[1] Zumbach ran an agricultural machinery business in Plan-les-Ouates, which, it was later revealed, also served as the headquarters of an international gang of criminals and arms dealers led by a former member of the French Foreign Legion who called himself “Reymond”.
[2] When the police interrogated Zumbach's son André, he said he had received two calls at his workplace (a radio station in Geneva) the night of the killing, but both times the caller hung up without speaking.
Baud worked as executive secretary at the radio station, had had an affair with André Zumbach, and wanted to leave Jaccoud.
[3] The police searched Jaccoud's apartment in his absence; he was in Stockholm on a business trip in connection with his position as Vice President of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce.
They found blood on a coat and a Moroccan knife, but, as later studies revealed, Jaccoud and the victim shared the same blood group, Type O. Erik Undritz, a renowned Basel haematologist, and Pierre Hegg, head of the Geneva Forensic Laboratory,[2] testified that there were also liver cells on the knife.
For the prosecution, Attorney General Charles Cornu reminded a reporter for Die Zeit of a "god of revenge" and "a classical mask of tragedy".
[6] According to Hans Martin Sutermeister, a Bern doctor bent on exposing courtroom injustices, the verdict was nothing more than a miscarriage of justice, whose main cause was inadequate forensic expertise.
He pointed out that "Reymond" and his arms dealer friends, unbeknownst to Zumbach, also kept knives and bayonets in the garage, one of which could have been the murder weapon.
Hegg had been censured for confusing human and pig's blood in a previous investigation, and had been defended on that occasion by Jaccoud – who had difficulty getting him to pay his fee.