Aristocrat Vanishes After Wife, Four Children and Two Dogs Found Buried Under Nantes Home

Scene Discovered in Nantes

In April 2011, police in Nantes, France, uncovered a chilling scene: five bodies wrapped in sheets, dusted with lime and buried beneath a suburban back terrace. The victims — a mother, her four children and the family’s two dogs — had been sedated and shot with a .22-caliber rifle, investigators say.

Victims Identified

Authorities later identified the dead as Agnès Dupont de Ligonnès, 48, and her children Arthur (21), Thomas (18), Anne (16) and Benoît (13). Police believe the killings occurred between April 3 and 5, and described the scene as a methodical execution.

Husband Vanishes

The family’s patriarch, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, vanished that month and has not been reliably sighted since. Born into an aristocratic family and styling himself the "Comte," Xavier’s outward image masked deep financial trouble: failing businesses, mounting debts and a rapidly crumbling personal life.

Evidence of Planning

Investigators say Xavier prepared in the weeks before the killings. He inherited a .22-caliber rifle from his father shortly before the deaths, joined a local shooting club and made a series of solo cash withdrawals from ATMs across southern France. Officers found notes and letters in the house intended to explain the family’s disappearance, including references to witness protection and, in an earlier note from 2010, the idea of a "collective" suicide. A sign on the mailbox requested that incoming mail be returned to sender.

Last Confirmed Movements and Leads

The last confirmed sighting of Xavier was on April 15, 2011, at a budget hotel in Roquebrune-sur-Argens, where he paid in cash and checked out quietly the next morning. In the years that followed, authorities chased more than 900 reported sightings across several countries.

Notable developments include human bones found in 2015 near Fréjus that were later excluded by DNA testing, an unverified 2015 handwritten letter and photograph sent to a journalist claiming "I'm still alive," and a high-profile 2019 arrest at Glasgow Airport that proved to be a case of mistaken identity after fingerprint and DNA checks.

Case Status

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès remains the subject of an international arrest warrant. Despite extensive investigations and numerous tips, no confirmed evidence has established whether he is alive or dead, and no conviction related to his disappearance has occurred.

Note: This case remains one of France’s most baffling unsolved mysteries and continues to attract international attention and media coverage.