For nine years, the Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès case, also known as the "Tuerie de Nantes", has remained unsolved. Suspected of having killed his wife and their four children, whose bodies were buried under the terrace of their house, the father is nowhere to be found. In October 2019, 66-year-old retiree Guy Joao was mistaken for the fugitive and arrested at Glasgow Airport, Scotland. Recently, a lead was discovered across the Atlantic thanks to the series Unsolved Mysteries, one of the episodes of which is dedicated to France's most wanted man. "People who live in Chicago heard a man who spoke French, they watched him and they had just seen the episode, explained producer Terry Dunn Meurer in an interview with Variety. They sent us a picture and he actually looked like Xavier. It was striking."
How Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès cheated his mistress
Thursday 23 July 2020, the magazine Society published a 30-page investigation into the Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès affair. An enormous file which traces the course of the fugitive before his disappearance. In February 2009, the man who was drowning in debt found Catherine, a love of youth, on the Internet. The start of an adulterous relationship that will end in legal proceedings. At the head of a company located in the Hauts-de-Seine, Catherine lends 50,000 euros to her lover, who wishes to start "the Crystal project". A partnership between la Française des jeux and hotels through which he hopes to become a millionaire. But Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès uses his mistress's check to lead the high life.
After offering a car to his wife Agnes, the father stays in hotels, each more luxurious than the last and pays off the debts he has contracted with his entourage and with credit companies. "At the end of 2009, nothing remains of Catherine's 50,000 euros", writes the magazine Society, which reports Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès had signed an acknowledgment of debt to his mistress, stipulating that the entire amount loaned was to be repaid by July 3, 2010. "I know that for you this sum that I owe you is only a drop of water, incidental and totally unnecessary", he wrote to her in June of the same year.
But Catherine doesn't want to hear anything and threatens him with legal action, "regardless of the consequences for him"."On the verge of bankruptcy and totally insolvent"As he explains to his former lover's lawyer, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès then sends a document entitled" Xavier Arrangements "to two friends."So, at the end of August-beginning of September, I will be at the foot of the wall with a final decision to be made: suicide alone or collective suicide", he confided to them. On September 17, 2010, a bailiff gave him a summons to appear before the Nantes tribunal de grande instance.
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