Many murder mysteries require a devilishly clever perpetrator to enter the public eye.
Most murderers act at the moment, suddenly committing a horrible crime, and are apprehended soon after. But some killers get away with so much more.
They plan the scheme, and once they commit their crimes, they are never seen again. In 2011, a French family disappeared.
Shortly after, their bodies were found buried in the garden of their home—all but one, the prime suspect, the father, Xavier Pierre Marie Dupont de Ligonnès.
The mastermind is still at large and unfound. He left behind was a mystery of the family in the back lot of a traditional, picturesque, unsuspecting French villa.
10 /10 Not An Ordinary Family
The Dupont de Ligonnès is part of an aristocratic line going back as far as the late 1700s. They were very secretive, particularly Xavier, the father.
Very little is still known about him as a businessman, as even the records from his few public businesses don’t reveal any precise details.
Together with Agnès, a Catholic school teacher of particular note, they had four children: Arthur, Thomas, Anne, and Benoit. All of them but Xavier were found dead in the yard of their suburban home in Nantes.
9 /10 Step By Step
The last few days leading up to the discovery and the years-long search were meticulously researched and investigated by French inspectors.
Once they found out Xavier wasn’t among his buried family, they began piecing everything together and found an undeniable trail of clues that the furtive family didn’t see coming.
Witnesses also attested to the strange movements of Xavier days before the disappearance.