Police 'getting closer' to truth behind Alps murders

French and British investigators probing a quadruple murder in the French Alps said yesterday they were looking at a dispute over a family inheritance and possible industrial espionage as possible motives for the unexplained killings.

"We have made great advances" in the investigation, said Eric Maillaud, the Annecy prosecutor in charge of an investigation conducted jointly with British police.

Three members of the British-Iraqi al-Hilli family were shot dead in their BMW on September 5 last year in a woodland car park close to the village of Chevaline in the hills above Lake Annecy. A French cyclist Sylvain Mollier was also found shot dead. The two al-Hilli daughters, then aged four and seven, survived.

At a press conference to mark the first anniversary of the killings, investigators said it was possible a family feud over a multi-million-dollar inheritance lay behind the tragedy.

Maillaud said the victim, Saad al-Hilli, and his brother Zaid, were locked in a dispute over properties in Iraq and elsewhere.

"This is being followed up actively," he said, adding that the brothers "initially worked together to regain their father's property" in Iraq but fell out. He said the theories ranged from the possibility that Saad al-Hilli was "trying to get himself declared as the sole inheritor" of his father's fortune to his brother Zaid al-Hilli "stealing money from his father for a long time".