However, on Wednesday the Annecy prosecutor announced that gendarmes in Chambéry had detained a man to “check his schedule” on the day of the murders. A search of his home was conducted on Wednesday morning in the Lyon area.

On Thursday, Michèle Domenge-Chenal, mayor of Chevaline, was sceptical about a breakthrough in the case, which has baffled more than 100 investigators in France and the UK for almost a decade.

“We’ve learned to be very cautious with every arrest that’s been made over the last decade…we have had a lot of false hope,” she told the Telegraph.

“I don’t want to say we have become jaded about the whole affair, but we have just learned to be cautious. It would be a huge relief for our whole village for the final chapter in this tragedy to come to a close.”

“We are a small village of 200 people – the is whole affair feels like a death in a family.”

Franck Desvignes, a longtime resident of Chevaline, told The Telegraph that the motorist’s original testimony “didn’t add up.”

“He said he came here to go paragliding, but the road he was on is the other direction from where you would paraglide,” Mr Desvignes said, adding the road also led to a dead end.

The motorist had told authorities he had got lost on the road, something Mr Desvignes also found suspicious. “People generally don’t go up that road unless they’re from here…it’s a road locals take to go hiking.” 

‘Going through hell’ 

The motorcyclist thought to be currently detained was said to have been riding on the Combe d’Ire road near the crime scene around 3pm before he was stopped by two forest rangers who asked him to leave.

At the time, he was ruled out as a suspect.

He said he did not “make the connection” between his presence near the scene of the killing and the identikit picture of him that was circulated in November 2013 because he didn’t follow the news.

However, investigators apparently detected discrepancies in his testimony.