Serialously with Annie Elise - 260: Murdered His Family…Or Did He?! | The Dupont Murders

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

This week on Serialously with Annie Elise, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès appeared to be a devoted father and husband, but in 2011, his perfect life crumbled in the most horrific way imaginable. After systematically executing his entire family, including his wife and four children, he lived among their bodies for days before disappearing into the night. Did He murder his entire family - or was something else going on? 🔎Join Our True Crime Club & Get Exclusive Content & Perks 🔎  Join The Club: https://www.patreon.com/annieelise 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to EXTRA deep dive episodes every week on Apple! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serialously-with-annie-elise/id1519456164 Follow Annie on Socials 📸  🩷Instagram: @ _annieelise, https://www.instagram.com/_annieelise/?hl=en 💜TikTok: @_annieelise, https://www.tiktok.com/@_annieelise?lang=en 🗞️ Substack: @annieelise, https://substack.com/@annieelise 💙Facebook: @10tolife, https://www.facebook.com/10toLIFE ⭐️Sponsors ⭐️ Ro Body: Go to http://Ro.co/AE to see if you qualify. Liquid IV: Get 20% off your first order of Liquid I.V. when you go to http://Liqiudiv.com and use code AE at checkout. Mint Mobile: Shop data plans at http://Mintmobile.com/ae. Shop Annie’s Closet & Must-Haves! 👗 Poshmark: https://posh.mk/Tdbki6Ae0Rb ShopMY: https://shopmy.us/annieelise Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/10tolife?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_aipsfshop_BKN1ZMCMEZHACVFQ2R75&language=en_US Disclaimer ‣ Some links may be affiliate links, they do not cost you anything, but I make a small percentage from the sale. Thank you so much for watching and supporting me. 🎙️ Follow the podcast for FREE on all podcast platforms!  Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serialously-with-annie-elise/id1519456164 Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/6HdheEH8WeMTHoe5da34qU All Other Platforms: https://audioboom.com/channels/5100770-serialously-with-annie-elise Get Involved or Recommend the Case 💬  About Annie: https://annieelise.com/ For Business Inquiries: [e-mail] Episode Sources 🔗 BBC Conspiracy Watch Daily Mail Familicide: A Systematic Literature Review France 24 Le Figaro NBC News Oprah Daily Paris Match Radio Times Science Daily The Connexion The Independent The Province Unsolved Mysteries *Sources used to collect this information include various public news sites, interviews, court documents, FB groups dedicated to the case, and various news channel segments. When quoting statements made by others, they are strictly alleged until confirmed otherwise. Please remember my videos are my independent opinion and to always do your own research.  •••••••••••••••••• Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this video are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the creator(s). These views are subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and are not to be held in perpetuity. We make no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information on this video and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis. It is the reader’s responsibility to verify their own facts.

Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, your true crime bestie. Can I talk? Hi, it's me, Annie Elise, who apparently can't even speak. Me, your true crime bestie, Annie Elise. Wow, that was rough guys, but it's a Monday, you know? Give me a little grace. It's a Monday.

I hope you guys all had a really nice weekend. What did I do this weekend? Oh, I actually feel like I did more this weekend than I do any weekend the entire year. I had like two back-to-back events on Saturday. Was it Saturday? Yeah, Saturday. I had a baby shower and then I had an event for my son's school fundraising event. And then I decided to bed rot all day on Sunday. And I finished Paradise, which if you guys haven't watched that on Hulu, oh my God.

It is so good. I think I binged it in like two days. And then what was it? I don't remember if it was the second to last episode. I think it was where if you have watched it, you know what I'm talking about, but it like is recounting the day that everything went down. I think that's even the title of the episode it's called The Day. I had such anxiety and nervous energy I thought it was real. I literally thought I was in the movie

Armageddon and that the world was ending and I thought it was real. It's such a good show. I'm so sad there's only one season because now I'm like waiting for season two and it's probably not going to come out for like two years. And then what else did I binge? I'm caught sad there's only one season because now I'm like waiting for season two and it's probably not gonna come out for like two years And then what else did I binge? I'm caught up with severance, which is also so freakin good And well by the time this airs, I guess the season finale will be out. So oh God, it's such a good show. Sorry. I probably just blew your eardrum out and then of course I had to watch White Lotus Piper, Piper Buddhism, you know, all of that stuff. So if you're like, Annie, just shut the hell up, please.

Sorry. TV's my life, okay? TV's my life. All right, so today's case, the one I wanted to talk to you about, this one is really interesting. I haven't heard a lot of people talk about it before, but I did see it on, I think it was

Unsolved Mysteries, which that's always a good show, right? But they didn't really do a lot of in-depth deep dive nitty-gritty details that you know I like live and die by, so I had to go a little bit further. I wanted to just research it because it's a really complex case. It's like hidden family secrets with a splash of deceit. I don't wanna say family annihilator, but I just wanted, let me break it all down for you and then you can be the judge. And, you know, I'm gonna stop talking.

On April 21st of 2011, five members of the DuPont DeLigonis family were found buried under the patio of the family home in Nantes. DePont DeLigonese had gone to great lengths to disguise his appearance, even undergoing cosmetic surgery. One day in October of 2011,

a man named Xavier Dupont de Leonis called the private school where his two young children went. And I should say his two youngest children, because his oldest son Arthur was 21 years old and away in college. His next oldest, Tomah, was also 18 years old and at a different college. So Xavier didn't call either one of their schools just for the youngest kids. And these two kids were 16-year-old Ann and 13-year-old Benoit. And he was calling the school to notify them that he just got a new job

in Australia. Which, if you can tell by all of these names and how I'm pronouncing them, Tomah, Xavier, these very fancy names, which I'm gonna honestly do my best not to butcher, they were from France, not from Australia. They were from a town in France called Nata, so this was going to be a big move. So he tells the school that his kids

are gonna be transferring to this school in Australia. And he also was asking the school not to bill him for the following month's tuition. But mainly the point of the call was just to say, hey, don't worry about them. They're going to stop showing up for class. Don't be alarmed. It's because we're moving. Please don't bill me. That's the situation.

He was also calling some of their friends, some of their neighbors all around this same time telling them not to worry if they didn't see his wife Anya surround either. However, he didn't tell them the same story that he told the school. It was kind of similar. He said that he and the whole rest of his family were moving out of the country and nobody should really worry too much if they stopped hearing from all of them. But he also told his friends a whole different story with like a big secret layer on top of it He told them that he was actually a secret agent working for the American government

Specifically, he said he worked for the DEA Which is the drug enforcement agency and he said that the reason that he and his family were about to leave town Was because they had to now go on the run, all because his secret identity had been exposed. Which I think we can all agree right now, okay, that's a pretty wild claim. Maybe it's true, but I've also seen the movie The Americans. Maybe it's not true, and I know that's a whole different plot, but I need it, or it's a show, not a movie, but you get what I'm saying. I don't know if anybody actually believed this story of his. It felt a little outlandish, but the point is that Xavier was telling basically everybody he knew at that point that he was a secret agent and they were going on the run,

which I'm just gonna throw it out there too. If you're a secret agent and your identity has been exposed, so much so that you and your family are in danger and you have to go on the run to another country, maybe don't expose your identity further by telling everybody you know that you're a secret agent. Right? Like, ugh. That feels like step one, but what do I know? I'm not a secret agent, but FBI, if you're listening, I would love to be, so slide into my DMs.

So anyway, he was basically telling everyone, you know, before too long, you're going to stop seeing me and my family around. And sure enough, not long after that, people stopped hearing from Xavier and the others. But even though Xavier had been calling everybody and saying that this was normal and saying this is what they were to expect, some of his neighbors, not all of them, some of them who lived near his house, thought that something was wrong here. Something didn't really add up. See, the city that they lived in in France, it's a pretty big city. It's right on France's western coast. And even though the city was very big and very urban, it was still considered pretty safe. And it was the sort of place where

you would want to go if you wanted to, say, go to a museum or see a play, something with a lot of culture. It's also pretty high income and, I don't want to say like bougie, but like a little bit ritzy. And that was especially true in the exact neighborhood where Xavier and his family lived. Again, we're talking about a very wealthy street here. But it was also the sort of place where everybody knows one another, everybody knows their neighbor's business. And beginning around Monday, April 11th, 2011, the other people on the block were noticing that things were off. First of all, nobody was coming in and out of the house, not even around 2pm, when the kids should have been done with school and when Xavier and Agnès should have been out and about, running errands, handling their business. In fact, some people even saw a note that was stuck on the door.

Now this note, it was in French, and it was left there for the mail carrier. It had very specific instructions telling them to stop dropping off the mail because nobody lived at that house anymore. Which that's kind of weird, right? I mean you just uproot and leave? Which maybe, maybe you didn't have time to file the mail forwarding, maybe you just had to leave a note and you were in a hurry because again your life was in jeopardy. But there was another thing that really upset the neighbors. It was the windows. Because the family was all about natural sunlight, keeping everything open, bright, airy. They never closed their blinds.

They never closed their shutters either. Not even when they went out on vacation. It was always open. Which again, it also kind of tells you a little bit about how safe this neighborhood truly was. Zavie and his family weren't worried about people walking by, saying that the house was empty, maybe trying to rob them, breaking in, something like that.

It was generally safe. But the key point is that it was so weird in this situation, on this day, because now they were seeing the house all boarded up. And needless to say, everybody who knew the family was getting pretty nervous. Even with Xavier telling everybody that he was moving out of the country, and he was going to be on the run, and that that he was gonna have no time to really pack up. He was just gonna have to leave with no notice without saying goodbye. They didn't sell the house. They didn't hire movers to pack their things. It was just very quick and kind of leaving quickly in the night.

But even knowing that that's what they were told they should expect, they still felt nervous. They still were worried about things, especially seeing it boarded up. Not nervous enough to call the police immediately because again, Zavia had given them a little bit of warning, but they did end up calling the police two days later. So some of these officers, after they were called, then came to investigate on Wednesday, April 13th. Now at this point, it was just a wellness check, right? They just wanted to make sure that everything was safe, everything was good. So they go up to the front door and they saw all of the same things that these neighbors had seen. There was that note on the door in French about not delivering any mail any longer.

The shutters and blinds were all closed. They started knocking. Nobody came to the door. But the officials still wanted to get a look inside. They wanted to make sure that everything was okay, that there wasn't some sort of foul play going on. So they ended up calling a locksmith who came and helped them gain entry. And once they got into the house, everything looked pretty normal. Nothing of value was missing. The beds had been stripped of the sheets and the blankets, which was a little bit odd, but maybe it's because they did take their bedding with them. Other than that that though, everything was very clean, very neat, very organized. There were definitely absolutely no signs of any struggle. There was no blood, no bodies, no other evidence that you would expect to see if the family was in some kind of trouble, right? Really, the only thing that was weird and that stood out was just how normal

this house looked, if that makes sense. Because again, if everyone had just uprooted, moved out of the country, you would think that they would have taken some things with them, clothing, jewelry, books, laptops, things like that. But literally every single thing was exactly where you would expect it, almost like they had all gone out to dinner rather than just moved out of the country and had been missing for two days at this point.

But after searching the whole house and finding nothing of concern, the investigators just decided that the family probably went on this spur of the moment, last minute vacation, or that there wasn't anything foul play or worrisome here. So they just left. They didn't open a missing persons case on any single one of them.

They didn't investigate further. It was just case closed. But as you can imagine, this is not what the neighbors wanted to hear. Because the thing is, these people were people who knew Xavier, who knew his wife, knew his family and the kids. They knew what kind of people they were.

And yes, some people are very spontaneous. I get that. They'll say things like, hey, let's drop everything. Let's go on this vacation. Let's do this. Then of course, there's people like me who are a little bit more anal,

for lack of a better word, where I need to plan things out. I don't want my kids missing school. I wanna plan the vacation out. I wanna know what we're doing, all of that. And Xavier and his family were very much like that, very much in that second bucket of people. It would have been completely out of character for them to just vanish like that,

which I don't blame the police for not knowing that, but the other people on their street, they did know that. So these neighbors kept calling the investigators. They kept saying, hey, you've really got to look into this. It is not normal. So it took two more days of hassling the detectives. And then finally they went back to the house for another wellness check on April 15th.

And this time, they saw pretty much the exact same evidence that they had seen that first time around. The detectives were like, look, nobody's here. Nothing of value is missing. There's no signs of forced entry, no signs of a struggle. There's no need to investigate further. So again, they left without opening up any kind of case file, which I don't really know what you do in that point. If there's no sign of anybody, you can't get a hold of them, but there's no foul play. Like, do you just continue to beat a dead horse

and investigate nothing? I think that's kind of what you would have to do. You would have to just stop and otherwise you're wasting resources on something that doesn't really look like there's a lead into anything or that anything's a foot, right? Well, this time around, his wife's family was also getting into the mix. They were also calling the police to complain because they hadn't heard from her or the kids in weeks. And if they were really on a vacation or something like that, then they would have called. They would have posted on Facebook. They would have done something. They knew something wasn't right here. But anyway, it still took three more days

of the neighbor's calling and his wife's relative's calling and every single person being like, seriously, this is a problem, something is going on. So then finally, on April 18th, the police did a third search. This time around though, still they didn't find anything. But instead of shrugging their shoulders and just calling it a day this go around, they decided, you know what, let's't find anything. But instead of shrugging their shoulders and just calling it a day this go-around, they

decided, you know what, let's sleep on it. Let's come back, let's pick up this search again early in the morning, and let's see if a set of fresh eyes and rested eyes will have a new take. So that's what they did on the 19th. And then they did the same thing on the 20th. And again on the 21st. Which I wish that I was exaggerating here guys, but the investigators scoured this house top to bottom every single day for four days in a row, not

counting the other two wellness checks from before that they did. They really wanted to just make sure that they were being thorough. And what's interesting is that on April 21st, they did notice something that they had missed on every single one of those earlier wellness checks. See, the backyard had either a patio or a deck, and there was also a garden nearby. Now, it's hard to say for sure what the setup was because most of the sources are translations

of news articles that were in French, and I don't speak French, so it's really hard to know if Google Translate is getting all of the little details right. But based on what I've read, my best guess is that there was this type of elevated patio or porch, maybe raised up somehow, and then this garden was sort of underneath it or below it. And I'm assuming that only because a bunch of sources say that the police made this discovery

in a garden, but then other sources say that it was underneath the porch, so I think it must be layered or stacked in some sort of way. My speculation is that both of these claims fit somehow. So anyway, the police were in this garden slash porch area slash patio area, and they saw something lying in the dirt right there off to the side, and it was a human leg. So right away they started digging through the dirt and digging around this leg, trying to see what's going on underneath it, right? And right there where they started digging,

they discovered that there were bodies buried in this backyard, multiple bodies. It was basically a large grave that had multiple bodies inside of it. One was a middle-aged woman who was the right size and age that appeared to be his wife. The other remains belonged to two boys who were either in their late teens or their early 20s. And then there was one girl in her teens. So the odds with this seemed to be very good that

they were three out of four of Xavier's children here in this grave, this makeshift grave in the backyard. The girl had to be 16-year-old Anne, and the boys were eventually determined to be 12-year-old Benoit and 21-year-old Arthur. There were also two dogs in this same mass grave. These were the family pets. So all of them, including the dogs, had visible bullet wounds. The police could tell how they all died without even needing to order an autopsy. And they were also all still wearing pajamas,

almost like they had been killed in their sleep. Each one was wrapped in plastic and in bedsheets, those same bedsheets that had been missing from all of the bedrooms during those first wellness checks. Remember when I mentioned that the beds were stripped? That's what they were wrapped in. They were also buried with these little religious objects. I'm talking wooden crosses, rosary beads, candles,

statues of the Virgin Mary, like all sorts of little religious trinkets. Now, clearly this wasn't a formal religious burial, not at all. I mean, it was nothing where a priest was involved, nothing where there was anything formal, not at all. But it does seem like whoever buried these people in this yard wanted to have some sort of religious burial,

almost give these people all of the things that they needed so that they could get to heaven and be right with God, something like that. The question, of course, that everybody was wondering in this moment was who would do this? Who would wanna hurt the entire family? Well, there were two bodies that were still missing from this makeshift grave from this garden under the patio. And one of them was the second oldest son,

18-year-old Tomah. However, it didn't take the police very long to figure out what had happened to Tomah or for them to realize that he really wasn't the one responsible here for this brutal murder, because he was also shot, wrapped in sheets and plastic and then buried out back. It just took longer for them to find him because, for some reason or another, he wasn't buried with the rest of his family. He was in his own separate grave, still in that garden area, still in that patio kind of under the porch, but completely separated from his family. Now with this discovery, it was pretty clear.

They had not all just been recently buried, not like say in the past few hours or even few days. They had been dead for a while. In fact, police believed they had been dead for every single one of those wellness checks, all six of those that happened earlier. The police just had completely missed this mass gravesite that was, I mean, in reality, right under their noses. But now they were starting to get answers.

They knew that the family had been killed and they also knew that there was one person missing, one person who, to all appearances, had not been murdered. And that was the father, Xavier. ["Dreams of a New World"] And that was the father, Xavier. We're gonna take a quick break in today's episode to hear from our first sponsor, Row Body. Now summer is obviously approaching, and even if it's not summer, if you're ever feeling like you're thinking about getting serious with your weight loss goals, I want you to

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Go to roe.co.ca for boxed warning and full safety information about GLP-1 medications. Half the list price when compared to auto injector pens and when paying cash without applying insurance or savings cards. So with the state of the backyard the way that it was, it was pretty clear to the officers right off the bat that this was a case of family annihilation. That more than likely, Xavier decided to wipe out his entire family in one clean swoop, shooting all of them, including the family dogs. And I will say, statistically speaking, when cases like this happen, it is pretty common for

the murderer to take their own life afterward. Not in every case. I mean we saw with Chris Watts, we've seen with certain people that that's not the case, but we've also seen with Susan Powell's husband or a loser murderer, not convicted, but I think he obviously killed her. He did that when he took his son's lives, took his own. Like there's a lot of different research studies out there about this and the results really can vary but it does seem like statistically speaking the killer taking their own life does happen around 50% of the time. But what's interesting about that is that only is the successful quote because it's said that family annihilators at least attempt to take their own life 81% of the time which that's a pretty big

discrepancy, right? So maybe they try, they fail, then they chicken out, and then they don't do it, which it's like, I wish you would have chickened out before you wiped out your whole family, but I just wanted to like kind of give you some ideas of what those numbers are so that you can understand the thought process of this point from the investigation team is, is he still alive? Could he be on the run? Because, again, in cases like this, oftentimes they do take their own life. Now, the problem this time with this case was that there was no evidence that Xavier had died by his own hand or that he was even dead at all. Clearly, his body wasn't anywhere in the house. So maybe this was not just a typical

family annihilator situation. Maybe there was something more to it. So at this point, it was really hard to say anything for sure. But I do think that it's helpful to look back at Xavier's history to kind of get a sense of his personality, kind of get a sense of what makes him tick, see if maybe he did have motive or a profile that fits with your standard family annihilator. Which to start, it's really important to know that Xavier was a member of the nobility. He was literally a count. And I think it's worth digging into that a little bit because I think it's important to this whole story as a total. Because I'll be honest, when I first saw that he was a count, I really had no idea what that meant. I knew that it was in some

sort of ranking in the royals, but I didn't really know the gravity of what it meant. The only thing I've heard is Countess Luanne on Housewives. So let me just kind of break it down really quickly. In France, basically if you're somebody from a noble family, then it's considered beneath you if you were to work, if you were to have a regular job, which is kind of a problem for a few reasons. I mean, first of all, it's like, hello, you're not above anybody else. You need to work.

But then also, where does the income come from? Unless you just have endless streams of generational wealth, how is everybody just in the family who's considered royal allowed to just sit on their butt the whole time? I don't think it works the way it works with the actual royal family where, and again, I'm probably gonna butcher this,

but like how taxes in America would then pay for that, not like that we pay. I'm gonna just stop talking. I was just trying to make a similarity of how they earn income and they earn income from a variety of ways. But anyway, my point is that if you come from a noble family, it's like looked down upon you to have a regular job.

And what I did find that I thought was kind of bizarre during my research is that there are literally nonprofits out there that exist where they just take these donations and then they give that money away to these rich noble people. Also that they can keep living in luxury without having to earn any of it, which sounds totally insane.

I mean, I would love to be a rich noble person, but it sounds totally insane. But this is a big part of how Xavier was raised. He literally thought that work was beneath him. It was actually shameful or embarrassing for him to try and go get a real job. And on top of that, his family was also very religious. They went to mass all the time. They never missed it. And as soon as Xavier was old enough, he was an altar boy. He also had to wake up at 6 a.m. every single morning so that he could squeeze in morning mass before he went to school.

Which there's nothing wrong with being super religious or going to church a lot, certainly not. But his family took things to the extreme. I mean, their ideas about religion were actually very fringy and very, I don't wanna say extremist, but right in that neighborhood. Because everybody thought that the second coming of Christ was going to come at any second. I don't think to the degree that maybe Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell thought,

where remember they thought it was like June 2020 or something like that, but they definitely thought that it was approaching quickly. Then when Xavier's sister was growing up, she was actually convinced at one point that it was approaching quickly. Then when Xavier's sister was growing up, she was actually convinced at one point that she was pregnant with the devil. Like she was going to give birth and that the baby coming out of her was going to be Satan and that she was gonna have to play this whole major role in the apocalypse.

I mean, I'm not, I know it's not relevant to the story, but I feel like I needed to just toss that in there as like a little antidote because it's insane. And it just kind of goes to show and a little antidote because it's insane and it just kind of goes to show and give you more insight into Xavier's upbringing and his family. How they thought that they were these chosen special people, these very religious people, and also were used to money and not working and a lot of privilege, religious privilege and actually just financial privilege. So because of the way that he was raised, Xavier thought that he didn't need to work. He came from this important family where he was entitled to all of this luxury,

a good life just because of who he was. He was the son of a count and someday he would be a count himself and he was going to have a great life. That is of course if he made it to that point because remember any day now Jesus might come back and sweep him off to heaven and I'm not saying that to be light-hearted or sarcastic, that that is what he truly believed. But that didn't happen, none of it. He didn't go to heaven in the apocalypse. He didn't have an easy life in the lap of luxury either. Instead, in 1979, Xavier's father just up and walked out

on his entire family. Xavier was only 18 years old and his dad was kind of like, look, I don't want to raise you anymore. I don't want to be your mother's husband anymore. So for those reasons, I'm out. And then he took off to Africa. And this meant that even though he was, yes, technically an adult, but I will say barely an adult himself, Xavier was now the man of the house. And the reason I say that is because his family was very big on traditional old fashioned ideas like that, like having the man of the house. So Xavier being the man of the house was a very big deal.

It was something that he took very seriously. So around this time, he also gave himself a new nickname, which is gonna make me cringe to say it and gives me the ick, but his new nickname for himself was the King. As in, he was literally going to his mom and his sisters saying he would take care of them, he would provide for them, but in exchange everybody had to agree that he was in charge. Xavier made the rules. Xavier told everyone else what they could and could not do. Just a complete control freak. And you know, if somebody's a king, what do they need alongside them? A queen, right? So it was some time in the late 70s or early 80s and he started dating Agnes.

Now she was only a year or two younger than him, so they were around 17 and 18, maybe 19 years old, but if you're imagining these hormonal teenagers like sneaking off to hook up, you got it all wrong because one of the things that Xavier really liked about her was that she was very devout. Like him, she had grown up Catholic. She believed in God. She also believed the second coming of Jesus, all of the things that he cared about as well. She also had very traditional values, especially when it came to women submitting to men. And that was very important to Xavier because remember, he liked being in charge. He liked having this girlfriend that he could boss around who wouldn't stand up to him,

where he would just be the one who ran the show. Which I'm sure a lot of you are starting to see the red flags in this, right? I mean, his need for control, his need to dominate, his privilege, all of these things. So they dated for about 10 years, and I don't know the exact date for when they started dating or when they exactly broke up, but I do know that around 1989 or 1990, Xavier decided that he now wanted to be single. He wanted to explore the world as a single guy, a single king, which cringe. And from the sounds of it, it sounds more like he just wanted the freedom to be able to hook up with whoever he wanted to all these different countries that he

would go and visit. So he basically told Agnes like, hey, see you later, and I'm out, I don't want to be with you anymore, and he took off to the United States. Which that's got to be a little bit of a culture shock, because Xavier had spent his whole life thinking that he was going to be the future Count, that he was special and better than everybody else. Then he went to the United States, this country that does not have nobility, where being born with a certain name doesn't really entitle you to any special respect. I mean, at least not officially, but we know nepotism is like in full force here, right? So anyway, while he was in the States, he sort of reevaluated his beliefs.

He met some different businessmen who had made fortunes by actually working, and it started to get Xavier thinking that maybe he should get a job after all. But he wasn't gonna get a job at like your local restaurant or fast food chain, nothing like that, nothing with like heavy duty, manual labor. He wanted more of a upscale job. He wanted to own his own company. He wanted to dabble in investing,

something that, you know, something like that where he's not really getting his hands dirty, but he's still help his ego enough to tell people he has his own company or his own job. So then Xavier came back to France and he had this brand new perspective and a whole new way of seeing himself. He was now at this point too, ready to settle down.

He was ready to marry Agnes and get a job. So imagine his shock when he has this whole plan ready to go, he's figured out his whole life and so he calls Anya, says he wants to be with her again, but he finds out that she's pregnant and the baby isn't his. Because as it turns out, he wasn't the only one who was sleeping around and hanging out with people

during their time apart. And I'll be honest, I'm not really sure who the father was. I don't know if it was a one night stand, if it was somebody that she briefly dated, then broke up with, but the point now was that the father was out of the picture, and she was also just a couple of months away from being a single mom. But I have to say that in and of itself was incredibly taboo, especially among the French nobility. Because remember, this was still like 1989, 1990.

So having a baby while she wasn't married was the sort of thing that could have ruined her reputation forever. Except Xavier didn't wanna see that happen to her. He loved her and he felt like she deserved to have a happy life. He still wanted to be with her. So they got back together.

And that's when baby Arthur was born. Baby Arthur was born in 1990. And for two years, they continued dating. He acted like a stepfather. And then after those two years the two of them got married. And after that they went on to have three more children together. Tomah, Anne, and Benoit. So by 1995 Xavier had all the things that he felt he was supposed to have. The wife, the kids. Heck, he even got his father back because that year his dad decided he had enough living this

bachelor type life in Africa. He came back to France and he tried to restart his relationship with Xavier. Now keep in mind his dad had been out of the picture since he was 18 years old and now he was 33 years old. So he had spent almost half of his life without any type of father figure at all. Which you might expect him to at that point be like, uh, no dad, beat it. Like, it's too little too late. You blew it. But that's not what he did because like I said, he was traditional in a lot of ways. He still wanted that nuclear family, that whole family, his relationship with his father. So he welcomed him back with open arms. And he even asked his dad to help him with some spiritual guidance because for whatever reason right around this time Xavier was starting to deal with some doubts for the first time he ever really had in his entire life.

And the doubts I'm talking about is at this point he was really starting to question things like are God, Jesus, heaven, do they really even exist? Are they real? Have I been taught something fictional my whole life? Just really in crisis trying to make heads or tails of it. And it's always tough to reevaluate your beliefs, right? And Xavier was really struggling, so he probably appreciated having his dad around to help him through it. But it's also worth noting that in addition to this spiritual midlife crisis that he was undergoing, he was also having an affair at this point. And this caused a lot of strain in his marriage.

It was not a good situation. And there was one other really big problem in his life, and it's one that I hinted at earlier. See, Xavier still didn't think that he needed to work to earn a paycheck, but it was of course super important to him to keep up appearances. He wanted to still look super flashy, super wealthy and rich. And ever since that trip to the United States, he had actually gotten a few jobs here and there, but they were all high-profile white-collar jobs, the sort of jobs that he thought he

was entitled to because of his family name. But they were also jobs that he wasn't even remotely qualified to do, because Xavier was not willing to start from the bottom and work his way up, just learning as he went. He wanted success to be handed to him right away. So by 1995, he was a failed salesman, a failed advertiser, he was bringing in an income of about 4,000 euros a year, which if you adjust that for inflation and convert it to US dollars, that's about an annual salary of $7,500 per year. And in the meantime, he was still buying expensive cars, designer clothing, he sent his kids to a private school, he rented a big fancy house in the city. So even though he was only making 4,000 euro a year,

he was spending 10,000 euro every single month. And again, in today's dollars, that's about $19,000 a month. I mean, I think we can all agree the math for sure doesn't math, right? But from the sounds of things, he wasn't really worried about any of it. He wasn't thinking about how he was gonna have to pay off these debts in the future. He was just spending, just living irresponsibly,

just going from moment to moment. And from what I can tell, I think part of it was also that he did not think that he would have any trouble paying it off when the time came because his father's health was getting worse by the day. It's not like he wanted his father dead or anything like that, but I think he knew that once his dad passed,

that he would inherit the title of count and he would also inherit all of the family's wealth. So he just needed to hang on a little longer and then all of his money problems would go away. And maybe this is why he allowed his dad back into his life with open arms. Maybe it wasn't just the traditional values and wanting his dad to be there. Maybe it was because he knew that with his dad there, he would be able to kind of just step into his shoes whenever his dad got old enough and passed away. But it took his dad a while to finally pass away. And during that time,

Xavier just went deeper and deeper into debt. At one point, he even borrowed 50,000 euros from his mistress. Which today, that's like borrowing 95 grand from your mistress. That's crazy. Which not only was this woman sleeping with a married man, but she was giving him money,

giving him more money than people make in a year, which I don't know how he had her under that spell. Maybe he was promising that she would be the Countess one day, that he was going to of course have like 20 times that amount of money and he would give it back to her. I don't know, but sounds a little short-sighted if you're asking me. But even though that was a lot of money, all of that cash still wasn't enough. He and his wife had to borrow even more money from some of their relatives, all just to try and keep their head above water. And this was not okay for Agnes. She hated having to beg her family for money, especially when it wasn't even necessary. Xavier could have just kept to a more

modest budget. He could have limited the spending, moved to a smaller apartment, sold some of his cars, bought cheaper clothing, but instead he was trying to keep up the appearance of being this flashy, rich, wealthy guy. Meanwhile, Xi was completely humiliated because they were living beyond their means. So Xi and Xavier started fighting, and we know that one of the number one arguments and cause of divorce and spouses is money, right? And that is what they started fighting about all the time. Money. But he kept saying the same thing to her, just hold on a little longer, I'll be count soon, we'll get a huge inheritance payment, just it'll

come any day now, just hang tight, bear with me. And sure enough, on January 20th 2011, his father did end up passing away. And Xavier had to spend the next 11 days notifying friends, family members, close family members, before he then finally publicly announced his father's death that February. Now, of course, anytime you lose a family member,

you need time to grieve, you need time to process it, you need to deal with all of your emotions. But on top of all of that, Xavier also had to go through his father's will. He had to go through his bank accounts, he had to get all of the logistics settled. Because remember, one of his main goals, if not his only goal, arguably, was that he needed that inheritance. So imagine his shock when he went through all of his father's stuff, all the bank accounts, all of the wills, all the documents, everything, and he realized his family was broke. Today's episode is sponsored by Liquid IV. Now, summer is finally around the corner, and me and my husband have already started planning beach days, long walks with the kids, a few family outings, but with all that time in the sun I feel like

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And on top of that, beginning right after his father's death, Xavier got into the habit of going down to the local shooting range and then practicing with this gun. And it didn't take very long for him to get really good at it. That's how often he went. Sometimes he even took his sons with him. So he would go back and forth to the shooting range. And on at least one occasion, he even asked the shooting instructor, hey, what about if I tried to shoot with a silencer? Where could I get a silencer? How would that work? So the instructor shared some information.

I don't know exactly how they answered. But then he went out, bought a silencer, and started practicing with that at the range. And during the last week of March 2011, he visited this range four different times. Four times in one week. And around this time, he was also making very disturbing comments to his family. At one point, he even said to his wife, Agnes, quote, All of us dying in a mass suicide would not be the worst thing for us. I'm sorry, who talks like that? What do you mean that wouldn't be the worst thing? That would quite literally be the worst thing. Now, I understand his wife is dead, so you might be

wondering, okay, how do we even know that he said that to her? But it's because she went online with this information. She went to a message board asking these strangers on the internet for advice, saying, hey, my husband's been saying this to me, what do I do? Now sadly, because of the outcome and what happened, she never really got the advice that she needed. Now we don't know the exact date of when his family was murdered. We can only make an educated guess based on when they were last seen alive and how badly decomposed their bodies were when they were found, but based on what we do know, it sounds like Xavier's four final visits to that shooting range all happened right before the murders. On April 3rd, everybody was still alive, and we know that because a bunch of them went

to Sunday mass together. Meanwhile, Xavier stayed home. His two oldest sons, Tomas and Arthur, were away at college, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, but Agnes and the younger kids, Anne and Benoit, were all at church. People saw them. Afterward, the three of them met up with Xavier and they all went out for pizza. Sometime during the day, Arthur and Tomas came over as well, and the whole family was together until about 5pm.

Then, Xavier went and met up with a friend to go run some errands. Tomas also had some other commitments that evening, so he told everybody goodbye, he left and he went back to campus. Xavier got home within the next hour and he went out to dinner with everybody except Tomas, who was already gone by that point heading back to campus.

And later, witnesses from that restaurant said that, the family just seemed unusually happy. They were laughing, they were drinking, they were having a great time. They even spent a few hours at this restaurant. They didn't get home until like 10 p.m. And then, at around 10.30 p.m., Xavier called his sister Christine. Now, once again, he sounded like he was in a really good mood. I mean, nothing about this conversation set off any sort of alarm bells for Christine. But there was one thing that stood out to her as odd,

not a red flag, just a little bit off. Because when it was time to hang up, Xavier said that he had to go put his children to bed. But his youngest son, Benoit, was 13 years old and Anne was 16 years old. Arthur was a grown adult, 21 years old, so none of them were little kids or little enough to need to be put to bed, right?

So in Christine's mind, she was like, okay, that kinda sounds weird. She didn't think that her brother was actually literally putting his teenage and adult children to sleep, but she thought, okay, maybe he's just gonna be sweet with them, say goodnight to them, and that's what he means. So it stood out a little bit, but not any way to make anything of it. So she just said goodnight and hung up and didn't think twice about it.

But as for what happened after all of that, it's really anybody's guess. We know that sometime between that night, the third and the 21st, when the bodies were found, that someone shot each member of the family twice in the head, ultimately killing them. They also were able to find out that Anyas slept with a special sleep apnea machine, something that helped her breathe during her sleep, and the machine was abruptly shut off at 3 a.m. on the morning of the 4th. She also usually took sleeping pills to help her sleep, but when her autopsy came back and the talks report, it didn't show that there were any drugs in her system. However, the four children had all been dosed

with her prescription, with their mother's sleeping pills. So based on all of that, the police had a rough theory about how things played out that night. Their theory was that Xavier must have drugged Arthur, Benoit, and Anne, which I don't know why he would give the pills to his kids and not his wife, especially because she's the one who usually took them. But again, that's what the autopsy said. So they believe that he drugged all of his children. Then once everybody was asleep in their beds,

he allegedly walked through the house and shot them one by one. They think that he probably started with Agnes because she was the one who was sober enough and not under the sleeping pills enough to where she would wake up if she heard the gunshots. So they think that he probably shot her around 3 a.m., which is right when that sleep machine was turned off. Then they think that he went next and murdered his two sons and his daughter.

By the next morning, only two family members were still alive, Xavier and Tomas, which Tomas remember was safe and sound back on campus. And he was still alive that evening, the night of the fourth, because in fact, that's when his father called him and said he had to see him in person, he had to get to him right away. Supposedly, according to Xavier, his wife and Tomas' mother had been in a terrible bicycle accident. She was in the hospital, so Tomas needed to leave school right away. And of course, Tomas wanted to be there for his mom,

but instead of rushing back to the city, rushing to the hospital, or rushing to the family's home, he ended up meeting up with his dad somewhere that was close to campus. They actually went out to dinner together at a very expensive restaurant. And I wish that I knew more about what Tomas and Xavier said to each other during that dinner. Because I would have to imagine that Tomas was probably very worried about his mom. He probably wanted to get to the hospital and make sure that she was okay. And I can't imagine what Xavier could have said or done to convince him that, you know, eating this fancy meal, this fancy restaurant was a better move than going and visiting the mom, but for whatever reason, that's what they did. But according to the waiters at the restaurant,

they spent almost the entire dinner in this very, very tense silence. Every time someone would come over and check on them to see if they were ready to order, to get something new, to refill their drink, they'd be very polite, very proper, but it seemed like the two of them just wanted nothing to do with one another. Meanwhile, his dad ordered a very expensive meal and a bottle of wine. Tomah ordered something cheaper and he ordered a tomato juice. When the waiters asked if he wanted anything else, Tomah just said no, he wasn't feeling well. So I don't know if maybe in that moment he knew that something wasn't right and his gut was telling him something, but there was definitely some sort of friction at that restaurant, which I would love to know what was going on.

We also know that Tomah was still alive the following day, the day of the fifth, because he was seen out and about. He was running errands. He was around town near campus, but unfortunately, that was the last time that he was ever seen. Now your guess is as good as mine as to how he ended up back in the family city, in the family home, drugged, shot in the head, and then buried in the same garden as the rest of his family. I don't know how that happened. We know that his dad tried to lure him once with this fictitious accident. So was he, did he lure him there again under false pretenses? And obviously he never went and saw his mom in the hospital, but then was running errands around campus. So did his father admit to lying about the accident?

And is that why the dinner was tense? There's a lot of uncertainty here, and I'm interested to hear your perspectives on this. But we do know that he eventually was lured back to the house or somewhere where he met up with his dad. And that explains why he was in a separate grave from the rest of his family, because he was killed two days or more later than they were. And then once Thomas was dead, Xavier stayed in that house for another week. He was out running errands, his neighbors all saw him coming and going, which now after

the investigation we know what those errands were. He was buying shovels, he was buying other digging equipment, lime, cement, all the things to try and conceal bodies. I mean, clearly he was stocking up on all of the tools that he would need if he was gonna try and get away with murder, but his neighbors didn't really know what he was up to. They didn't know that something was disgusting and sinister

that was going on in his backyard. All they knew for sure was that he was home and he seemed fine. There were no signs that anything was wrong. I mean, not at first. They just assumed he was up to his usual business. And that's why it ended up taking people multiple days to even call the police, to even be worried enough to call the police. And this is in spite of him telling everybody all of those stories about being this undercover DEA agent who had to go on the run. And the other really interesting detail that I found out was he was also sending threatening emails to his mistress. Not actually threatening to kill her, but saying things like, quote,

she would live in hell for the next 30 years. Which, I don't know how he's going to make her do that. If he's meaning like, you know, not real hell, but maybe a version of hell, I don't know how he's going to make her do that if he's meaning like, you know, not real hell, but maybe a version of hell. I don't really know, but for whatever reason it freaked her out enough that she called the police and she reported him for threatening her. But the police didn't really do anything with this. So this creep, this guy just spent a week, give or take, living with the dead bodies of his family. Out, running errands, going to bed every night, that same bed where he allegedly shot his wife to death. He would eat breakfast, lunch, dinner at the kitchen table, the same table where his children used to eat meals

with them as a family, all while his wife and kids were rotting in his backyard. What a sociopath. Now the last time that he was ever seen in his home was on April 10th, because on that he was ever seen in his home was on April 10th because on that day he got in his car, he drove away, and he left the house completely boarded up, locked up, and shut down behind him. Remember that's also when he called the school saying we're moving to Australia, don't bother checking in, don't worry that the kids are going to just stop showing up. So again,

clearly Xavier did not take his own life when he reportedly killed the rest of his family. He was just going about his business, living his life, acting like he didn't care about anything. I mean, certainly he didn't care that his wife and his children were dead. And I really wish that the police had investigated just a little bit earlier in all this, because maybe they could have caught him while he was still living in that house, when he was making those cover stories about moving to Australia or being a secret agent. But by the time anybody actually thought to search the house even for the first time, he was long gone. But I've got to say, for a guy who was on the run, Xavier really was not doing a very good job of staying hidden. He was using his credit card to

buy meals, he was using his card to book hotels, he was traveling all across France leaving a literal digital paper trail, and when he would check into these hotels he also used his real name. I mean he was not covering his tracks at all. He also made withdrawals from the bank, I mean multiple times too, pulling cash out, pulling money out. So based on all that information, we know exactly where he went after he left his home on April 10th. And from the sounds of things, it was almost like he was replaying his life in reverse, going to all of these different places that had been so important to him before the murders. He started by visiting college campuses where Arthur and Tomah had been in school.

He drove to an old house where he used to live with his wife years ago. He even stopped at places that he and his wife had thought about living in but never pulled the trigger to live in. And that was probably a poor use. I shouldn't have said pull the trigger, but you know what I mean. It's just the expression. Also at one point in his life he had enlisted in the military and he ended up changing his mind right away and he quit. But now he went and visited that base where he would have been stationed if he did stay with the military. So it's almost like he was going to all these nostalgic places and these like key moments of his life, even key moments that never materialized. So he started out this road trip staying in all

these fancy super expensive hotels living this life of wealth and luxury. But then by April 14th, the cash was gone. He ran out. And so that's when he decided he had no other option but to check in to a budget hotel. Now, by now, he had made it to the south of France, and he was in a region that was not too far from where he had grown up. This place was really special to him because this is where he grew up as a child. So again, you start to get this sense that he was almost trying to recreate, like, the greatest hits of his life, or things from a time in his life when he remembered being happy. And the last time that he was ever seen he was walking away from that very cheap hotel that he had been staying in. Now this was on the 15th when

he was seen walking away. He showed up on the security camera with a backpack and with something long and thin strapped to his back. The CCTV footage was too grainy for anybody to say with 100% certainty what the long thin thing was, but of course a lot of people believe it was the.22 caliber rifle that he reportedly used to kill his family, the one that he had inherited from his father. And then in a very creepy way he turned and he looked right at the camera lens. One French newspaper described his expression as indecipherable. But I gotta say it takes

some serious balls to look right at the camera like that when you're on the run and you're trying to get away with murder. Even if none of the authorities even know that a murder had happened at this point. It's almost like he still is like cocky and looking at the camera just like it gives me the chills honestly thinking about it just looking at the lens dead in the eye again sorry probably a bad expression and like kind of like come and get me like fuck you come and get me. It irks me and then after that he just disappeared completely disappeared it that was the last verified sighting of him ever. Which with that, I just want to mention that statistic that I had brought up earlier about

family annihilators usually taking their own life. He was walking off into a remote area. He most likely had a gun literally attached to his back. So was that what he was planning to do, to go take his own life? Or was the gun for protection against authorities when they caught up to him, I don't really know. But the working theory was that he had gone off to take his own life, and that's what the police were thinking, especially once they realized

what had happened to the family. They even sent search teams to the areas all around the hotel. I mean, they were looking everywhere for Xavier, or for his remains, and it took a while, but they eventually did find a body. Now this was now in 2013, so two years after Xavier's disappearance. Of course, after being out in the elements for so long, these remains were very badly decomposed, so much so that the officials could not confirm, at least right away, if

this really was in fact Xavier. But still they felt like they could finally close the case, finally rule him dead and announce that they had solved this mass family murder, which kind of feels a little premature. I mean, maybe you want to identify the remains first before you announce something like that, especially because when the coroner took a closer look at these remains, they determined they did not belong

to Xavier. So the hunt for him, it was still on. Flash forward another two years to 2015, and now a hiker was on a remote trail in the woods, not very far from where Xavier disappeared. And that hiker found not only a deceased adult man, but a whole camp, almost like somebody had been living in the woods and then died there. The campsite had a sleeping bag, a pair of glasses that looked exactly like the ones that he used to wear. It also was chock full of camping gear, and there was also a wallet that was near the

body. Now unfortunately, the hiker couldn't find any ID inside this wallet, so they couldn't say for sure if this belonged to Xavier or not, but all of the money inside the wallet was at least four years old. None of it had been printed since 2011. So this, this was a really good sign. Once again, everybody was really excited that they had finally found him, that this case was going to be closed, that they could finally declare him as dead. Except when the coroner checked this person's DNA, it was not a match. It was some other unrelated guy who went missing in the woods and then died right when Xavier also went missing in that same part of the country.

I mean, talk about a coincidence, right? So by 2015, the authorities still had not found Xavier. They still couldn't say for sure whether he was dead or alive. But they felt like even if they weren't totally certain, they still had a pretty good hunch. I mean, clearly this guy hadn't been seen in public for four years. He hadn't used his credit card,

he hadn't made any withdrawals from the bank. I mean, chances are of him being dead or alive, I mean, they were definitely leaning toward dead. They felt good enough about him being dead that a prosecutor even publicly announced that she believed he had taken his own life. But I want to be clear, in that same statement she also added, quote, We will be sure of it the day that we discover his body.

And of course, just a few months after that second body was found and determined not to be Xavier, tips started pouring in that he had been seen and he had been seen alive. Do you guys say data or data? I feel like I go back and forth, but lately I've been saying data. I say it because for the longest time I felt like I was paying a fortune on my monthly data plan and that that was just the way that it had to be, I Didn't have any other option that is until of course today's sponsor mint mobile reached out to me for the first time a few months back Because their premium wireless plans start at just 15 bucks a month I thought that that was fake news. I used to be with a company that is bright yellow starts with an S I'm not gonna say who but I decided to kind of like call Mint Mobile

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letter in the mail. It had a photograph in it, and it was of a middle-aged white man sitting at a table with two other younger men. Now, the journalist didn't immediately recognize the men in the picture, but they looked like they could have been Xavier's two oldest sons. And this picture had a note written on the back of it. It was written in French, and when you translate it to English, it says, I am still alive. And then underneath it, it was Xavier's signature. Which, okay, it could certainly be a hoax. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time that somebody tried to jump on the bandwagon

and get famous for a murder that somebody else committed, but it also is kind of giving like zodiac vibes a little bit. Like, is this guy such a egomaniac and narcissist that he is pissed they haven't found him yet and he's sending a photo of him with his sons saying he's still alive to taunt them to like, claim this notoriety? A little unhinged, right? So just to be safe, the authorities took the letter and they did a bunch of tests on it.

They were checking for fingerprints, they were analyzing handwriting, they were doing everything they could. Now remember, that was in 2015. And to this day, they have not released their findings. They literally will not come out and say if they think that this letter was from him or not. Which is honestly kind of crazy to me, because if it was a hoax, why not just say that? Why give any more attention to whoever wrote this letter if it was a fraud, if it was all fake? Why not make it clear to everyone that it was all fake? Now on the other hand, if the letter was real and the fingerprints did match Xavier, wouldn't

people want to know that as well? Just to give them a heads up like, hey it looks like this guy is still alive, let's get this manhunt going again, be on the lookout, let me know if you see him. Also, by the way, he's probably armed and dangerous, like and dangerous like something anything I mean I just don't see what the police would have to gain by being so secretive about this kind of thing but it gets even weirder because that's not the only evidence that could suggest that he's still alive there's also been a ton of sightings of men that completely match his description one of these tips was in January of 2018 when they said that they saw somebody who looked exactly like Xavier and that they were now living as a monk and took a vow of silence. Pretty convenient, right? Because the police can't just go into this monastery and start questioning all these monks who took a vow of silence.

I mean, nobody would be able to answer them, right? So it was all very complicated, but they still wanted to follow up on the tip. So they did a very surprisingly quiet raid. The officers wanted to respect these people who were just trying to live their lives, practice their religion, and be in peace, but they also, of course, wanted to find his aviay. But when they finally tracked down their suspect, the guy they were told was him, it wasn't him. It was just a guy who looked like him. Then in October of 2019, the officers got another tip and this one was a lot more promising because a man had just been arrested in Glasgow, Scotland.

He had flown there from Paris and the authorities realized that he was using fake identity papers. According to some early reports when the Scottish police fingerprinted this guy, you know, trying to figure out who he was. His prints were an exact match for Xavier's. —of murdering his wife and their four children, he was traveling under a false name when he boarded a flight at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Paris police identified him, but not before the flight took off. So they warned Interpol, and police in Glasgow were waiting for him when the flight landed. De Pont de Ligonese had gone to great lengths to disguise his appearance, even undergoing cosmetic surgery. Investigators were able to identify him by his fingerprints. Which we know fingerprints don't lie. So the police had him. This was it. Except even though fingerprints don't lie, some anonymous

tipsers do lie. And as it turns out, the fingerprints were not an exact match. The Glasgow police only managed to get a partial fingerprint from this man. And while it looked, yes, like Xavier's fingerprint at first, the full prints ended up being different. So this guy wasn't Xavier. And a DNA test also proved that he was not the man that the police wanted. Which I'll be honest, I don't know why this guy was traveling around with a fake ID, but whatever the reason was, apparently the police weren't very concerned about this. They had like bigger fish to fry,

so they let the man go without pressing any charges. And they had tons of tips to go through trying to find Xavier. By 2020, there had been an estimated 800 to 900 reports that were made by the police. Now keep in mind, it had also been nine years since the murders, which that works out to roughly 100 sightings per year, but that's a lot. That is a lot. Especially for somebody who might actually be dead. And then things got even crazier after July 1st, 2020, because that's when Netflix released the very first season of their reboot of Unsolved Mysteries.

And one of their episodes was all about Xavier and the murder of his family. I mean, before that point, yes, he had been very famous in France. It was a very famous case over there. Everybody knew about it, but it hadn't been really famous to the rest of the world. So Unsolved Mysteries really did raise awareness

and it got people thinking about Xavier and starting to look for him, starting to kind of keep their eyes peeled. And sure enough, the tips started pouring in. Now I told you how in 2020 the police had taken about 800 to 900 tips about him. Well by 2024, that number skyrocketed to over 1700. And on April 8th of that year, one of those tips was credible enough for the police to actually act on it. So they traveled to the east of France so that they could talk to a suspect who could have been Xavier.

He was in fact living as a monk in a convent. Which you might be thinking, Annie, you already talked about the monk situation, like move on already. But that was a different raid. That was a different monastery. Which I gotta say, it's kind of wild that all of these people kept thinking like move on already, but that was a different raid. That was a different monastery. Which, I gotta say, it's kind of wild that all these people kept thinking that he could have taken off

to become a monk because he was so religious in his life, and apparently that tracks. So anyway, this time around, the convent was supposed to be for female nuns, not male monks like what Xavier might have been trying to pass him off as. But what's interesting is it was a convent that specifically specialized in women with criminal records, women who had broken the law. They did their time, but then afterward, they felt like they needed to still pay their debt to society, so they took their vows, they wanted to get a second chance, make things right.

So given that background, some of the officers wondered if this convent might be willing to help Xavier hide out. Like if he showed up and said that he felt so bad about murdering his family and he wanted to make right with God that they would help him do that. Would this convent, which already specialized in helping to rehabilitate other criminals, take him in? Would they really hide him from the police if they thought that they could save his soul by doing so? Well, it was definitely worth investigating, and the good news is that this convent was not under avowal silence.

So it was a lot easier for the police to start questioning the nuns and the other staff. They took seven statements in total. Four of the people that they spoke to said that they had never seen anybody who looked anything remotely like Xavier on the grounds. But the other three, they weren't so sure. They acknowledged that a traveler did stop by, stayed there a few days, and then left, and that traveler could have been Xavier. There was a little bit of a resemblance.

But it wasn't a slam dunk. Nobody could say for sure, and nobody was willing to really stand up and say that it definitely was him. And either way, even if that guy had been him, he was long gone now, and the police didn't know where he had disappeared to. However, the nuns were able somehow to find some old soda cans that this man had drank out of, so the police took them and decided to run some DNA tests. But I've done a lot of research and I haven't been able to find any kind of announcement about the results of this test,

which I don't know if that means that things were inconclusive or if they determined that the guy wasn't him. I'm not really sure. But the point is, to this day, people still don't know if Zabie is dead or alive, which also means technically his family's murder has not been solved. They have not seen justice in this. Which in theory, there is still a chance that he could go to trial, that he could be arrested, that he could be charged, all of those things, and the authorities don't want to blow that chance by closing the case prematurely. But that also means that if he hasn't been charged and locked up and found guilty yet,

that there is still a possibility that he didn't do it. I don't think that's likely, but hey, innocent until proven guilty, right? And if that's the case, then that would mean that there's some other killer out there just walking free and that they got away with it. Now it may not surprise any of you guys listening to know that there are a lot of conspiracy theories

floating around out there. So many saying that he was innocent, that he was framed, that's why he went on the run. And a lot of those conspiracy theories come directly there. So many saying that he was innocent, that he was framed, that's why he went on the run, and a lot of those conspiracy theories come directly from the people who knew him best. Family members, people who used to work with him, people saying there is no way that he is capable of this. His lawyer even gave an interview where he said that not only did he think that Xavier was innocent, but he actually thought that the whole family is still alive, that their murders were

fake. Which, in case you can't tell already, that theory is absolutely insane, but buckle up and listen to this because it's wild. So you'll remember before the murders he told everybody he was this undercover DEA agent, right? That he had to flee because his job was so dangerous he had been exposed. Well apparently the lawyer thinks he was in fact telling the truth, which for the record he wasn't. And I can say that with total confidence because the DEA has very strict rules about who they are willing to recruit to work with them, and you do have to be an American citizen. You have to be trained somewhere like Quantico. So this never would have happened because obviously he was not an American citizen.

So there's also no record that he ever set foot at Quantico, let alone going through this full-on secret agent training program. But anyways, his lawyer thinks that he was an exception to all of those rules and that he got recruited to be an American spy. Then, when it was time for his mission to end, he was worried about some of the dangerous, violent drug dealers coming after him. So he and the U.S. government decided that the only way to make sure that Xavier and his entire family would be safe would be to fake a huge mass murder. Pause for a reaction. Literally, I'm like rolling my eyes so hard right now.

And he says that they did it by getting their hands on other people's bodies. But of course, he hasn't explained who those bodies he thinks belong to. I mean, he hasn't said if the DEA murdered a whole different family or just grabbed some corpses out of the morgue. I don't really know. But the point is he thinks that some government agents buried these other people's bodies in the family's backyard and then they had the real Agnes, Arthur, Tomas, Anne, and Benoit all escape to another country with new identities. And he says that this is the most likely explanation, because according to him, there was no way that Xavier could have killed his entire family and buried them, not only because it didn't

fit his personality, but also because he wasn't physically capable of it. He apparently has a bad back, and he just wasn't suited for digging with a shovel and then hauling bodies around. This according to his lawyer. He also thought that it was pretty suspicious that nobody who actually knew Agnes or the children ever came and identified the bodies. Again, according to the lawyer, which I haven't been able to verify if that detail is true or not. But he also says that the police refused to let anybody ever view the remains. And the official reason for that is because they had been buried for something

like two to three weeks by the time they were found. So they were really badly decomposed. And so the police were worried that the sight of seeing these bodies would be far too disturbing and traumatizing for anybody who knew them. But the lawyer also says that the coroner skipped any type of DNA testing or dental examinations,

anything else that could have verified their identities. Which again, I don't know if that's true or not, but according to him, there's only one reason that the authorities would do that. Because they knew that the records wouldn't match, and they were all in on this cover-up. Which, don't get me started, there are so- I love a good conspiracy theory, I truly do, but there are so many holes in that theory. And what's the thing- Occam's razor, right? I truly do, but there are so many holes in that theory. And what's the thing, Occam's razor, right? It's probably just the most obvious scenario is probably the right one.

It's probably that he was in so much debt, there was no family inheritance. He felt like he couldn't go on and he didn't wanna live this more humble downsized life. So instead it was easier to just wipe out his entire family, right? Rather than him being some Jason Bourne, D-E-A-A, I've never seen it, so I don't know if that's what So instead it was easier to just wipe out his entire family, right? Rather than him being some Jason Bourne DEA agent, I've never seen it so I don't know

if that's what it's about, but some Bond DEA agent who then the government helps stage a mass murder to get his family off to hiding. Fat chance. Fat chance. And if that was the case, okay, let me just throw this out there as a little nugget. Let's say that was the case, okay, let me just throw this out there as a little nugget. Let's say that was the case, okay? Wouldn't the whole purpose, if you were trying to get away and live under a new identity, why would you be on the run and then buying shovels, having receipts for that, and then also looking at the CCTV footage straight in the face? That don't quite

track, my man. So it just doesn't hold up does not hold any water but as ridiculous as I believe this theory is a lot of people have spoken up and said that they believe he is innocent this includes his own mother and his sister in fact his sister Christine is so convinced that he's innocent and she's so anxious to clear his name that she wrote an entire book about what she thinks really happened it was in French but you can translate the title into English, and it's called Xavier, My Brother, Presumed Innocent. According to Christine, the whole murder was staged, and it was just like the lawyer had said earlier, it was all a cover-up and nobody got killed.

Now whether or not you believe that, that's where things stand right now, as of today. Xavier still has not been found dead or alive. That also means that he has not been charged or convicted of anything. And lots of people have their theories, that is for sure. Which, I'm curious to know, what's your theory? What side of the argument do you stand on? Do you think he did it, he's on the run, and he probably took his own life, or maybe he's still hiding out there? Or do you think that this was all an elaborate cover-up and that he and his family are well alive, safe, happy, good, and that it is just, you know, a non-American citizen who was recruited to work for the DEA and then the most elaborate cover-up of

a family mass murder that I've ever seen was executed. Look, I don't work for the Secret Service. I wish I did. But maybe things like this happen. Maybe things like that show the Americans in Homeland and all of that are real. I'm sure to an extent they are, but like how real is it? So I don't know. Let me know what you guys think. I know this was an extra long one today, but like I said at the top of this case, it was just a really wild one. So I wanted to share it with you. I want to get your thoughts on it. Tell me what you guys think. All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of Serialist Lee with me. I appreciate it. I'll be back on the mic with you.

First thing on Thursday with an all new headline highlights where we will break down everything happening this week in the true crime world. All right, guys, until until then take care, be nice, don't kill people, stay safe, don't join any cults, and please please please don't go undercover as a DEA agent and kill your whole family. Alright? Alright guys thanks, bye.