French Newspaper Links Online Account Active Until 2017 to 2011 Nantes Murder Suspect

Com that remained active until 2017 and showed writing patterns matching two earlier accounts used by Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès before the 2011 murders. The newspaper enlisted a stylometry expert who found identical wording of a Bible contradiction, matching punctuation, and the same syntactical habits across the accounts.

Claude Alain Roten, another stylometry expert consulted by the paper, stated that the markers are consistent: the punctuation, the syntactical habits, the accounts that interact, they’re always the same.

The account also interacted with many of the same contacts that Dupont de Ligonnès had used before his disappearance. Ouest-France noted that studies of long-term fugitives show total isolation is psychologically difficult to sustain and that many maintain some form of social or intellectual life.

The case began on April 21, 2011, when police arrived at the family home on the outskirts of Nantes after friends and family reported the shuttered house and the family’s silence.

They found Agnès Dupont de Ligonnès, their four children, and the family’s two Labradors buried under the terrace. The bodies had been covered in quicklime, wrapped in hessian sacks, and sealed under a fresh slab of concrete. Autopsies showed the victims had been sedated and shot in the head; they had been dead for more than two weeks.

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, then 50, was the only family member missing. He had inherited the gun used in the killings, and investigators linked him to the burial materials through receipts and credit-card purchases found in the house.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration whose cover had been blown. The letter stated the family had gone into hiding somewhere warm with new identities and would not contact anyone for several years. It also instructed relatives on handling the family’s belongings, including selling some items and transferring money to his sister’s bank account.

Agnès Dupont de Ligonnès’s employer received messages stating she had been hospitalized with gastroenteritis and later that she was resigning because her husband had a once-in-a-lifetime work opportunity in Australia. The two youngest children’s schools received similar notes. Dupont de Ligonnès had a 17-day head start before police began their manhunt.

Investigators traced the first week of his escape using security cameras and credit-card-paid hotel stays. He disappeared on April 15, 2011, near the southern French village of Roquebrune-sur-Argens. CCTV at a motel parking lot captured the last known images of him walking away from his car.

Earlier in 2026, a retired investigator who worked on the case visited the sheriff in Brewster County, Texas. The sheriff posted a public appeal on Facebook, and at least one person responded stating they had seen someone resembling Dupont de Ligonnès in the area in 2020.

French broadcaster M6 is scheduled to air a special edition of “Appel à témoins” on Tuesday presenting a possible recent proof of life of Dupont de Ligonnès.

The investigator presenting the evidence is the same retired police officer who visited Texas in March. Police have received more than 1,850 tips related to Dupont de Ligonnès and his disappearance since the 2011 murders. None have led to any breakthroughs.