Police seek clues to Alps murder escape route

CHEVALINE: Police are combing through security camera footage in an attempt to identify the escape route taken after a quadruple murder at a French Alps beauty spot, in an investigation that has thrown up more questions than answers.

As the inquiry grows in complexity -- the victims had direct links to four different countries -- police in southeastern France have still been unable to trace a dark-coloured 4x4 vehicle spotted near the crime scene.

Officers have also searched woodland and remote hikers' huts for any trace of the killer.

An unnamed British man who alerted police to the shootings is said to have seen a car, and a motorcycle a few minutes later.

"That does not mean that this is necessarily the car involved," prosecutor Eric Maillaud cautioned however.

At first glance, the small parking area -- about an hour on foot through forest along a narrow potholed road from the tiny village of Chevaline -- would seem the perfect place to commit a crime.

But such a location would also have limited the possible escape routes.

The 'car park' is in fact an alcove-like space of about five by 12 metres (18x40 feet) edged on both sides by steep forested hillside.

Four bunches of flowers next to a pile of stones and some faint chalk marks on the road are now the only sign of the tragic events of last Wednesday.

Three members of a British-Iraqi family on a camping holiday on the shores of Lake Annecy and a local cyclist were found with two gun shots each in the head.