Her murder attracted a significant amount of public attention and resulted in increased political and institutional pressure to fight domestic violence, and influenced the debate on changing Swiss gun laws.

Stadler was a captain in the Swiss Armed Forces, and used his service pistol in her murder; following her death, rules were changed to prohibit the keeping of military ammunition by soldiers at home.

[5][6] Her father's family were locally influential and powerful landowners who at times had harsh conflicts with their neighbors over their wealth.

[13] While previously viewed as having potential and placed under much pressure, called the new Vreni Schneider, the fact she did not win any World Cup races between 1992 and 1996 resulted in disappointment, and she was abandoned by her sponsor.

[10] On 16 January 1999, Rey-Bellet won two races, the downhill and the super-G three hours later in the World Cup at St Anton am Arlberg.

[4] On 15 January 2000, she won the downhill race at Altenmarkt in the 1999–2000 World Cup, beating the next racer, Regina Häusl, by 15 hundredths of a second.

[16][14] At the 2000–01 World Cup, she came second in the giant slalom at Semmering, third at Lake Louise in the downhill and in the Aspen super-G in 2001.

While competing, she used alternative medicine treatments, including acupuncture and homeopathy, to treat allergies, to the chagrin of her skiing team's doctors.

[20] By October 2001,[2] she was dating Gerold "Gery" Stadler, a private banker for Credit Suisse and captain in the Swiss Armed Forces.

[19][3] They met as part of a financial monitoring program from Credit Suisse for prominent Swiss athletes.

According to the pastor who married them, she told him that she was attempting to fix their marriage; Stadler refused to speak of it to anyone and kept up "a facade".

[19] Another who knew Rey-Bellet said she felt disconnected in German-speaking Switzerland, and that she had told her she wanted to "finally be loved as a woman and a mother, not as a ski champion", and said that Stadler was "very ambitious".

[24] On 30 April, Stadler brought their son home to Les Crosets and put him to bed upstairs.

[24][3] Shortly after her father left, Stadler opened fire, killing Rey-Bellet and Alain, and seriously injuring her mother.

[13] His car was recovered in a forest in Huémoz [fr] near Ollon in the Vaud canton, 20 kilometres (12 mi) away from the location of the murders,[8][28] abandoned with an empty magazine inside.

[24] The crime was found to be premeditated, with Stadler leaving two notes, one addressed to his parents and the other to his employer.

[21][24][31] The media presented it as a crime of passion or an act of madness, in contradiction to the processes that typically lead to family murders.

[21] The case also influenced the debate on changing Swiss gun laws,[32][33] with a popular initiative for reform forming in the aftermath, particularly spearheaded by the women's magazine Annabelle.

[35] At the time, Switzerland had a very high rate of suicide amongst young males, and more familicides than the United States.

[3] After her murder, in 2007, rules were changed banning the storage of military ammunition by soldiers at home instead of in arsenals.

[33][36][37] The vast majority of Switzerland's soldiers did not keep their ammunition at home prior to this change, with only a few thousand doing so.

[37] This law change was disputed by anti-gun activists, who argued it was ineffective as it only applied to soldiers, not civilian gun owners.

[31] Following both the Zug massacre and Rey-Bellet and her brother's murders, in 2011 a referendum was held on instituting stricter firearms laws, which would have entirely banned military weapons from private homes.