Dupont de Ligonnès murders and disappearance

The Dupont de Ligonnès murders and disappearance also known as "la tuerie de Nantes" involved the murder of five members of the same family in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, France, followed by the disappearance of the patriarch of the family, Xavier Pierre Marie Dupont de Ligonnès. His wife, Agnès Dupont de Ligonnès, and their four children, Arthur, Thomas, Anne and Benoît, along with the family's two dogs, were killed on an undetermined day in early April 2011. Their bodies were found buried in their garden on April 21. Xavier disappeared at the same time and has not been found. The exact nature of the events has never been determined, but Xavier is considered the prime suspect in the murders. Since the investigation began, he is targeted by a unpublished blue notice (witness) of Interpol.
The Dupont de Ligonnès family was an aristocratic family originally from Annonay, in the Vivarais region in south-eastern France. Ancestors include Édouard du Pont de Ligonnès (1797–1877), who married Sophie de Lamartine, sister of the poet Alphonse de Lamartine, and whose youngest son, Charles du Pont de Ligonnès, became the Bishop of Rodez.
Xavier Pierre Marie Dupont de Ligonnès (born 9 January 1961 in Versailles) is the son of Bernard-Hubert Dupont de Ligonnès (7 November 1931 – 20 January 2011), an engineer with a degree from the École nationale supérieure de mécanique et d'aérotechnique in Poitiers; his mother was Geneviève Thérèse Maître. Xavier's professional activities were very vague, but he is described as a salesman by a source close to the inquiry. Xavier created several businesses with limited success, most of which catered to travelling salespeople and restaurant guests. One business based in Pornic, called SELREF, had a secretive and ambiguously defined purpose. The company's 2006 accounts, accessible through a public commercial website, only show the bare minimum information, and the last data pertaining to the company was filed with the French Register of Commerce on 24 February 2004. As manager of SELREF, Xavier hired six salespeople in 2003 and released them all shortly afterwards.
Xavier's wife, Agnès Hodanger, was born on 9 November 1962 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris. She was an assistant at Blanche-de-Castille Catholic School in Nantes, where part of her duties involved teaching catechism. Agnès was described as being very religious, regularly attending Mass with her children. Parishioners described her as being kind but strict with the children. In 2004, writing on the French online medical chat forum Doctissimo, Agnès described the difficulties she and her husband were having and stated he had commented to her that a group death as a family would not be a catastrophe.
At the time of the murders, Xavier and Agnès lived at 55 Boulevard Robert Schuman in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, in a modest house in the western suburbs of the city.
Arthur Nicolas Dupont de Ligonnès was born on 7 July 1990 to another father, but was recognised by Xavier as his son when he married Agnès when Arthur was two years old. He earned a baccalauréat in Science, Industrial Technology and Sustainable Development at the age of 20. He was studying for a technical diploma in IT at the Saint-Gabriel private college in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre in the Vendée department, an hour's drive from Nantes. He was also employed as a waiter at a pizzeria in Nantes. He was 20 years old at the time of his death.
Thomas Dupont de Ligonnès was born on 28 August 1992 in Draguignan, in the south of France. He earned a baccalauréat in Literature when he was 17. He was passionate about music and studied it at the Catholic University of the West in Angers. He lived in the Saint-Aubin hall of residence and was described as an "ordinary boy who was often accompanied by his family to drop him off and pick him up", while several of his classmates remember him as "very discreet". He was 18 years old at the time of his death.
Anne Dupont de Ligonnès was born on 2 August 1994 in Draguignan. She was in the 11th grade following an academic curriculum in Science, and was described by her friends and relatives as a girl who shared her mother's religious beliefs and was considerate and approachable. Her friends became concerned when she was regularly offline and did not answer calls. Anne was 16 years old at the time of her death.
Benoît Dupont de Ligonnès was born on 29 May 1997, Xavier and Agnès's youngest child. He was an altar server at Saint-Félix Church in Nantes. He was 13 years old at the time of his death.
Investigators believe that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès murdered his wife and three of his children on the night of 3 to 4 April, then murdered his son Thomas on the evening of 5 April.
On 29 April, a search was carried out in the Var department. On 10 May, an undisclosed blue notice (witness) was issued by Interpol for Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès.
On 23 June, caving experts searched 40 natural caves in a 15-kilometre (10-mile) radius around Roquebrune-sur-Argens.
Following the disappearance of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, and based on elements of the police investigation reported by the media, "hundreds of French Internet users, fascinated by this curious crime, became improvised cyber-investigators and gained great excitement from recreating every digital trace left by Agnès and Xavier" on Facebook.
According to an AFP press release in Le Monde, "administrators of a Catholic website, classified as fundamentalist by the episcopacy, confirmed that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was a member of their forum, where in 2010 he asked about the meaning of "sacrifice" and he recently became "aggressive". Xavier was involved in various theological discussions under several different online identities on the Christian forum La Cité catholique. He was eventually banned from the forum. According to a source close to Dupont de Ligonnès, he "never set foot inside a church". A study published by Bernard Blandre in Mouvements Religieux ("Religious Movements") and later put online states that if Xavier is the murderer, his motives were not religious.
The investigation has been running since 2011 and has led to more than 800 tips, as well as searches that have led to dead ends.
Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès created Netsurf Concept LLC, a company that was recorded on the commercial register in Florida, United States. His advisor was Gérard Corona, a French immigrant and manager of the company Strategy Netcom, which was founded in 1998. Corona specialises in assisting foreigners with administrative and legal procedures in the United States. He also helps his clients to open foreign bank accounts and to obtain anonymous bank cards allowing them to withdraw money anywhere in the world without leaving a trace. It has been theorised that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès could have used these services in order to disappear.
Prosecutor Brigitte Lamy has not reconsidered Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès's status as a suspect and leans towards the belief that he committed suicide. If his body is found and there is no other suspect, the investigation will be closed "by default".
In June 2013, a body was found 20 kilometres (12 miles) from where Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was last seen. An autopsy was carried out and did not completely exclude the possibility of the body being that of Xavier. The prosecutor in Draguignan, Danielle Drouy-Ayral, stated "at this moment in time, it is not the body of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès", without providing any more details to explain this declaration.
On the evening of Tuesday 28 April 2015, a walker discovered bones in a forest in Bagnols-en-Forêt, near Fréjus on the south coast of France, close to where Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was last seen.
The police made a link with Xavier's disappearance and analysed what appeared to be a survival camp where other objects were discovered, including an empty wallet, a lighter, a pair of glasses, a sleeping bag, a magazine and a bill dating from 2011. A medical pin was also allegedly found in the unknown decedent's forearm bone. However, as far as the police are aware, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès did not have a medical device in his forearm, even though it is not impossible that he may have been operated on after his disappearance. The magazine that was found seems to date from 2010, preceding Xavier's disappearance in 2011.
On 1 May 2015, the RTL.fr website reported that "DNA obtained from the personal effects around the body discovered on the evening of 28 April in Bagnols-en-Forêt is not that of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, but that of another man whose identity is currently unknown."
In mid-July 2015, a Nantes journalist received a photograph, on the back of which is a handwritten note "I'm still alive". The picture shows two of the Dupont de Ligonnès children – Arthur, the oldest and Benoît, the youngest – sitting at a kitchen table. It is not known who took and who sent the picture.
On 9 January 2018, police raided the Saint-Desert monastery in Roquebrune-sur-Argens, the village where Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was last seen, after several worshippers claimed that they had seen him there. Police initially struggled to make headway as the monks at the monastery have taken a vow of silence. However, after a two-and-a-half-hour search, they determined that the reports were a case of mistaken identity, and the person believed to be Dupont de Ligonnès was a monk who bore a resemblance to him.
On 11 October 2019, a man was arrested at Glasgow Airport in Scotland after arriving on a flight from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. Following an advance passenger information (API) alert, Interpol in London had informed the French authorities on Friday 11 October that a passenger who was booked onto a Paris-Glasgow flight on Saturday 12 October had entered API details corresponding to a stolen French passport. Suspecting that the passport may have been used by Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, the French authorities planned to be present at the boarding gate at Charles de Gaulle Airport for the Saturday flight to intercept the passenger and verify his identity. However, the passenger made a last-minute change to his flight booking, instead flying to Glasgow on the Friday evening. This was too late for the French authorities to go to the airport in Paris, so they asked their Scottish counterparts to intercept the passenger upon arrival in Glasgow. The passenger was duly arrested by Police Scotland, who fingerprinted him before telling the French authorities: "This is your man." This information was released to the media and the story received blanket news coverage in France. However, in the meantime, the French authorities had studied CCTV images from Charles de Gaulle Airport and doubted that the man was Dupont de Ligonnès; their doubts were further raised when Police Scotland refused to send them the fingerprinting results.
On 12 October, following more thorough fingerprinting and a DNA test, it was announced that the arrested man was not Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, but a 69-year-old Portuguese-born French national visiting his Scottish wife in Dunoon. The man was released without charge. It was revealed that the man had reported his passport stolen in 2014, but had since acquired a valid, legitimate replacement passport and has been travelling on that passport regularly since then.
Following this revelation, critics in France raised concerns about how the media took for granted the official police statements.
Even though Christine de Ligonnès initially doubted the authenticity of the letter of 11 April 2011 (while still claiming her brother's innocence), she began stating to the media in March 2012 that "basically, Xavier and his family left for the United States because their safety was threatened in France. The bodies found under the patio can't be those of Agnès and the children." She believes that "the information leaked to the media originates from sources with an interest in making the family disappear". In 2013, in the blog that she created with her husband, Bertram de Verdun, she mentions an email that her brother wrote to two friends in July 2010. He wrote of "accidents" which may befall his family, and ended with the words: "So I hope that, even after a police investigation, my parents, brothers and sisters will never be led to believe that I intentionally caused these accidents (even if the evidence is strong)."
According to Mr Goldenstein (the lawyer for Geneviève Dupont de Ligonnès, the suspect's mother; Christine, his sister; and Bertram de Verdun, Christine's husband):
Christine de Verdun also cites on her blog the difficulties faced by a person burying five people underneath the garden patio. She provides photographs of the niche where the bodies were discovered and states that the space is 1.2 metres (just under 4 feet) high. Thus, the perpetrator would have had to be working on their hands and knees, without long tools (including the shovel and hoe purchased by Xavier just before the murders). Christine also mentions that no displaced earth was found in the garden, in which case the perpetrator would have had to have used a tarpaulin, displaced 5 tons of earth by hand, and left absolutely no trace of this earth. Furthermore, Christine claims that Xavier had neck and back problems and would not have been physically capable of such a task. Finally, it is surmised that due to the low headroom, the perpetrator would likely have both banged their head and rubbed their hair on the ceiling repeatedly, but no human skin cells, blood, or DNA were found there.
Police received more than 900 reports from people who believed they had spotted Xavier. Most notably, in 2016, someone matching his physical description was caught on CCTV in a casino in Néris-les-Bains, and the police subsequently concentrated their search on the area.
At least five documentaries and special reports exploring the case have been aired on French television.
French broadcaster TF1 produced a drama series inspired by the events. While the storyline is fictional, it is based on the Dupont de Ligonnès case, as well as that of John List. The plot revolves around a man, Thomas Kertez (played by Kad Merad), his wife Alice (Laurence Arné) and their eight-year-old son Romain (Gaspard Pasquet), an ordinary family whose lives are turned upside down when the police suspect that Thomas is living under a false identity and is actually Antoine Durieux-Jelosse, a man suspected of murdering his family 15 years earlier before going on the run and not being seen since. Thomas is brought under investigation by the police and goes about trying to prove his innocence, both to the police and his family. Filming for the series, consisting of two 45-minute episodes, took place in December 2018, and the series was aired in September 2019.
In 2020, Netflix resurrected the Unsolved Mysteries series and the Dupont de Ligonnès murders were investigated in the third episode, "House of Terror".