The Luger in the Lake

 Medawar's thoughts on the murder of Saad al Hilli, his wife, mother in law and an apparent passer-by.

Here is a link to the BBC report on the discovery of a Luger pistol (quite possibly the same Swiss P06 model as that used in the attack fourteen year ago) in a lake fairly near to the scene of the attack and somewhat closer to the campsite where the family had been staying.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c74eklrm344o

There are some assumptions inherent in the article which require thought and comment. But we have to start with a boring technical explanation, which is not a digression because it allows the remainder of this post to be a succinct read.

The BBC article has been edited since Medawar first read it, to modify a reference to forensic experts needing to decide whether this was a P06 Swiss model (of which 60,000 were made) or the German Army's P08 model, of which a couple of million were made. There is no difficulty in differentiating the P06 in 7.65mm Parabellum from the German military P08 or any military or commercial Luger in 9mm Parabellum calibre, because the external profile of the barrel is visibly different; not just because the 9mm version needs to encompass a 9mm bore: the concept was that the barrel (and the sights attached to it) would be the ONLY component needing to be different between Lugers of the two calibres. (For example, when the mainspring and its housing changed, it changed for both calibres.)

The 7.65mm bore being both smaller and the first to be manufactured, and the barrel being part of the recoiling mass that times the toggle action keeping the breech closed until the bullet leaves the gun releasing gas pressure from the barrel, the external profile of the 9mm barrel not only has to safely accommodate the larger bore size and bullet: it has to come in fairly close to the same mass, yet different enough to null out any difference in recoil force between the light and fast 7.65mm projectile and the heavier, slower 9mm. (Barrels which are heavier by being longer adjust the timing for themselves because the bullet takes longer to traverse them!) The consequence is that once you've knowingly seen the two different barrel profiles, the slim profile of the 7.65mm version towards the muzzle is distinctive. If one can see into the muzzle, the smaller bore is obvious, but perhaps not if the bore is clogged with rusty mud. So it's the external profile of the barrel that you look for.

The forensic challenge is to distinguish between a Swiss P06 Luger (originally 60,000 of) and the significant number of 7.65mm Lugers made for other foreign government contracts and commercial sales to private individuals and small organisations, for whom the accurate 7.65mm was the preferred choice. Swiss Army Lugers also got updated over time (as production continued) so that existing pistols that hadn't been totally trashed or lying forgotten in a desk drawer somewhere, were both refurbished and made to conform to the same standard as the new ones. Which means that some features which might have distinguished the Swiss Army model from that adopted by the Brazilian Police (and in service for even longer), could have changed.

Forensic techs will be looking for factory markings, which will be sufficient if they have survived, and they will be looking at some working parts to see, not just what era they come from, but whether that's the same era as other parts of the gun which have not been updated. Updates to the frame were done by reworking the existing item, because a new frame might as well be a new pistol! That should be detectable, but it will take some time to get there without destroying evidence. The payoff for that will be not just confirmation that it is a Swiss P06 (or not) but if it is, an idea of the date of original manufacture too and that will lead to a serial number range, even if the whole serial number has corroded away or been deliberately defaced. Added to that is the fact that the last two digits of the serial number will be repeated on several components, some inside the pistol and more likely to survive. In time they will end up with both ends of the Luger's serial number if not the whole number, which may usefully eliminate a lot of blind alleys, including many of the similar Lugers which have reportedly been in private hands in the region.

That's the end of the boring technical part of this post.

The Assumptions:

"It's a collectible firearm that was used, so it cannot have been a professional hit as (supposedly) professional hitmen do not used collectible firearms." 

Except for the murder of Mr Alistair Wilson in Nairn (where the vintage German pistol used would have been especially collectible if it had been "found" in the USA anytime after the import ban on pocket pistols!)

In many professional killings the firearm is never found and we don't always know the exact model. In any case, the professional thing to do is probably to source whatever weapon you can get, as near to the intended scene of the crime as possible, so it doesn't lead the police anywhere they don't already know about. (Unless the forensics are followed up with sufficient persistence: see the first part of this article!)

"The killer is EITHER a professional, OR a psychopath."

The logical operator here needs to be a non-exclusive OR, or AND/OR.

Or perhaps even; professional = = psychopath.

Psychopaths are very talented in some ways: they identify and exploit opportunities. Professional killing would give the psychopath not only a chance to fund his obsession, but also a chance to hide behind his many clients' divers motives for killing an unconnected series of victims and with that comes the opportunity to rack up quite a score with only a modest risk of arrest and conviction. If the killer does not choose his victims, the pattern which detectives look for is not his!

"There is no benefit to a dealer in collectible firearms in letting them be used and then destroyed in professional killings or other crimes." 

Medawar himself once subscribed to that idea and in the light of the murder in Nairn it was a twenty year-long headache, but on lengthy reflection there are circumstances where the opposite could be true. Such as when there are lots of an otherwise rare firearm in one place: securing only as many as the American collector market will bear and then letting one be used in a appalling crime might cause most or all of the remaining similar firearms to be seen as a liability rather than an asset, and they will promptly disappear into police amnesty bins or otherwise be destroyed rather than put on the market, which protects the dealer's investment! This does seem to be what happened in Nairn (the police eventually concluded that several identical rare pistols had been circulating in the town) and it might have been what happened in the Saad al Hilli case, too.

In both cases the killer chose to be appalling: Saad al Hilli was killed in the presence and sight of his daughters and Alistair Wilson was killed within earshot of his two small children, whom he'd been putting to bed when the killer came to his front door. The impact of both crimes on the public psyche stems from the proximity or involvement of children. What gain was that intended to bring and to whom?

 

The conundrum:

If the Luger from the lake is indeed the right one, and if it went into the lake near where most of the victims had been camping, straight after the shooting, then the killer had been at the very least watching them while they were there and quite possibly camping there himself.

It is unlikely that it got into the lake DURING intensive police searches for evidence nearby!

But if it got into the lake AFTER the movements of Saad al Hilli and his family because public knowledge, then the Luger might have been put there to support the police and prosecutor in a mistaken conclusion. Against that one must remember that it was finally discovered with the water at a relatively low level at the end of a hot dry summer across much of Europe, so in a more normal year the killer wouldn't have been expecting it to be discovered at all.

This is why it would help greatly to know the source of the Luger and when it came into the killer's possession, because that might help confirm who the intended target actually was, but so far it does seem to be Saad al Hilli and those dear to him. There's an element of terrorism amidst any expediency.

 Further Reading:

Here is a link to another post on this blog which explores technicalities connected with the use of a much more common model of pistol by professional hitmen:

 https://medawarscornflakes.blogspot.com/2025/07/why-might-professional-hitman-use-380.html

The St Petersburg Economic Forum and Investing in Armagedon

 

This is a scan of a short article in the Metro newspaper (their copyright but fair use) and this is a link to a more complete version of the article on their website. It is not behind a paywall at the time of writing, but it's obviously not "fair use" to copy anything but the short extract above. That is sufficient, if readers are not disposed to go and read the whole thing, because it contains all that Medawar needed (on top of other sayings and events since 2014) to come up with the following understanding of why these apparent lunatics are saying what they are saying.

 They fear "US and Chinese hegemony" because AI is the superpower which Russia will never possess, having missed that particular bus whilst annexing Crimea, bridging the Kerch Straits at great and probably understated expense and driving tanks into Ukraine. They correctly fear that Russia will not be seen as a superpower once AI is seen as more significant, and a more powerful agent of warfare, than nuclear weapons. The obvious solution (in their eyes at least) is to use the nuclear weapons to "win back the world's respect for Russia" (in other words impose a global reign of terror) and in the process, perhaps, destroy the huge data centres currently hosting AIs, making a nuclear arsenal once more the only credential a superpower needs. (It amounts to using nuclear weapons as a way to time-travel back to the lost golden age of Soviet dominance, an excursion likely to deposit any survivors in the stone age.) Some may claim that the "EMP" from nuclear weapons detonated at a great height would destroy data centres as if by magic, with relatively few people killed or cities burned, but the data centres are already adequately hardened against that sort of attack, this being an effect that has been known about for seventy or more years. The protective structures would have to be destroyed, along with their contents. Modern semi-conductors are not only smaller than those of the 1970s: they are somewhat less vulnerable to electromagnetic and electrostatic trauma even when they are not in well-screened protective buildings. What nuclear EMP almost certainly would do, is disable or even ruin any digital devices, including contactless bank or ID cards, on the persons of citizens going about their normal business. Tony Blair please note!

One alternative, which is supposed to prevent US and Chinese hegemony by some sort of magic that will also cause the EU to crumble to dust before Russia's thriving economy, is to retain the world's respect for Russia by using nuclear weapons, right now, to win the war in Ukraine. This is a sign that not even Putin's most fanatical backers now can see Russia being able to win the war in Ukraine without the use of nuclear weapons, and the plural is not a misprint: they would need to make many nuclear strikes to eliminate a Ukrainian war machine that is underground and well-dispersed over a wider landscape than that of the Japanese home islands. Talk of occupying Ukrainian cities afterwards is probably designed to make Putin himself believe that this might be accomplished without the destruction of the cultural heritage which Ukraine and Russia share. It's impossible to see that working: Ukraine and all its heritage would be destroyed, not conquered. Putin would have to be removed from actual power for this to even be attempted. Is that what they plan, one wonders?

 The "bad" scenario, bizarrely seen as inherent in any non-use of nuclear weapons, is Russia being "colonised" by 2050. It's not clear what "colonised" means in that context and the intent is probably to make the non-use of nuclear weapons seem unacceptable by playing on the nameless fears of the Russian people. So they can't really spell it out, in case people think it through and either decide it's something they could live with, or that it is something they could prevent by other means: especially if the rest of the world was in a mood to be helpful. A world held at nuclear gunpoint by Russia simply isn't going to rush to Russia's aid. 

 And all of this was presented at an economic forum, in St Petersburg, designed to showcase Russia to the world as an ideal partner to trade with and invest in. And the fact that two of the "brains" allegedly behind the entirety of the Putin project are quite unable to perceive any drawback in doing this, is the most telling thing of all, because it explains why Russia has never prospered in the way its leaders think it is entitled to, and why it never will unless and until there is a change, not in the personnel at the top, but in the type of people who rise to the top. None of Russia's revolutions and coups has ever really changed the type of person who rules Russia. And they do only rule: nobody actually governs in a kleptocracy, as America will soon discover. China already has.

Serial Killer Steve Wright Goes West

With this article, Medawar seeks to correct two widespread and quite natural assumptions about Steve Wright, and advance a few possibilities for consideration by readers who may already know things Medawar does not know, which may suddenly make a new kind of sense in combination with the things which Medawar does know. This sort of thing used to be known as the scientific method, before “science” became an unchallengeable statement of absolute "truth" by an official source using phrases like “I am the science” which really ought to worry anyone with any experience of psychopaths.

The second part of the article takes the form of a list of links to existing online articles from trustworthy sources, with each link preceded by a description of what kind of knowledge a reader might already have, which stands a chance of allowing two and two to add up to four.

 Correcting the assumptions 

The first somewhat misleading assumption is that because Wikipedia states that Steve Wright left school in 1974 with no qualifications and then joined the Merchant Navy, he must have dropped out of school and somehow fell into the Merchant Navy as a sixteen-year old afterwards. That’s not the way it normally worked at the time and it’s not necessarily true in Wright’s case either, but it might look like that to someone from a younger generation or a more sheltered background.

The earliest date for Steve Wright to legally leave full-time education would have been April 1974; but if joining the Merchant Navy was a planned career move and not a sort of accident, then it becomes relevant that some of the maritime colleges used to train cadets and recruits to the Merchant Navy qualified as providing full-time education within the meaning of the education act, and others offered training opportunities to boys who remained in a normal secondary school until they had sat their O’level or CSE exams. Indeed, there was one college (in Cumbria) which offered a normal secondary education alongside training towards entering the merchant navy as a radio operator, for example. If a boy had made a positive choice to join the merchant navy, there would have been a planned transition from school to maritime college rather than a hard cut-off point, and in many cases boys would have been given leave from school to take advantage of training opportunities and they would certainly have been given leave from school to attend the necessary interviews and tests. And the range of skills required for even the lowliest seaman, meant that boys would have probably attended more than one training day at more than one site. A lot of the most basic and essential training happened and still happens in Bristol Docks, where there is a large but not very busy non-tidal basin (the dock is separated from the tidal river Avon by a lock-gate) which allows trainees to learn how to get from small boat onto a large ship and back again, and other basic skills like that. Almost regardless of Wright’s point of origin within the UK, he’d have likely visited Bristol a few times between the ages of fifteen and seventeen. And regardless of any lack of academic achievement, failure to master a fairly challenging skill set would have barred him from service in the merchant navy in any seagoing capacity. Even stewards have to know how to get passengers into lifeboats, how to get themselves onto and off a ship in a boat boat, and generally keep themselves and the passengers alive.

And mention of Bristol brings Medawar to the other natural but less than helpful assumption: that because Steve Wright was born in, often lived in and was finally arrested for crimes committed in East Anglia, the search for earlier and indeed his earliest victim, obviously needs to be focused on East Anglia. Medawar holds, very strongly, that depending on what happens to latent psychopaths (mostly at home but not always) between the ages of nine and eleven, they will emerge as active psychopaths mostly between the ages of thirteen and seventeen and sometimes but not all frequently into their early twenties. And between 1974 and 1978, when he was in that phase of life, Steve Wright was actually all over the place and would have been familiar with locations, such as Bristol and Milford Haven (where he was married in 1978), which are as far from East Anglia as Britain gets.

And, as a passing thought, no-one who served on the P&O liner Queen Elizabeth the Second would have been a stranger to Southampton or New York & Atlantic City. That includes Suzy Lamplugh, Steve Wright and Steve Wright’s second wife, who now claims that he may have killed several times during their marriage.

Possibilities to consider:

Those readers who have experience of, or at least a good knowledge of, Merchant Navy recruitment and training practices and locations in the 1970s, might like to have a think about whether or not he could have been present in Clifton, Bristol, when Glennis Carruthers was strangled to death by a “man” (seen in darkness as there was a power cut) who walked away when challenged, but had done nothing to Glennis other than strangling her. She was not abducted, raped, or moved. Which would fit a first killing for an emerging offender under seventeen. (Over seventeen, they might have a car to abduct a victim in.) see:

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/history/strangled-death-clifton-zoo-blackout-4360

Anyone who investigated, knew (or had the misfortune to be married to) Wright around 1984 and remembers him with a “professional” camera in his possession, might like to take a thoughtful look at this link here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c51125prrvvo

The relevant serial number is included!

 

Anyone who knows about Wright (ever) having access to any flat or even utility area in Foye House, in Leigh Woods, near Bristol, might like to read this article on this blog:

https://medawarscornflakes.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-shelley-morgan-murder-and-foye-house.html

(The possibility is not dependent on Wright having access specifically to John Canaan’s flat there, nor does it depend on him knowing John Canaan at all. There are 24 flats and the location is strategically placed in relation to murders committed while Canaan was in jail!)

Leigh Woods, by the way, is as strategically-placed for the City of Bath as it is for the City of Bristol. There’s a very famous unsolved abduction and murder by strangulation connected with Bath. And it cannot be pinned on John Canaan, who was in jail at the time, as he so often was.

This link is about Steve Wright’s second wife (who know uses the name Diane Cole) and her concerns about how many victims there might be:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79r25xnnpro

Anyone who has, as a young woman, had a near miss with an apparent kidnapping, might be able to bring herself to examine this link (but Medwar would urge caution and having a friend with them when they do) too:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjnjpdwlnlo

It shows both that Wright was extremely determined and willing to spend twenty minutes in a fairly high risk game of hide and seek with his intended victim, and that he might have been more successful if he’d had an accomplice to help him corner his victim. Medawar notes that Suffolk Police and the CPS have never claimed that he committed all, or even any, of the Ipswich prostitute murders on his own. Those came seven years after Emily’s terrifying experience, so perhaps Wright learnt something from the incident even if the police ignored it at the time.