Episode 299 - La maison de l'horreur: The Dupont de Ligonnès Family Murder

RedHanded

Wondery | RedHanded

True Crime

4.5 • 18.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When five members of the cheery, churchgoing Dupont de Ligonnès family were found dead at their home in Nantes – buried in the garden with small Catholic relics – a million questions erupted from neighbours, family and friends.

But for the police, only one question mattered: where was the sixth? Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès was nowhere to be found. And as they dug into his past, they uncovered a story that’s obsessed the nation of France for years: one of an ancient aristocratic dynasty, of international espionage, and a crime scene that, decades later, still refuses to add up…

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Prime members, you can listen to Redhanded early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today.
0:15.0	I'm Hannah. I'm Sireuti. And welcome to Redhanded. I forgot how we did it again.
0:21.4	I mean, it's a mystery. No one knows anymore. But you are here. We are here. Hannah's new dog Mabel is here.
0:28.6	In the studio, particularly well, but if there is a jump in the recording, it's probably because she's done a shit on me.
0:36.2	So excellent news. Well, let's hope that that isn't what happens.
0:40.2	And so far, so good. We're going to be speaking a lot of French today.
0:43.3	Be kind. Only one of us in this room has a French GCSE. And it's the dog.
0:48.7	I've always been so terrible at French. And it was 12 years ago.
0:53.6	Right. No, it's just never really agreed with me. So be kind. Whatever that is in French.
1:00.9	On the 21st of April 2011, police arrived at a house in a middle class neighborhood of not a city in Northwest France.
1:09.9	The officers were responding to a missing persons report. Or should we say six missing person reports,
1:16.5	because the home that they were called to belong to the DuPont, the Lidronesse family, and all six of them had seemingly vanished into thinner.
1:27.4	I do enjoy, as soon as you say a French word, it goes into like proper like all for say.
1:33.4	All for say. All for say.
1:35.6	Now this visit on the 21st of April wasn't the first time that the police had made a trip to the family's home.
1:43.0	10 days before they'd been tipped off by concerned neighbor.
1:47.2	But when they searched the place was completely spotless.
1:51.5	Just as it had been the last five times they'd been called out to investigate all investigators had found were a series of strange and confusing letters announcing both the spontaneous move to Australia and a witness protection relocation program in the US.
2:08.8	Presumably if you are going into witness protection, they don't send you a letter that you then leave magnetic to your fridge door, but sure.
2:16.6	But now the police were back because family pressure from the remaining DuPont, the Lidronesse bunch made them determined to find something, anything that would explain what the hell was going on.
2:29.8	A family of six can't just disappear without leaving a single trace.
2:34.8	And the police were right because this time at last the eerily calm house would finally reveal its secrets under a terrace to the back of the house.
	...

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