Police investigating the unsolved 2012 murder of a British family in France have a new clue with the discovery of a Luger pistol in Lake Annecy.
The victims—Saad al-Hilli, his wife and mother‑in‑law, and a cyclist—were all shot in the head with a Luger model P06, a pistol once used by the Swiss army.
The pistol was found by British tourists in the lake on 20 August, 19 days after the killings. They mistook it for a water pistol until its weight was noticed.
Investigators are now examining the damaged weapon to confirm it is indeed the P06 model that was used in the attack.
The case has been cold for 14 years, with earlier investigations unable to identify the perpetrator or motive. The family, summering in Lake Annecy’s picturesque surroundings, were found in their car on a forest road near Chevaline, the village where the murder occurred.
The surviving daughters, aged four and seven, were injured but survived the attack. The pistol fragments were the key evidence that linked the weapon to the killings.
A Luger pistol of the P06 type is considered more a collector’s item than a functional weapon, making a professional hit less likely. Yet many examples were kept by families across the French‑Swiss border, making the weapon accessible.
Several theories have been proposed: a family dispute over money, a random act of violence, or a targeted assault on the cyclist. Police were briefly intrigued by the fact that al‑Hilli’s wife’s former husband died of a heart attack hours before the murders.
