Disappearance of Dupont de Ligonnès

Dupont de Ligonnès was a French aristocrat, who had 4 kids, good life on the outside (but had amassed a lot of debt). In 2011, letters were delivered to his immediate family stating that Xavier and his family would have to “leave urgently for the US” because he had become a key witness for the Drug Enforcement Agency and now they all had to enter into the Witness Protection Program. After a couple of weeks, the concerned family members got the police involved. Investigation into Xavier’s recent purchases (bullets, cement, lime, a shovel) led the police to search his home. They found bodies buried under the patio in the back garden of the house. The investigators claimed to have found the remains of all four children and Xavier’s wife. They had been drugged and shot in their sleep.

The night after he murdered his family there is footage of him at a restaurant smiling and chatting with the waiter. There are some other oddities related to the case. Up to 9 people saw Xavier’s wife alive after the date the police say she was killed. She was seen walking the dog with the two youngest kids. Xavier left detailed letters to his family about what to do with the house, their belongings, the contracts, etc. He left the key to the basement, which you could only access through a door in the garden right next to where the bodies were. The autopsy was kind of botched. The individual death certificates were made on site without DNA testing or anyone to attest to their identity and the police released details to the family that was not consistent with the victims (eg. they mixed up the two sons, gave heights and weights that weren’t accurate, etc.)