Un homme soupçonné d’être Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès arrêté en Ecosse
This is an unexpected twist in one of France's largest criminal cases. But Nantes investigators were still having trouble believing this on the evening of Friday, October 11. On Saturday morning, some of them were already on their way to Glasgow, Scotland, to see with their own eyes a man who had been arrested a few hours earlier, as he was getting off a plane from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle.
His fingerprints would have designated him as one of the most wanted fugitives in France, a man they had been tracking for many years, and who was the subject of an international arrest warrant: Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, the 58-year-old family man, suspected of having methodically murdered his wife and four children in April 2011 in Nantes.
This arrest follows an "anonymous tip" according to a source close to the investigation, in remarks collected by AFP. But this "information" came too late for the police to be able to intervene before boarding at the Paris airport. The French investigators then informed the Scottish police that the suspect was on a plane and "provided them with means of identification".
Upon his arrival in Scotland, he was checked. "A man has been arrested at Glasgow Airport and remains in custody following a European arrest warrant issued by the French authorities," confirmed a Scottish police spokeswoman in a statement. "The investigation continues to establish and confirm his identity." Beyond fingerprint analysis, a DNA comparison is underway. The man reportedly remained silent during his arrest. However, on Saturday morning, several sources called for great caution, pending formal confirmation of his identity.
The passenger, described as "really physically unrecognizable", did not resist. "If the fingerprints were not there, it would be hard to believe," says a source close to the case. If the arrested man accepts it, he could be extradited shortly, before being presented to the Nantes investigating judge in charge of investigating this voluminous case. Just a few hours after his arrest, however, it is impossible to comment on a deadline for handing over to France.
The Nantes prosecutor, Pierre Sennès, announced to AFP on Saturday that the teams of investigators from the National Fugitive Search Brigade (BNRF) and the Judicial Police (PJ) will be travelling. "They will check with the person who was arrested at Glasgow airport in Scotland to make sure it is Mr. Dupont de Ligonnès," he said. "There is a suspicion with regard to fingerprints but it is being verified, being confirmed," added Mr. Sennès, calling for "caution" while waiting for the official results.
Lawyer Stéphane Goldenstein, who defends the interests of Geneviève and Christine Dupont de Ligonnès, the suspect's mother and sister, interviewed by Presse Océan, was also cautious. "I'm not sure it's him (...). I hear the media talking about fingerprints, I don't know how they have Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès' fingerprints, I objectively don't have them in my file, it seems very surprising to me. »
According to another AFP source, the man arrested was travelling on a stolen French passport in 2014, and he would most likely have spent part of his runaway in the United Kingdom. A search, which ended at around 12:30 a.m., also took place in a house on a residential street in Limay, in the Yvelines. This address is the one on the passport, according to a source close to the file.
Dumbfounded, a neighbour of the house searched assured Europe 1 that the police were making "a monstrous mistake": "I've known this guy for thirty years, he was a friend. I went to his wedding in Scotland (...) He has nothing to do with it! ».
Eight long years have passed since the disappearance of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. When the Nantes police discovered the bodies of his wife, Agnes, and their children, Arthur, Thomas, Anne and Benoît, on April 21, 2011, the man was already far away. At the time, forensic experts established that the victims were all coldly shot and killed with two 22-long rifles to the head between April 3 and 5 after ingesting sleeping pills. The bodies were then covered with rubble, earth and quicklime and buried under the terrace of the family garden of the bourgeois residence.
Investigators quickly learned that the father, who could not be found, had bought DIY equipment and quicklime in two stores in the Nantes area twenty-four hours before the first crimes. For a few months, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès had also been training for shooting, with the 22 long rifle inherited from his late father. According to his coach, he had asked for advice on how to use a silencer. On April 4, he also phoned his wife's employer to inform him of her absence due to "illness". The school of the children Anne and Benoît was also contacted. Shortly before the crimes, he left a collective letter to his family explaining that he and his wife and children were about to leave for the United States as part of a mysterious witness protection programme.
Behind the picture of the ideal father was already emerging the portrait of a man in debt, who was struggling to make his family believe that everything was fine and left for the roads on Monday morning to return only on Friday evening, as if he was a very busy man. But the mask was about to fall off. It was only a matter of days. A bailiff was coming by. All of his small businesses had collapsed, one after the other. Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was facing the wall.
At the wheel of his Citroën C5, on this fateful day in April 2011, the man had already left Nantes for several days. The reconstruction of his escape route leaves some doubts. To reach the south of France, the suspect took his time. Before leaving his car in the car park of a Formula 1 hotel in Roquebrune-sur-Argens, in the Var, he took a convoluted route, even making stopovers for dinner in restaurants, paying with his credit card.
He will disappear at the foot of the mountains, in this small commune surrounded by rugged hills. In a last image captured by the hotel's camera, this man leaves the field with a shoulder bag. This photograph, the last one, is dated April 15, 2011.
The Nantes Judicial Police Department's criminal brigade took up the case ten days later and immediately stepped up its investigations to find his whereabouts. Calls for witnesses are issued. Everywhere. The face, or rather the faces of this man, sometimes pulled to four pins, sometimes relaxed, in a suit and tie, black turtleneck or country dancer's outfit, wearing glasses or not, is the subject of an arrest warrant.
At the Nantes central police station, the phone rings all the time. Soon, hundreds of reports were received by investigators. Some people swear they saw him in the south of France. Others are certain that the unknown encountered in Thailand was the one... Each time a new publication is published in the press, each time a new TV show or series is broadcast, new testimonies flow.
In January 2018, seven years later, two parishioners still believe they recognized this man, whose childhood was cradled by the religious, in a monastery in the Var. All alerts shall be systematically checked. "We never gave up anything. During all these years, there have always been investigators from the Nantes PJ to operate all the tracks, check everything, purge everything," says Marc Perrot, the boss of the Nantes PJ. Some strangers on these streets here and elsewhere looked like him, indeed, mistakenly. But none of them was Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès.
Over time,those close to the case came to believe that the suspect would never be found alive. It was impossible that a man like him, however organized, could have escaped all the radars. He who was penniless. He who had no known hiding place. He who had no means to hide it for such a long time. He had probably killed himself somewhere in these Var mountains, taking his secrets with him, they thought.
Others imagined that if he had had to take his own life, the suspect would have done so as soon as the murders occurred in 2011. They believed in his ability to change his appearance, to get false papers and to borrow money, a lot of money, as he had done several times in the past.
If the DNA analyses carried out in Glasgow on Friday would confirm the identity of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, many questions would still arise. Where has he been all these years? What did he do? Who helped him? Who helped him? Others will follow at trial time. In the presence of the accused, the justice system could then finally try to understand how this man, if he is guilty of the facts that is hos accused of, has pulled it off.
BBM
Oops .... fingerprints?
This is an unexpected twist in one of France's largest criminal cases. But Nantes investigators were still having trouble believing this on the evening of Friday, October 11. On Saturday morning, some of them were already on their way to Glasgow, Scotland, to see with their own eyes a man who had been arrested a few hours earlier, as he was getting off a plane from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle.
His fingerprints would have designated him as one of the most wanted fugitives in France, a man they had been tracking for many years, and who was the subject of an international arrest warrant: Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, the 58-year-old family man, suspected of having methodically murdered his wife and four children in April 2011 in Nantes.
This arrest follows an "anonymous tip" according to a source close to the investigation, in remarks collected by AFP. But this "information" came too late for the police to be able to intervene before boarding at the Paris airport. The French investigators then informed the Scottish police that the suspect was on a plane and "provided them with means of identification".
Upon his arrival in Scotland, he was checked. "A man has been arrested at Glasgow Airport and remains in custody following a European arrest warrant issued by the French authorities," confirmed a Scottish police spokeswoman in a statement. "The investigation continues to establish and confirm his identity." Beyond fingerprint analysis, a DNA comparison is underway. The man reportedly remained silent during his arrest. However, on Saturday morning, several sources called for great caution, pending formal confirmation of his identity.
The passenger, described as "really physically unrecognizable", did not resist. "If the fingerprints were not there, it would be hard to believe," says a source close to the case. If the arrested man accepts it, he could be extradited shortly, before being presented to the Nantes investigating judge in charge of investigating this voluminous case. Just a few hours after his arrest, however, it is impossible to comment on a deadline for handing over to France.
The Nantes prosecutor, Pierre Sennès, announced to AFP on Saturday that the teams of investigators from the National Fugitive Search Brigade (BNRF) and the Judicial Police (PJ) will be travelling. "They will check with the person who was arrested at Glasgow airport in Scotland to make sure it is Mr. Dupont de Ligonnès," he said. "There is a suspicion with regard to fingerprints but it is being verified, being confirmed," added Mr. Sennès, calling for "caution" while waiting for the official results.
Lawyer Stéphane Goldenstein, who defends the interests of Geneviève and Christine Dupont de Ligonnès, the suspect's mother and sister, interviewed by Presse Océan, was also cautious. "I'm not sure it's him (...). I hear the media talking about fingerprints, I don't know how they have Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès' fingerprints, I objectively don't have them in my file, it seems very surprising to me. »
According to another AFP source, the man arrested was travelling on a stolen French passport in 2014, and he would most likely have spent part of his runaway in the United Kingdom. A search, which ended at around 12:30 a.m., also took place in a house on a residential street in Limay, in the Yvelines. This address is the one on the passport, according to a source close to the file.
Dumbfounded, a neighbour of the house searched assured Europe 1 that the police were making "a monstrous mistake": "I've known this guy for thirty years, he was a friend. I went to his wedding in Scotland (...) He has nothing to do with it! ».
Eight long years have passed since the disappearance of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. When the Nantes police discovered the bodies of his wife, Agnes, and their children, Arthur, Thomas, Anne and Benoît, on April 21, 2011, the man was already far away. At the time, forensic experts established that the victims were all coldly shot and killed with two 22-long rifles to the head between April 3 and 5 after ingesting sleeping pills. The bodies were then covered with rubble, earth and quicklime and buried under the terrace of the family garden of the bourgeois residence.
Investigators quickly learned that the father, who could not be found, had bought DIY equipment and quicklime in two stores in the Nantes area twenty-four hours before the first crimes. For a few months, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès had also been training for shooting, with the 22 long rifle inherited from his late father. According to his coach, he had asked for advice on how to use a silencer. On April 4, he also phoned his wife's employer to inform him of her absence due to "illness". The school of the children Anne and Benoît was also contacted. Shortly before the crimes, he left a collective letter to his family explaining that he and his wife and children were about to leave for the United States as part of a mysterious witness protection programme.
Behind the picture of the ideal father was already emerging the portrait of a man in debt, who was struggling to make his family believe that everything was fine and left for the roads on Monday morning to return only on Friday evening, as if he was a very busy man. But the mask was about to fall off. It was only a matter of days. A bailiff was coming by. All of his small businesses had collapsed, one after the other. Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was facing the wall.
At the wheel of his Citroën C5, on this fateful day in April 2011, the man had already left Nantes for several days. The reconstruction of his escape route leaves some doubts. To reach the south of France, the suspect took his time. Before leaving his car in the car park of a Formula 1 hotel in Roquebrune-sur-Argens, in the Var, he took a convoluted route, even making stopovers for dinner in restaurants, paying with his credit card.
He will disappear at the foot of the mountains, in this small commune surrounded by rugged hills. In a last image captured by the hotel's camera, this man leaves the field with a shoulder bag. This photograph, the last one, is dated April 15, 2011.
The Nantes Judicial Police Department's criminal brigade took up the case ten days later and immediately stepped up its investigations to find his whereabouts. Calls for witnesses are issued. Everywhere. The face, or rather the faces of this man, sometimes pulled to four pins, sometimes relaxed, in a suit and tie, black turtleneck or country dancer's outfit, wearing glasses or not, is the subject of an arrest warrant.
At the Nantes central police station, the phone rings all the time. Soon, hundreds of reports were received by investigators. Some people swear they saw him in the south of France. Others are certain that the unknown encountered in Thailand was the one... Each time a new publication is published in the press, each time a new TV show or series is broadcast, new testimonies flow.
In January 2018, seven years later, two parishioners still believe they recognized this man, whose childhood was cradled by the religious, in a monastery in the Var. All alerts shall be systematically checked. "We never gave up anything. During all these years, there have always been investigators from the Nantes PJ to operate all the tracks, check everything, purge everything," says Marc Perrot, the boss of the Nantes PJ. Some strangers on these streets here and elsewhere looked like him, indeed, mistakenly. But none of them was Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès.
Over time,those close to the case came to believe that the suspect would never be found alive. It was impossible that a man like him, however organized, could have escaped all the radars. He who was penniless. He who had no known hiding place. He who had no means to hide it for such a long time. He had probably killed himself somewhere in these Var mountains, taking his secrets with him, they thought.
Others imagined that if he had had to take his own life, the suspect would have done so as soon as the murders occurred in 2011. They believed in his ability to change his appearance, to get false papers and to borrow money, a lot of money, as he had done several times in the past.
If the DNA analyses carried out in Glasgow on Friday would confirm the identity of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, many questions would still arise. Where has he been all these years? What did he do? Who helped him? Who helped him? Others will follow at trial time. In the presence of the accused, the justice system could then finally try to understand how this man, if he is guilty of the facts that is hos accused of, has pulled it off.
BBM
Oops .... fingerprints?
