Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès: a new life in San Francisco?

Eleven years of mystery. Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès disappeared in the spring of 2011, leaving behind the bodies of the five members of his family and a whole series of questions. The main suspect in the murder of his wife and four children, he fled to the south of France before completely disappearing from the radar. Investigators are still looking for him and, while many leads have been raised in recent years, none have led to the alleged murderer being found.

Is Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès dead or alive? Without the answer to this question, it is difficult to target specific places, because the police are looking for a man who would have aged 11 years as well as the body of a person dead for 11 years. Cavities have been probed, monasteries have been excavated and calls for witnesses abroad have been launched, but all of this has come to nothing… Except for a false lead in Scotland in October 2019. Some of his friends believe that he committed suicide only a few days after leaving Nantes, while others believe that he is still alive and that he has rebuilt his life abroad.

This theory is regularly fueled by people who think they have crossed paths with Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. One of his former neighbors would have seen him in 2015, four years after his disappearance, while she was in San Francisco (United States) during vacation. This is explained by the magazine Soir Mag, adding that this woman claims to have recognized him “in the French Quarter, a historic enclave of the Franciscan city center” of the city.

Jostled by a man, write our colleagues, this woman “would have immediately recognized Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès and pronounced, aloud, his first name”. It described a man wearing “a fitted shirt” and “immaculately shaved beard”. Seeing her, he would have widened his eyes “before turning around at a run”. Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès has lived in the United States for more than ten years? The country often comes up in the theories of those who think it is still alive and, according to the latest revelations from one of his former friends, he would have rebuilt his life on the other side of the Atlantic.

This meeting mentioned by a neighbor of the family, is it plausible? Questioned by Marie France, Bruno de Stabenrath explains: “The only thing I’m sure of is San Francisco (…) I know it’s true because they [the neighbors who would have crossed him, Ed] have told the story to their first family circle when they came back from San Francisco. So I think that in 2015, he was actually in San Francisco. There is no shadow of a doubt (…) Xavier loved the States United, it’s a territory he knows by heart, he has done 48 states out of the 50 “.

The entourage of the father of the family described him on several occasions as charismatic, knowing how to captivate and seduce his audience. For his childhood friend, he is “sufficiently comfortable and I think also manipulative, to seduce a woman and a family”. Has Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès rebuilt his life? Without a shadow of a doubt for Bruno de Stabenrath, who imagines him married to an American who knows nothing about his former life in France…

Has the main suspect of the Nantes killings rebuilt his life with another? With Marie France, Bruno de Stabenrath explains that his former friend “had to be very careful”, but that he has “a face that changes a lot”. “He can grow a biker mustache, he can shave his head, he can change Xavier and anyway, few people have met him in real life. 90% of people have only seen him in photos or in documentaries”, he adds, before concluding: “Nobody knows what he looks like except those who really know him. I would recognize him among a thousand”.

Last April, Bruno de Stabenrath – who wrote a book about his friendship with Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès – reminded Gala that “a body can be found”. “Xavier was someone who was on the side of life. He did a reset. All of a sudden he reprogrammed himself. He had a lot of problems and all of a sudden he found himself light like when he was 18. And there, everything was possible again. He reprogrammed a life, without attachment, without debt, shame, fear”.