In 2011 Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès Murdered His Family and Disappeared. Police Believe He's Still Out There.

From Esquire

On April 21, 2011, police discovered the bodies of Agnes Dupont de Ligonnès, her four children Arthur, Thomas, Anne, and Benoit, and the two family dogs buried under the terrace of their family home in Nantes, France. The discovery occurred after several police searches of the home, which had been boarded up for days, confusing the neighbors. The father, Count Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, however, was nowhere to be found. The third episode of Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries examines Xavier's plan to murder his family and escape without a trace. Although no leads have led to his arrest, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès is largely believed to still be out there in the world today.

Netflix’s episode entitled “House of Terror” depicts a patriarch of noble French lineage who, ashamed of his unbearable debt load, resolved to murder his family rather than confront them with the truth of their financial ruin. The episode explains that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès spent the weeks leading up to the murders of his family learning to operate a .22 rifle he inherited from his father. He also purchased a silencer, prepared letters to friends explaining that the family had to go into U.S. witness protection and would be out of contact entirely, and informed his children’s schools that the family was moving to Australia. After he drugged and shot each member of his immediate family asleep in their beds between April 3-5 and buried them, he cleaned up the scene so not a speck of blood or DNA remained, shuttered the house, and drove south. The documentary notes that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès did not hide in the weeks that followed the murders—he withdrew cash at ATMs, was captured on dozens of security cameras, paid with his own credit cards at restaurants, and stayed in hotels under his own name. But on April 15, six days before the police first discovered the bodies of his five family members, Xavier was seen on security camera footage arriving at a small hotel in Roquebrune-sur-Argens, parking his car, taking his bag, and walking into the dense forested area. This is the last known sighting of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. The police initially suspected he went into the woods to commit suicide, but thorough searches of the brush never turned up a body or any remains. An international warrant was put out for Xavier’s arrest that May, and many suspect he was picked up by a boat on the Southern coast of France and to this day is alive on another continent.

The episode does not wade into reported sightings or theories about where Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès is today, but the police have received over a thousand leads and tips of supposed sightings in the nine years since the tragedy. In 2015, a person claiming to be Xaiver sent a note to a journalist that read “I am still alive from then until this hour” on the back of a photo of Xavier’s sons. According to France24 News, handwriting analysis, DNA and fingerprint testing for the photo was conducted, but the note never led to any additional information on the case.

In 2018, investigators visited a monastery in the village of Roquebrune-sur-Argens after a tip came in about a monk who bore a resemblance to Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. This was a false lead, as the man was just a doppelgänger. In 2019, authorities arrested and detained a man who they believed to be Dupont de Ligonnès at Glasgow airport in Scotland. This, too, turned out to be just a lookalike. Although none of these instances have led to answers, maybe Netflix’s wide audience will lead to increased sightings, and perhaps a break in the case.

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