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