On September 5, 2012, a shocking discovery was made in the French Alpine village of Chevaline. British tourist Brett Marin stumbled upon a gruesome massacre in a difficult-to-reach parking lot while cycling in the area. There, he found the motionless body of a little girl lying in a pool of blood next to a car with its engine still running. Inside the car, Marin discovered British-Iraqi Saad Al-Hilli with a gunshot wound to the head, along with his wife Iqbal (47) and mother-in-law Suhaila (74) who also had gunshot wounds. The little girl was Zainab, the 7-year-old daughter of Saad and Iqbal. Additionally, Marin found another victim – French cyclist Sylvain Mollier, who had been shot five times. The incident resulted in the deaths of Saad, Iqbal, Suhaila, Sylvain, and Mollier but Zainab survived.
At first, it appeared that there were no additional survivors but after a tip from a local campsite owner, the police discovered another daughter of the Al-Hilli family – Zeena. She was only four years old and had hidden under her mother during the attack and miraculously survived unharmed for hours.
The details surrounding this massacre remain baffling as an extensive investigation yielded few leads. Despite this lack of evidence and eyewitness accounts, new light has been shed on this case with recent books and documentary series emerging to explore what happened in Chevaline. Filmmaker Imen Ghouali and crime journalist Brendan Kemmett have spent two years delving into this case and believe that certain aspects of the police investigation may not have been thoroughly explored. They examined theories linking this case to another murder involving Belgian tourist Xavier Baligant which shared several similarities leading to speculation that a serial killer may be responsible for both incidents