Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès: What if he wasn't guilty? These alternative theories, without conspiracy theories

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. His name haunts one of the most disturbing criminal cases in France. On April 21, 2011, police made a gruesome discovery at 55 Boulevard Robert-Schuman in Nantes: under a recently poured concrete slab in the garden, lay the bodies of his wife Agnès and their four children , Arthur, Thomas, Anne, and Benoît. All were shot dead, presumably while they slept. Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès vanished. Yet he is the prime suspect in the murders.

As a reminder, the last image of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was captured on April 15, 2011, by a video surveillance camera in a hotel in Roquebrune-sur-Argens in the Var region. That day, he was leaving a Formule 1 hotel, carrying a briefcase.

And more than fourteen years after the events, all sorts of theories and hypotheses continue to flourish in the media and on social networks. While to this day the suicide theory remains the most widely considered, several other hypotheses suggest that the fugitive is still alive and could be innocent.

An informant for US intelligence services?

In their book , Sans pitié pour les siens (Without Mercy for His Own) , journalists and legal columnists Béatrice Fonteneau and Jean-Michel Laurence, interviewed by Planet.fr in 2020 , explore the idea that Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was in reality an informant for American intelligence services. According to this theory, he, Agnès, and their four children were exfiltrated "for their safety."

An idea shared by Christine Dupont de Ligonnès, who has been firmly defending her brother's innocence since 2011. "For me, his family was murdered by third parties who wanted to place the blame for this murder on Xavier," she told Paris Match that year. "And since he hasn't been found, he remains the ideal culprit because he can't explain himself."

Since then, she has published the book Xavier, My Brother Presumed Innocent in March 2024, which brings together her findings from a "counter-investigation" conducted over several years. Between 2012 and 2013, she also ran a blog in which she offered "another point of view on the Dupont de Ligonnès affair." She shared testimonies intended to reveal "the real Xavier" and revisited certain aspects of the investigation that she considered inconsistent.

And from a legal point of view?

Could Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès be exonerated by the statute of limitations? This is in any case the idea developed by the former police officer and novelist Romain Puértolas in his book How I Found Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès , published in January 2024. “In 2031, there will be a statute of limitations, because the time limits for crimes are 20 years. In six years, he is innocent!” he insisted in an interview with Femme Actuelle .

This information was denied by Le Dauphiné Libéré the same year, which explained that the "20-year" period only applies to the general framework of crimes against minors. As the website service-public.fr specifies, in cases of infanticide or murder, this period is actually 30 years. However, the investigation targeting Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès specifically concerns murders, particularly those of his own children.

In addition, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès is the subject of an international arrest warrant , which has been active since 2011. This warrant notably led to the erroneous announcement of his arrest in Glasgow in 2019, an event which had the effect of restarting the limitation period . In law, each judicial or investigative act (such as a search or a court decision) interrupts the limitation period , causing it to start again from zero. Thus, with each new act, the deadline is pushed back.

The scenario in which he could escape justice thanks to the statute of limitations is therefore doubly improbable . The only situation in which Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès would be definitively considered innocent in the eyes of justice , without ever having been tried, would be his death , since in French criminal law, the death of a defendant leads to the immediate extinction of proceedings against him.