Alps murders: Family of French cyclist Sylvain Mollier speak out for first time Last week, though, family and friends in Ugine, the small Alpine town where Mr Mollier lived and worked, said such theories were "nonsense." "He was just a very straightforward, quiet living man," said his aunt, Suzanne Ginolin, a pensioner in Ugine, where Mr Mollier had lived all his life. His father, Roger, a founder of the local rugby club, died last year. His mother has been in a care home since long before her son's death and is understood to be only vaguely aware of his fate. "He had no enemies, he was very friendly and charming," Mrs Ginolin added. There's no way that he was the cause of all this. Like the rest of the Mollier family, she is beginning to doubt that they will ever really find out what happened on the afternoon of September 5, high above Lake Annecy in the remote forested car park. A keen sportsman, Mr Mollier was a father of three - Leo and Mathis, sons from his first marriage to a Ugine hairdresser, and Louis, born to his pharmacist girlfriend Claire Schutz. The child was born just months before he was murdered. Locals in Ugine's cafés remember seeing him pushing the baby buggy through the cobbled square in the days before his death. Indeed, the cyclist was on paternity leave from the Cezus metal factory where he worked when he was killed. The factory, at the bottom of the valley below Ugine, is owned by nuclear company Areva - sparking the idea that he could have been involved in sensitive, highly-secretive projects. "Impossible," said one cousin, who refused to give his name. Sylvain didn't even have a degree. He was a welder, not a nuclear scientist. He wasn't a mystery man; he'd not ever really travelled far from home. Alain Mollier-Camus, another cousin, who works in a nearby ski resort, added: "He was a sportsman and a family man. There's nothing hidden there. Certainly, the Cezus factory, where many of Ugine's residents work, does not look like a high-security nuclear facility. There are no visible CCTV cameras, and only a low wall surrounding the compound, where staff members come and go with only a cursory flash of their ID cards. "If Sylvain was at all involved in something suspicious, I'd keel over with shock," said one neighbour, who knew the family well. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eric Maillaud, the prosecutor leading the inquiry, says that all theories are still being explored. But investigators appear still to be far from defining a motive, let alone an intended victim, and all the possible scenarios mooted so far have their flaws. Mr al-Hilli, 50, was a Baghdad-born satellite engineer, who had moved to Britain with his parents when he was a boy. One theory has been that Mr al-Hilli had arranged a meeting with Mr Mollier to exchange nuclear and technological secrets. But colleagues of both men have denied that they were involved in any secretive work. And besides, it would seem unlikely that Mr al-Hilli would take his whole family to such a potentially sensitive rendezvous. Nonetheless, initial reports pointed strongly towards the murder being a professional "hit." In particular, it was noted that Mr al-Hilli, his dentist wife Iqbal, 47, and his mother in law Suhaila, 74, were each killed with a so-called "double tap" of two bullets to the head each - a classic hit man's touch. But as The Sunday Telegraph revealed shortly after the killing, the murder weapon, a Luger PO8, was a First World War relic - liable to jam, comparatively easy to trace, and not the first choice of professional assassins. The gunman also left behind spent cartridges - a gift to detectives - and did not kill all the witnesses, as both daughters survived the attack. Likewise, if the family were lured to the remote forest site, it seems unlikely that they would drive circuitously around the winding lanes, doubling back on themselves and stopping to photograph the scenery. Photos recovered from a digital camera found at the scene show the group smiling in front of a pretty flower-covered stone farmhouse. Another theory suggested that the death of Saad al-Hilli was connected to an inheritance dispute. Khadim al-Hilli, Saad's father, had died a year before, leaving a £1 million home in Claygate, Surrey, plus cash in a Swiss bank account. Mr al-Hilli was reported to have changed the locks on his doors before he left, and frozen his father's estate - blocking his brother Zaid from accessing his share of the inheritance until lawyers resolved the dispute. But Zaid al-Hilli immediately handed himself over to Surrey police for questioning once his name was mentioned, and has vehemently denied having anything to do with his brother's death. Mae Faisal El-Wailly, who was a childhood friend of the al-Hillis in Baghdad, and rekindled her friendship with them in later life, told The Sunday Telegraph from her home in Arizona that she did not believe Zaid had anything to do with Saad's murder. Relations between Saad and his brother Zaid were said to be strained, with the two communicating through lawyers. "But it was just a bit of a row," she said. There is no way it would escalate like that. I know Zaid, it's nothing to do with him. I just think Saad got into something over his head. Others point out that had fellow Iraqis wished to get rid of Mr al-Hilli, it would have been simpler to have lured him to Baghdad, where few murders are ever properly investigated, than to kill him in France. A report from Germany last week even linked the killing back to Iraq's brutal former ruler, Saddam Hussein, who, it was claimed, had hidden £840,000 in the al-Hilli's Swiss bank account. While the French prosecutor, Mr Maillaud, has dismissed suggestions that such a cash fund even existed, one theory holds that a criminal gang might have become convinced that Mr al-Hilli knew the fund's whereabouts and tried to extract information on how to access it from him. Seven-year-old Zainab al-Hilli has told British police that she was outside the car with her father when the shooting began, and that she was pistol-whipped and shot in the shoulder. Some have suggested that the attackers might have been torturing her to pressure her father, and that the situation then veered out of control, possibly when Mr Mollier stumbled on the scene. That, they also conclude, was why the Frenchman bore the brunt of the gunfire. Another scenario lies in the claim that the Annecy area used to be known as a secret hiding stash for Basque terrorist weapons. Questions are being asked as to whether the al-Hillis and Mr Mollier could have all been unfortunate passers-by, stumbling upon an illicit act. With so many unanswered questions, the police seem genuinely in the dark. And in Mr Mollier's hometown, most think the truth will never come to light. "The only thing we know for sure is that Sylvain wasn't up to anything strange," said his aunt, Mrs Ginolin. But I don't think we'll ever know what really happened.