[woman, in French] I saw the house all closed up.
I've always seen that house with the shutters open.
It was a shock.
I knew something terrible had happened.
They seemed like a normal family.
Totally normal.
But no one really knows what goes on behind closed doors.
[theme music plays]
[woman] Nantes...
Nantes is a large French city,
situated in the west of France on the Atlantic coast.
It really is a city of culture.
Life is fairly peaceful....
very quiet.
In the middle of the town there's a residential neighborhood,
where you see upper middle-class people.
They take care of their children who go to school nearby.
They also go to church a lot, to mass.
It's fairly peaceful.
-And then... -[church bell tolls]
...the Dupont de Ligonnès murders happened.
THE HOUSE OF TERROR
The story is an enigma that perplexes everyone,
with lots of mystery.
It's something that
no one saw coming.
That such events took place...
is unthinkable.
We're on Shuman Boulevard in Nantes,
across from number 55.
That's where the drama took place.
It's a house where, after 2011,
people slowed down or stopped
to see what we call
the House of Horror.
It still...
haunts everyone who knew the family, you know?
[woman 2] I know the family because they moved into a house
at 55 Shuman Boulevard.
I moved to number 61 in 1992,
and they brought some work in for me.
I did alterations for the children, for Agnès.
And I ironed the husband's shirts.
I saw the family regularly.
I'd see Agnès picking up the children from school every day.
I watched them pass the store every day.
So it was a really lively, busy house.
There are four children, two parents.
The father, Count Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès,
he's a businessman who'd had some success.
He's comfortable communicating with people and quick to laugh.
The pretty mother, Agnès, works in a Catholic school.
They have four beautiful children.
Arthur, the eldest.
Arthur is a very handsome young man.
He's 20 at this time
and goes to a private Catholic college.
There's Thomas, who's 18.
He's a shy boy.
He studies musicology.
He's a passionate-- crazy about music.
Anne is 16.
She's a very pretty young girl.
She models for mail order catalogs.
A very good student.
She's the best student of all the children.
She's at a private Catholic school called La Perverie.
The same high school as Benoît.
Benoît is the last and is 13 years old.
[imitates drums] He's crazy about drums.
He plays the drums all the time.
So, that makes a lot of noise in the house.
And there you are.
Seemingly, a golden family.
[Chapon] One day,
I sensed something that troubled me.
It was a Monday afternoon at 2:00 p.m.
when I discovered the house was closed up.
I passed in front of the house and I saw this note on the mailbox,
that said to stop leaving mail there.
RETURN MAIL TO SENDER THANK YOU
And then I saw the closed shutters.
I said, "That's so weird."
I just felt that something was wrong.
The shutters were always open.
Even when they went on vacation,
they were always open.
Tuesday, I went back to work, and it was the same. It hadn't changed.
Wednesday morning, I went to work, and obviously nothing had changed.
I kept asking myself, "Where are they?"
And so, I called the police.
[buzzer buzzes]
[man] When the police arrive, it's the local police.
It's just a home visit
to make sure nothing out of the ordinary is taking place inside the house.
The front door is locked.
The shutters are closed.
They have to call a locksmith to open the door.
[indistinct radio chatter]
And there, they find that basically everything in the house is in its place.
There are some bedrooms where the sheets have been removed.
Some closets are open.
[Bloch] All of that seems totally normal.
So, the police feel that the residents have left voluntarily.
There's nothing out of the ordinary which would necessitate
launching a formal police investigation.
[Chapon] But some of the cars were still there, except the C5.
And they couldn't all leave in a C5.
It was impossible.
With the bags, six people, and the dogs.
I don't know, but if you think about it-- It's obvious, you know.
The police were staring at me and listening to me like they thought,
"What has she been smoking?"
And then, several letters from Xavier and Agnès arrived.
They had been addressed to friends and relatives.
The letters said...
"Okay, well, as you know, I've had links with the US...
WE ARE BEING LOOKED AFTER BY THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
The Americans have recruited me...
AND "TRANSFERRED" TO THE USA
...to infiltrate an international drug ring.
This will be hard. You won't see us for a long while...
(NO EMAILS, NO TEXT MESSAGES, NO TELEPHONE)
...as we're going to change identity, be under protection,
and won't be contactable at all."
In fact, he was a spy for the US drug squad, the DEA.
And bizarrely, this letter comes from Xavier and Agnès Dupont de Ligonnès.
Xavier is well-known, respectable,
and Agnès has a Bible study group.
She goes to mass on Sundays.
They're not the type to lie.
WORKING INCOGNITO FOR THE DEA
So, they are actually spies for the DEA.
It's simply baffling.
KEEP IT SECRET
[man] It's classic Xavier de Ligonnès.
"Hey, everybody! Hello, everybody.
[in English] Hello, everybody... [in French] Hello, everybody.
Big surprise! We've been transferred to the US."
That's totally Xavier. I can hear his voice.
-[siren wailing] -The traffic is insane, huh?
I met Xavier here in Versailles,
in the mid-1970s.
I've known him since we were 16 years old.
We became best friends right away.
We were neighbors...
on Avenue Maréchal Foch where...
where Xavier lives and where I live.
[in English] The first floor, with the room of Xavier on the right.
[in French] Versailles remains the city of the palace of King Louis XIV.
The city of the Sun King.
And many aristocratic Catholic families still remain.
We were all from that world.
Meaning we were all nobles.
And Xavier didn't come from just any noble family.
Xavier's family was very prestigious.
Xavier's father was a count.
He was the Count Dupont de Ligonnès.
In this family there had been musketeers,
a castle in the center of France,
the signet ring with the family's coat of arms,
with the... family motto.
All that is very important.
Especially to Xavier.
He met Agnès in the early '80s.
He was a handsome guy of 20.
She fell crazy in love with him. She was 16 or 17.
Agnès was a beautiful woman.
She was very traditional, very... conservative.
And Xavier introduced me to her and they were together and in love.
But Xavier longed for adventure.
He wanted to seek new horizons,
and Xavier broke up with Agnès.
Xavier left to go traveling.
And then, one year later,
when Xavier returned to Versailles,
he found that Agnès had become pregnant by another man.
To my great surprise,
he chose to marry Agnès and keep her baby.
That is, to adopt him and give him his name:
Arthur Dupont de Ligonnès.
Which in Versailles, you just didn't do.
You didn't marry an unwed mother,
a girl who had had a baby outside of marriage.
I found that very...
very courageous of Xavier, to take that initiative.
And then they built a family.
They were beautiful. Not your everyday family.
They were aristocrats, nobles,
with the values of Versailles and a lot of love.
[Martin] And this noble family man,
who's writing this eight-page letter,
claims to be a "spy" for the DEA.
But because he's such an exceptional man,
the readers' first reaction was...
"maybe."
But Agnès' family sent the letter to the Nantes district attorney saying,
"Listen, he's saying... all kinds of strange things.
Agnès would never have left with the children
without telling us or giving us a call."
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Block] The police return to the house
to do a more thorough investigation.
The police find that photos are missing from their frames,
like when someone leaves
and takes the pictures that are dear to them.
But there's still absolutely nothing suspicious in the house.
[de Stabenrath] Agnès' family was saying,
"Come on. A family just doesn't disappear like that."
It's her family who put pressure on the police.
[Bloch] And each time, they didn't observe anything unusual.
Until that last visit on the 21st of April.
The police lieutenant finds something odd under the terrace.
That same day, the district attorney, Xavier Ronsin,
holds a press conference at the courthouse to say,
"It's unusual that this family has disappeared.
We're opening an investigation into a worrying disappearance."
Then, suddenly, the district attorney halts the press conference
and goes to answer the phone.
When they were digging under the terrace,
they discovered plastic bags,
large trash bags bound up with tape.
COURTHOUSE
[Martin] And then he came back.
The district attorney said, "Look, we're going to delay this."
The press knew something important had happened.
Bodies were discovered under the terrace of this house.
It's a discovery that's unbelievably shocking.
They stumble onto bodies, onto a massacre.
It's truly terrible. It's really hard to take.
I'm watching it live on a TV channel.
It's a horrible tragedy.
[Martin] They find them all wrapped in blankets and duvets,
then tied up and put into plastic bags.
There's a small religious icon next to each body:
a little candle, a cross.
That illustrates it's an imitation of a religious burial.
It also shows there's an affectionate bond
between the perpetrator and the buried bodies.
It's as though someone had carried out a burial on Catholic ground.
Except it isn't a cemetery,
it's under the terrace in the garden.
[Bloch] And in these graves,
there are the bodies of the mother, Agnès,
and three of the children:
Arthur, Benoît, and Anne.
Even the two dogs, all in the same grave.
And in a separate grave, the body of Thomas.
But one is missing.
[de Stabenrath] Where is Xavier?
Is his body there?
Is it somewhere in the house? In the basement? In the attic?
[Bloch] You have four children,
the mother, two dogs, but no father.
And from that point forward, Xavier became the prime suspect.
[Bloch] Having discovered that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès had disappeared
the investigating judge issued a warrant
and sent it to all member countries of Interpol.
This is known as an international warrant.
FATHER WANTED
[man] For many friends, it's impossible that Xavier is the murderer.
We know the individual,
we know the man, and we know it's not possible.
Where they found the bodies, it's very low down.
Between the ground and the balcony it's very low,
and Xavier had terrible back pain.
He complained all the time about his bad back,
which kept him from bending
and... it's just technically impossible.
He couldn't have dug holes under that balcony.
So if it's not him, it's somebody else.
FAMILY DECIMATED INQUIRY INTO THE NANTES MYSTERY
It's absolutely incredible.
And I don't believe it.
[de Stabenrath] I don't believe it. He's a true friend.
When I had my car accident, he was there.
I broke my neck and I couldn't play music anymore.
I could no longer play the piano or the guitar,
and he knew that, to me, that was everything.
Without my having to say anything, he knew my suffering and he knew my pain.
And above all else, he helped me get through it all.
He was there to take my hand, to tell me,
"You're my friend, I love you.
Don't worry, I'll never let you down."
So, for me, he was a good guy.
[Martin] He has the characteristics of a father hen.
Like a mother hen, who...
sits on her eggs and takes care of her children.
He's a father who's very present.
He's very concerned about his children.
Above all, he's tactile.
He hugs them. He takes them in his arms.
[Goldenstein] Xavier loved his family.
It's not possible that he could kill his four children, his wife,
and to be a suspect in such a heinous crime.
The main concern for investigators is determining what happened.
How were the victims killed? At what moment?
From the autopsy, we found sleeping pills in the children's viscera.
Meaning they were put to sleep.
[Martin] Agnès didn't have drugs in her system,
but she had a sleep apnea machine which helped her to sleep.
And Agnès' apnea machine stopped suddenly at 3:00 a.m.
on the morning of the 3rd or 4th of April.
It appears that the first victim was the mother.
And then...
the children were killed.
Each victim was killed by two bullets to the head.
The bullets extracted from the bodies had been shot from a .22 long rifle.
Yet, the neighbors were not awoken by any gun shots.
These are methodical executions.
They're all in their pajamas.
So they've all been killed in their sleep.
But there's an incredible mystery.
There's no trace of blood in the bedrooms.
There's no trace of blood in the living room.
Nothing in the foyer...
in the bathroom.
Nothing on any walls, any furniture, the ground.
In other words, there's zero blood, five victims.
A total mystery,
where someone kills five people
in the same place, the same house,
and leaves no trace.
[Bloch] And then, well,
when the crime scene investigators take samples,
they never find any fingerprints or DNA from anyone.
There's still no absolute physical proof implicating Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès.
Xavier was 50 years old,
had never had any problems with the law,
and now he's a criminal mastermind.
[de Stabenrath] This is Xavier, head of the perfect family.
You see, Xavier...
was the heir to the family name.
It's even more important in light of what's happened,
because Xavier, by killing his three sons, kills his lineage.
And for the aristocratic world, for the French nobility, this is dreadful,
because you're terminating a lineage.
This family gives the impression of being wholesome,
an old family, with children in private schools...
nice house, et cetera.
Anyway, they dig a little, and Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès,
well, he doesn't lead the life that he's pretending to.
In the early 2000s, they try to relocate to the USA, to Florida.
But they don't succeed.
They thought it would be simple,
when actually it wasn't.
So they try that before settling back in France.
Due to this failed American Dream,
they've more or less spent all their money.
[de Stabenrath] The last ten years, 2001 to 2011,
he's in a downward spiral of failure.
They lose a lot of money.
He's got bailiffs on his back.
Well, nothing but problems.
[Bloch] But he claims to be a business owner,
that he's creating successful companies,
that he's traveling all across France, being a busy businessman, etc.
The truth is his companies have never been really successful.
[Martin] He knew that in a short while...
there would be no money left.
So, eventually, he'll have to leave his house, et cetera.
This is going to be serious, with severe consequences.
He was about to be uncovered...
as someone unsuccessful.
[de Stabenrath] He's vain, proud.
He doesn't want to lose face.
He doesn't want his children to find out he's got no money, that he's ruined.
[Martin] It's like he was on a mission...
to save his children from disgrace,
from finding out their father didn't have the life people thought he had.
He's looking for something that could help materially...
to avoid these consequences.
Then, came the death of Xavier Dupont de Logonnès' father, Hubert.
I was a neighbor of the count, Xavier's father.
We lived in the same building.
That's how we came to know each other, little by little.
January 20, 2011, I found out that Hubert had died from a heart attack.
So, the apartment had to be cleared out,
and Xavier tackled it,
namely by sorting through his father's personal belongings.
What he was interested in, apparently,
was to recover a ring which had belonged to his father.
It was a count's ring.
A count's signet ring, to be precise.
He tried to find out if there was any money set aside.
Apparently, he didn't find anything.
In fact, he told me there wasn't anything.
So those words came from Xavier's own mouth.
[Martin] There was no money left.
There had, actually, been big money problems for years.
In fact, his father, the count, had a very sad end to his life:
illness, loneliness, poverty...
Near poverty, he was no longer living in splendor.
It was a rented apartment.
And I think that this failed life
is something that profoundly resonates
in Xavier's feelings, possibly in his thoughts.
And then, there's a second event, critical to this case.
Xavier discovers that there's no money,
but he does find a weapon.
A .22 caliber long rifle.
So, the last time I saw Xavier was after clearing out his father's apartment.
There's a strange image that's stayed with me.
It was the first time I saw him like that. His expression was unusual.
When you know Xavier,
you know him as someone who's very nice, smiley, pleasant.
But the last image I have of him really is...
I found it very...
He had a dark look in his eyes.
[gunshot]
[Bloch] Before inheriting his father's rifle,
no one who knew him would say
that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès had any interest in weapons.
It's from the moment he inherits this rifle from his father
that he learns how to shoot.
He even went to the shooting range with two of his sons.
He posed a few questions to his shooting instructor,
notably, on the eventual use of a silencer.
[Martin] Then, he bought a silencer.
A silencer to fit the long rifle,
allowing him to shoot in downtown Nantes
without alerting the neighbors.
[Bloch] There's the discovery, a shocking one,
that when they dug under the terrace,
there's the body of Agnès, the mother,
and the bodies of three of the children in the same grave.
And you've got a grave next to it, with Thomas' body inside.
Now, it seems that Thomas wasn't killed
at the same time as his brothers and sister and his mother.
The four children are there both on Saturday and Sunday.
And, in fact, Thomas has to leave
to go back to his Catholic university,
and Xavier lets him go.
The massacre takes place Sunday night.
And on Tuesday, he tells him,
"Listen, you have to come back.
Your mother has had a bicycle accident.
She's in the hospital, in a coma. We don't know if she'll come out of it.
It's very serious. You have to come home."
So, on Tuesday evening, Thomas goes back home.
The last we hear from Thomas is at midnight
when he sends a text message to a friend.
His friend gets back to him. It's a little after midnight,
and that message will remain unanswered.
The drug took effect at that time.
Thomas was never seen again.
He very likely got killed Tuesday night,
and buried in a separate grave.
[Martin] So, why this time difference?
I do believe he hesitated to kill him.
Arthur wasn't his biological son.
Thomas was. He was the eldest.
So he was the heir, the one who would bear the name,
be nobility...
The last one to carry it, as there are no other sons in the family.
So, he must have hesitated.
As the bodies of the whole family and the two dogs were discovered,
the police searched for Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, the prime suspect.
The date is April 21st,
and they haven't been seen since April 4th.
So, nearly three weeks went by without a search.
So the police searched hotels and restaurants around France.
Very quickly, on April 22nd,
they find Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès' car
in the parking lot of a small Formule 1 hotel,
in Roquebrune-sur-Argens in the south.
Once they find his car,
the police reconstruct the week prior to the disappearances.
The massacre of the family took place the nights of April 3rd and 4th.
The police discover that Xavier spent the whole week inside the house.
He was seen alone by acquaintances from Nantes.
And then, they discover that...
one week after the murders,
Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès took his car and left Nantes.
We know that because...
his car was recorded by a speed camera...
between Nantes and La Rochelle.
Around noon, Xavier would be located in a restaurant.
The credit card's time stamp certifies this.
Then, in the evening, at a hotel in La Rochelle.
The next day, he heads south.
He heads towards the southwest.
The police say that he's gone on the run.
He's fleeing, a fugitive.
But he doesn't go very fast. He's not...
hitting the road to put hundreds of kilometers
between his house and his destination.
Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès isn't hiding.
He's withdrawing money with his bank card.
We know that because we see him.
[de Stabenrath] He goes to restaurants, leaving bills, credit card receipts.
So, he doesn't care.
[Martin] It's rather strange,
considering the amount of caution and work around the crime scene
to fool the investigators.
Now, we've got an accumulation of evidence.
He doesn't want to hide.
Why?
[Bloch] Of course,
in the majority of cases of family massacres,
when you're dealing with the slaughter of a family, it's always difficult.
More often than not, the murderer commits suicide
after having killed his entire family.
The thought was, "This is someone about to kill himself."
[Martin] The police interpreted it as a pilgrimage.
So no need to hide.
It's a farewell
to his past life, to places where he had been happy.
All along the southeast PACA area,
where he had lived with Agnès during the first years of their marriage.
Some of his kids were born there.
The years he spent in the south were happy years...
which made people think that he would end the story
where it had been so good.
The last known stop is Roquebrune-sur-Argens.
And there,
he spends the night in a Formule 1 hotel.
They recover...
the CCTV images.
They discover an image
where he's crossing the hotel parking lot...
carrying a bag.
At the bottom of this sort of carry-all clothes bag,
there's a long object.
So, the investigators think he's got the rifle that killed his family there,
in the bag, and he's disappearing with it.
He looks into the camera and somehow is saying, "Goodbye".
What's in Roquebrune-sur-Argens? Cliffs, a mountain.
Lots of things that make you think, "Right, he killed his family,
so he hid in the rocks and killed himself."
[Martin] This image of a man walking away with a rifle in a bag
will convince the investigators
that he left for the back country to commit suicide.
[siren wailing]
There's zone one and zone two, so...
[Martin] For weeks,
there are search parties looking for him.
We're looking for traces of a crossing or a body.
[man] Clues, in fact.
Clues or a body, a corpse.
So they're looking in holes, in rocks, in caves.
[de Stabenrath] For two months, first-aid workers, gendarmes, firemen,
searched every nook and cranny with mountain guides.
[Martin] No body was ever found.
They were certain he had committed suicide.
And I believe he fooled them all.
In these family crimes, called familicide,
in 98% of cases,
the father, who's the murderer, commits suicide on the spot.
Predictably enough, the investigators thought that was the case.
They didn't think he could be the one or two percent
of those who go on the run.
There's so much care, work, organization
to deceive the investigators,
to buy time.
And it worked.
[de Stabenrath] Like a chess player, he had planned two things.
First, that it'd take as long as possible before the bodies were found.
And then he thought, "I need more time.
So, Roquebrune-sur-Argens, a place I know well,
when they find out I've been there, they'll search all the surroundings."
And that's what happened. Xavier escaped.
We see a happy family.
A family-- That's what is--
That's what-- How can I put it? That's what appalls me and makes me angry.
How can you decide that one day...
you'll strip your children of their future?
How can you...
take people's lives?
How can you take people's lives?
That's totally inconceivable.
Unspeakable.
[Bloch] Nobody knows what happened to him.
No plane ticket was bought under his name,
no cars have disappeared,
no cars have been rented,
no train ticket has been purchased under his name.
There isn't the slightest clue as to where Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès could be.
You know, in this area, you can take a boat.
The sea is 30 kilometers away.
You can take a cargo ship in Fos, near Marseille.
You can take the highway to go to Italy.
You can even take the mountain paths to go to Italy.
You can board a train and go to Croatia and start from there.
It's totally mind-blowing.
It makes him a master at disappearing.
Not of the perfect crime, as the bodies will be found.
Even though I'm sure he believed that they wouldn't be found in the garden.
But the perfect disappearance,
since to this day, years and years later, he still hasn't been caught.
Now, we can agree that there are a vast number of clues,
but we don't know what really happened.
This case remains... unsolved, mysterious.
We'd all really like to find out what happened
and where...
the main suspect involved in this case is, that is, the father.
A lot of questions.
Seeing that house all closed up, I was asking myself, "Where are they?"
Now the question is, "Where can he be?"
[Martin] I believe he's alive.
I think Latin America because...
he's bilingual in English. His English is very good.
His Spanish is pretty good, so he would be at ease.
I think that he went to...
either Hamburg or Tangiers to take a cargo ship.
And he went to Latin America, Argentina, or... you know.
He's got dark hair with dark eyes. He can grow a beard, shave his head.
[Bloch] The problem in this case
is that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès looks a bit like everybody else,
with no strong features.
He's of average height.
Physically, he doesn't stand out.
He's physically normal.
And there's nothing worse in this kind of situation
than physically normal people,
because they both stay unnoticed and they draw too much attention.
You spot him everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
[de Stabenrath] My only question, as he's still my friend,
is how can he look himself in the mirror every night, every morning,
brushing his teeth,
shaving,
and think about his children who he loved.
Because he loved them. A lot. He was a real father.
That, for me, is a mystery.
It's a big mystery.
Yeah.