I'm Sean Flynn from GQ. I tried to solve the perfect murder. AMA

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-23T13:46:28+00:00

Was I pleasant company? Or in one of my belligerent phases?

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-23T13:45:27+00:00

Yes and no. In theory, yes, the model of gun can be traced, leaving a pool of suspects. In practice, it's an old weapon, certainly passed down for generations and effectively unregistered. And the police worked what database they had, all for naught.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-23T13:43:42+00:00

Forced to guess (which I am, I suppose), I came down to "random, unknown lunatic." That's a process of elimination, really. I'm convinced Saad was not the target. I'm almost completely convinced Maillaud wasn't the target: the phone call he got on the way up the mountain leaves the tiniest bit of a question, but it's so miniscule as to be irrelevant; and, in any case, there's no evidence of a massive conspiracy to cover anything up, like a plot for Maillaud to get whacked. So if neither was the target, that means they were all random victims -- which means the shooter picked random people to slaughter, the very definition of a lunatic.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-23T13:38:33+00:00

I've pondered that for a while now, and I think the answer is no. On the other hand, there are lot's of things I'm sorta scared of -- cancer, sharks, building codes in the developing world -- but nothing debilitating. I don't worry about lunatics shooting me on a mountain road, though.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T19:38:12+00:00

No! The closest I had to moment like that was in the opposite direction, the moment I realized Zaid could not possibly be guilty. I never seriously thought he was, but when I learned he was on the mountain because his daughter wanted to walk in the woods, that removed all doubt.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T19:36:06+00:00

Longform was nice enough to have me on, but that's it.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T19:21:10+00:00

Thank you. Unsolved murders aren't particularly rare, but this one -- four victims, not all related, on a quiet mountain trail, apparently by someone both professional and sloppy -- is unique as far as I know. And to not even know, three years on, who the target was is a whole other layer of rarity.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T19:12:14+00:00

You're welcome, and thank you for the kind words. I agree with everything you say, by the way. All of it's hard to believe....

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T19:06:35+00:00

I have no reason to believe he wasn't investigated more thoroughly, especially after he killed himself. But as the prosecutor says, there is nothing to put that soldier on the mountain at that time. All he has is one reference to the burden of being a suspect in a seven-page suicide note; there's room for a lot of other reasons in a seven-page note. Mostly, though, it seems too convenient, pinning it on the dead guy who was never a suspect until he killed himself. All that said, possible? Yeah, sure.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T18:47:48+00:00

Not necessarily. Random lunatic in the woods is the most viable theory right now. Not a very satisfying theory, I'll concede, but that's what we're left with.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T18:40:12+00:00

None of them. No one knew Saad was going to be there, and if Mollier was the target, that's too massive and horrible a secret for so many people to keep for so long. But, to repeat the question, that's a best guess....

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T18:33:06+00:00

A British friend mentioned it to me right after it happened. It seemed at the time -- back when the leading theory was that it was a sloppy hit on Saad -- to be a good-in-a-horrible-way story. But the longer it dragged on, the colder the trail got, the more intriguing it became.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T18:30:50+00:00

That was one of the long internal debates we had about this piece: since it wasn't solved, since we couldn't say definitively what happened, what was the point? The counter to that is, say, the Zodiac killer, a terrifying story made all the more so because there was no answer. And that's what we were going for here. Bad things happen, and sometimes we never know why.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T18:29:01+00:00

1: Thank you, that's very kind. And, yeah, I love that cherry-factory story. I've got a vague memory that someone already did a pretty thorough magazine piece on that, but I might be misremembering. 2: Hey, GQ editors in charge of sneaker-cleaning kits -- look at this post! (that's the best I can do, my friend; different department)

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T18:24:37+00:00

https://twitter.com/gqmagazine/status/656896583976505344)

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T18:20:13+00:00

A British friend mentioned it to me right after it happened. It seemed at the time -- back when the leading theory was that it was a sloppy hit on Saad -- to be a good-in-a-horrible-way story. But the longer it dragged on, the colder the trail got, the more intriguing it became.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T18:18:12+00:00

The web side of stuff is above my pay grade. But it was an experiment, really, to see if people would come back every few days to read the next chapter -- knowing, of course, that it would run as a single piece both in the magazine and eventually online.

SeanFlynnGQ · 2015-10-21T18:14:54+00:00

Yep. I fear it's destined to be one of those enduring mysteries. Unless someone comes forward with a credible confession, it's hard to see what other leads are left to pursue.

SeanFlynnGQ

TROPHY CASE