Xavier Dupont De Ligonnès and his wife -
Private De Ligo / FSMADJA / SIPA
Agnès Dupont de Ligonnès and her children Arthur, Anne, Benoît and Thomas were murdered between April 3 and 5, 2011 in their house in Nantes.
Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès has not been spotted since April 15, 2011.
His loss of faith, his professional failure, his wife's infidelity, the legal action of his mistress and the death of his father have particularly shaken him.
Ten years ago, almost to the day, Agnès Dupont de Ligonnès and her four children were killed in Nantes.
Their bodies will be found on April 21, 2011, buried under the terrace of the family home.
The father and husband never reappeared.
Very quickly, investigators considered him the sole suspect in the five assassinations, “five methodical executions”.
The preparation of the passage to the act and its escape appears indeed meticulous.
This man, hitherto without fuss, knew problems of money, of couple, of profession.
And certain specific events have helped to tip it.
Point.
His disillusionment with faith, 1995
In Versailles, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès grew up under the influence of the Catholic religion.
His mother, Geneviève, leads a prayer group, The Church of Philadelphia, now suspected of abuse of weakness.
Among the divine messages put forward by Geneviève, one of them predicted that the Apocalypse would take place one evening in June 1995. Members of the group meet, XDDL being presented as "the chosen one".
But the prediction does not come true.
From this event, Xavier repeats having lost his faith and moves away from traditional Christian practice, "unlike his wife Agnès, with whom he is in clear opposition on this point", notes Jean-Michel Laurence, co-author of the book
Sans pitié pour les siens
.
"He asks himself a lot of questions and obsessively," adds the journalist.
He spends entire evenings analyzing the Bible.
He now considers, in religious forums, that human sacrifices, including those of his own children, are the most beautiful offering that can be made to God.
"
The infidelity of Agnes, his wife, in 2005
In 2005, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès discovers that his wife, Agnès, is cheating on him.
Worse, with one of his best friends, Michel.
XDDL is enraged, demands an explanation but ends up accepting the situation.
Aware that his couple was in danger, he would have participated, on his own initiative and on several occasions, in three-way sex, according to police records.
“It's something he wasn't prepared for.
He didn't really want to, but he was doing it to save his marriage.
It hurt him a lot, ”said Bruno de Stabenrath, childhood friend of the fugitive and author of his own investigation.
In 2007, a man who was still wounded wrote to his wife: "I will spend my days cursing you for having destroyed my world and suspecting you of continuing behind my back".
The failure of the Crystal project, 2010
In the months preceding the five-fold assassination, Selref, a company created by Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès in 2003, was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Its latest project, Club Crystal, a loyalty concept for traveling salespeople, is, despite a large human investment, a failure even before having really started.
In the garage of the Nantes residence, cardboard boxes filled with unused Crystal coupons are thus piled up.
“XDDL is financially strapped.
Its hotel prospecting business is in decline.
Agnès accuses him of having squandered his personal heritage to keep afloat businesses that do not work, ”explains Béatrice Fonteneau, co-author of
Sans pitié pour les
siens
, the Dupont de Ligonnès mystery
.
In 2010, XDDL declared 4,000 euros in annual income for taxes.
Urssaf is no longer paid.
The family's lifestyle is estimated at 7,650 euros per month, not counting debts.
The debt claimed by Catherine, his mistress, 2010
In February 2009, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès returned to a youthful flirtation, Catherine, after having contacted him on the Internet.
A love affair of about six months follows with this woman who became a business manager in the Hauts-de-Seine.
It lends XDDL 50,000 euros to develop its “Club Crystal” project.
But the months pass and Catherine realizes that the money has been squandered.
She stops seeing him and orders him to repay his debt.
She initiates proceedings, a bailiff comes to Nantes at the end of summer 2010. “Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès knows that he does not have the means to pay off this debt.
The panic it inspires is that of a cornered animal barking in the dark, ”wrote
Society
magazine
in its survey published in July 2020.
Our file on the Ligonnès affair
The death of his father, Hubert, 2011
Hubert Dupont de Ligonnès died on January 20, 2011 at the age of 79.
He had lived for almost 20 years in a residence in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine).
His son, who had visited him often in the previous months, in particular to steal money from him, took care of the burial of this count who had left his wife and children in 1972, without divorce, to flee debts. and rebuild his life in Africa.
An abandonment that had traumatized the family.
If XDDL did not inherit the signet ring from his father, he did, however, recover a 22 Long rifle which he then took care to maintain.
The same type of weapon that was used to shoot the five victims while they were sleeping.
“This death, then the arrival of the rifle, were a trigger, believes Bruno de Stabenrath.
Xavier had problems but above all did not want to reproduce his father's escape.
So he had to consider something else.
But he would never have committed a crime during his father's lifetime, he was the representative of the Ligonnès dynasty.
"
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Nantes slaughter