not a suspect.
Speaker 1 32:33
Why is everybody in this area like an ex-cop, ex-Air Force, Legionnaires?
Speaker 3 32:36
Like, it’s a good point. I hadn’t realized that.
Speaker 3 [32:41]
Well, it’s a very small area, I guess, and they have needs. Anyway, they questioned him as a witness and they let him go because they thought he knew Silvian Moliere, the guy, the bicyclist who’d been murdered.
Speaker 3 [33:01]
So they questioned him in April 2014 and let him go after about an hour. And then two months later, in June of 2014, what happened, Kim?
Speaker 2 [33:11]
He committed suicide and left a note.
Speaker 3 [33:15]
Oh. A seven-page note. Oh. The theme of which essentially was, I can’t handle being a suspect in a murder. Which he never was, by the way. He was never a suspect.
Speaker 1 [33:26]
Huh. Did he mistakenly think he was?
Speaker 2 [33:30]
He did, or maybe he did do it. I don’t know. We don’t know.
Speaker 3 [33:35]
That’s a weird thing to think. Like, you came at your time with like, how do you not? You’re questioned for an hour, you’re never arrested. Why would you think you’re a suspect?
Speaker 2 [33:44]
And why would you kill yourself because of that? In seven pages? It’s not even as if the police were closing in on him and he killed himself.
Speaker 3 [33:54]
No, they questioned him for an hour and never contacted him again.
Speaker 1 [33:56]
Do they think it’s a suicide, or do they think it was a…
Speaker 2 [34:00]
It was a suicide; he left a note.
Speaker 1 [34:03]
Now, could somebody else have written that note? Seven pages? This guy would never write more than a paragraph. What are you talking about? Well, they never…
Speaker 3 [34:11]
I don’t think that was an angle they explored, but they definitely found it strange that he felt that he was a suspect and killed himself.
Speaker 2 [34:20]
He never said he was a suspect.
Speaker 3 [34:26]
Yeah, right. So that, of course— and then that raised, like, well, why would you do that?
Speaker 3 [34:26]
I haven’t seen the note, but it did raise all kinds of questions about him. Why would he kill himself if he had nothing to do with this crime? So, of course, there are lots of theories online that he did this killing. Nobody knows why. There’s no evidence that he did, but he certainly, as a former soldier, would have had the means and the skills to do it.
Speaker 1 [34:49]
They still couldn’t use like the bullets or something like this is such a rare gun with rare ammunition there’s no way to track who bought or…
Speaker 2 [35:00]
Ordered or, yeah, if you have a record of it if it’s registered or right.
Speaker 1 [35:06]
This is before the dark web or no?
Speaker 2 [35:08]
No, this is, uh, no, this is pretty recent. This is ten years ago.
Speaker 1 [35:11]
Right. But I’m just saying, like, you could order, I guess, order the stuff like without anybody knowing or…
Speaker 2 [35:17]
It was even where he already had a box of ammunition or something. Yeah. I mean, it was even speculated whether the assassin was gotten from the dark web.
Speaker 3 [35:29]
Like if you go on the dark web and search for “assassin who uses antique guns.”
Speaker 1 [35:37]
Eight people show up.
Speaker 3 [35:39]
Oh my gosh. So, yeah, this is just a baffling case because every avenue seems promising and then falls apart. The ones that seem most promising are ones you can’t really figure out, like, was it the guy who killed himself?
Speaker 3 [35:58]
Was it related to the work? Was it a government-ordered hit related to the work? Like the brother, was it?
Speaker 1 [36:08]
Right. The brother seems to have been cleared.
Speaker 3 [36:12]
He was cleared, yes.
Speaker 1 [36:16]
Physically doing it, but not necessarily the hiring of someone.
Speaker 3 [36:20]
That’s true, but they looked really closely.
Speaker 1 [36:22]
Did you ever get all that money?
Speaker 3 [36:24]
I don’t know.
Speaker 1 [36:26]
I’m having lunch with him tomorrow. I can ask him.
Speaker 3 [36:28]
So then the theories start to come out like, was it a case of mistaken identity? There was a theory of like, was this… Because if you take the professional hit thing to the next level, it’s like, okay, let’s say it was a professional hit, but it wasn’t meant for any of these people.
Speaker 1 [36:45]
That’s crazy. Totally crazy. So is that where it ends? Is it ends with, uh, nobody ever, uh, is this a perfect murder?
Speaker 2 [36:55]
I mean, they have not. There’s nobody doing time for this.
Speaker 3 [37:06]
Right. All right. And they’re still investigating.
Speaker 1 [37:08]
Wow.
Speaker 3 [37:10]
In fact, Zainab, who was seven years old at the time who was shot and brutally beaten, she was interviewed two years ago in June of 2022.
Speaker 1 [37:22]
Okay, so eight or ten years later.
Speaker 3 [37:24]
Yeah. She was so traumatized.
Speaker 1 [37:26]
And she couldn’t identify in any way the person who attacked her.
Speaker 3 [37:28]
All she remembers is that the attacker had white skin and bare hands. Right, and had grabbed her.
Speaker 2 [37:35]
And she thought it was her dad grabbing her, but then realized it wasn’t.
Speaker 3 [37:38]
Oh, fuck.
Speaker 3 [37:40]
And she remembers he was wearing long pants and a leather jacket.
Speaker 1 [37:42]
Right. Huh.
Speaker 3 [37:44]
But it is still an active investigation. French authorities are still pursuing leads and analyzing evidence.
Speaker 1 [37:51]
Wow.
Speaker 1 [37:52]
Okay. Well, let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back for a wrap-up, final WTF, and takeaway. Right after this quick break, a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 [38:20]
And we’re back with a head scratcher. You know, you think that there’s no perfect murders, and then here we are on our show with these murders and mysterious deaths that don’t get accounted for.
Speaker 1 [38:23]
So what do you guys think?
Speaker 3 [38:25]
I guess my gut on this one is that it was related to his work—
Speaker 2 [38:28]
Uh-huh, the satellite company.
Speaker 1 [38:34]
Do you think it was a foreign government, or do you think it was inside something like he knew too much about something and they had to take him out?
Speaker 3 [38:44]
I think the inside thing. You don’t take out the whole family for a foreign government, maybe. Or I don’t know. Like, you know, like you said before when you’re talking about professional hits, like you’re hired to kill one person, and if there are other people around, they often get murdered also because they’re just there.
Speaker 2 [39:04]
You got to keep everybody quiet, but the kids…
Speaker 3 [39:07]
Kids survived, but they didn’t know the one kid. I think they thought that one girl was dead, and the other one they didn’t know was there. It feels so brutal and so crazy over the top, and there’s just no motive for anyone in the area to have been… It’s not an area where crazy shit like this happens.
Speaker 3 [39:25]
So my, and when you look at his work and the fact like his politics were kind of the opposite of the politics of the places he was supporting, maybe there was something going on there. Maybe someone thought he knew too much.
Speaker 3 [39:40]
That’s the only thing I can figure because it’s such a brutal, horrible situation. Like, it just feels like it’s over the top. It feels like it’s international stuff. What do you think, Kimmy?
Speaker 2 [39:52]
You know, I was just completely baffled. But I’ve come to sort of understand the world that nothing is impossible.
Speaker 1 [40:05]
If you believe it, you can achieve it.
Speaker 2 [40:08]
Right, exactly.
Speaker 2 [40:11]
That like, yes, you can do anything. If there are governments or if there are entities that want to silence him, they will do that by any means necessary. And if it means taking out children, so be it. If it means taking out somebody that’s just riding a bike and happens to be in the vicinity, so be it.
Speaker 3 [40:38]
Mm-hmm. I mean, it is interesting that it’s so gruesome, but the fact that it was so specific who are the he or she, whoever did the killing, that they totally gunned down the guy on the bike. They shot each of the adults twice in the head, but shot the girl on the shoulder and then cracked her skull.
Speaker 2 [40:58]
Right. And it was speculated that the shooter had run out of ammunition at that time, which was why then the brutal beating of, you know, because he ran out of gun power to finish it.
Speaker 2 [41:16]
Gunpowder, yeah.
Speaker 3 [41:21]
That’s my old gun.
Speaker 3 [41:21]
Ran out of bullets.
Speaker 3 [41:24]
Yeah. So are you leaning towards it being a government, either friendly or foreign government because of his work?
Speaker 2 [41:30]
I’m not ruling that out, let’s put it that way. I don’t know. But it seems extra to do all of that. So even the idea that it was a crime of opportunity, it’s who is the person that’s walking around going, I think I’m going to just slaughter an entire family and an extra guy.
Speaker 2 [41:57]
It feels like some planning went into it. It seems so out of pocket that somebody had to have said or planned this in some way.
Speaker 3 [42:19]
It doesn’t fit the psychopath-on-the-loose series, especially because nothing like this happened before or since.
Speaker 2 [42:26]
Right, and in that area, this isn’t a crime, isn’t a thing.
Speaker 1 [42:32]
All right, I’ll give you my theory. What do you got based on what you guys have said?
Speaker 1 [42:44]
Yeah, it feels like you’ve got a guy who’s radicalized. He’s on social media, spewing a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1 [42:44]
He works for a satellite company. His father had ties to Saddam Hussein. It was like alleged.
Speaker 3 [42:56]
Well, no, his father definitely did.
Speaker 1 [42:56]
Yeah, because he worked for the Hussein regime, but then had a falling out.
Speaker 1 [43:07]
Okay, right. So, you know, this guy is a threat. And I think, you know, a government that doesn’t want to be on the other end of that threat was like, we got to take this guy out. And the time to do it is when he’s got his guard down, he’s with his family. But you know what?
Speaker 1 [43:26]
Wiping out the family and, you know, collateral damage. And it’s like, in a way, it’s almost like it’s the humane thing. Like they’re all gone. Now it’s not like, you know, kids growing up without parents and stuff.
Speaker 1 [43:42]
That’s a tough definition of humane.
Speaker 3 [43:46]
I know, I know.
Speaker 1 [43:48]
It’d be easier like if you’re a government trying to take a guy out. Like he’s around by himself all the time, going to and from work.
Speaker 1 [43:52]
He’s, you know, this is, this is… Oh, by the way, perfect murder, they got away with it. It worked.
Speaker 1 [43:56]
And here’s the thing. I wonder if the guy on the bike was riding by and maybe even tried to stop it or tried to intervene and was gunned down, like, you know, and that’s why he was shot a bunch of times because he’s coming to attack the assailant or whatever.
Speaker 1 [44:13]
I do think, yeah, it was probably an orchestrated takeout and, you know, just take them all out. Like, fuck it. This guy, and who knows? His family could be radicalized. They don’t, they don’t know.
Speaker 2 [44:28]
Who knows what he’s telling his wife? Maybe he’s sharing information or saying things.
Speaker 3 [44:33]
I could suspect the wife knows stuff too.
Speaker 1 [44:35]
And yeah, I think that happened.
Speaker 2 [44:38]
They are actually living in England and have a new identity.
Speaker 3 [44:44]
Yeah, they live secretly.
Speaker 3 [44:46]
Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Because, and I’m glad they’re open. Because of the concern that they don’t know who…
Speaker 3 [45:05]
Yeah, so this one obviously, because it’s so intriguing and so horrible and has so many potential theories, especially with the espionage and the government stuff, there’s a lot online, a lot of Reddit chatter on this one.
Speaker 3 [45:16]
It’s still an open case. So, this is one I think it’s fun for our Slaycators. Like, go dig around on this one. If you’re intrigued by this, there’s some fun rabbit holes to go down and try and help figure this out.
Speaker 3 [45:26]
We’d love to hear what our Slaycators think, if they find any new stuff, if there’s any theories we’re missing, or what you think is really going on.
Speaker 1 [45:35]
Yeah, I agree. That’s a great takeaway. I mean, otherwise there’s, you know, the takeaway is…
Speaker 3 [45:43]
No takeaway. Don’t get gunned down.
Speaker 1 [45:46]
I mean, it’s insane. And yeah, where are we supposed to encourage people to do?
Speaker 2 [45:51]
Oh, we have subscriptions.
Speaker 1 [45:53]
Yes, so here’s the thing. You can subscribe to our show on Apple, or you can go to our website, slaycation.wtf, and click subscribe. Your subscription gets you the show ad-free. You also will get bonus content that we are in the process of recording and editing, so you’ll get a little extra fun with us, and it supports the show, which we could always…
Speaker 1 [46:09]
I would like to know…
Speaker 2 [46:11]
What type of bonus content our Slaycators would like?
Speaker 1 [46:17]
Yeah. You know what? That’s a good point. I mean, I know, yeah, we’ve already started recording us chit-chatting and bantering. It’s coming.
Speaker 3 [46:24]
It’s coming. You got banter. If you like banter, you’re going to love the bonus content. Definitely more…
Speaker 2 [46:30]
Kim, definitely more Kim and more of us too. What do you guys want to hear? Maybe there’s a Q&A? Let us know.
Speaker 1 [46:36]
So yeah, you can subscribe, and also we are working on merch. We are talking to a merch company, and that’s the other thing too. If you— I mean, we already— we’re going to do t-shirts and hoodies and beach towels and a “Pack Your Body Bags” tote bag and socks.
Speaker 1 [46:52]
Somebody wanted, but yeah, let us know if there are any particular merch items you want. You’ve already given us a lot of ideas, and we’re going to execute those as well.
Speaker 2 [47:00]
And a shout-out to my knitters, my crocheters, even my bird watchers.
Speaker 3 [47:05]
You got bird watchers?
Speaker 2 [47:07]
I do. I love when people tell me what they’re…
Speaker 3 [47:09]
Wait, you’re a bird watcher?
Speaker 2 [47:11]
I’m not. But I will tell you, one of our Slaycators is and shared that.
Speaker 2 [47:15]
So I love when our Slaycators share what they’re into.
Speaker 3 [47:16]
And sketchers?
Speaker 2 [47:17]
And sketchers, yes, that’s right. Our artists.
Speaker 3 [47:20]
Yes.
Speaker 2 [47:22]
So all are welcome.
Speaker 3 [47:25]
All are welcome in the House of Slay.
Speaker 1 [47:29]
All right. I’m not topping that. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 [47:35]
Bye, guys, until the next one.
