“It’s unique. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it”

A massacre took place at 55, boulevard Robert-Schuman, in Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), at the beginning of April 2011. A fivefold murder. It will be necessary to wait until the 21st of the same month for the investigators to finally discover the five bodies of the victims buried under the terrace of the garden of this house occupied by the Dupont de Ligonnès family… Philippe Esperança, expert in blood spatters, has analyzed for thirty years thousands of crime scenes. On each are found traces of blood, even tiny, allowing him to bring to light the truth…

In the case of this fivefold murder, of which the father Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès is suspected, there was nothing. And it is exceptional! “It’s really the only scene I’ve had to know, where there are five victims, and no trace has been discovered. It’s unique. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it”, says this forensic officer and morphoanalyst of blood traces to the magazine “1:15 p.m. on Sunday” (replay). He read the reports and saw the photos of his colleagues who spent hours in the crime house: “The first thing I can conclude is: how did he manage to remove all the traces or prevent them from existing?”

“I even had the impression that it was a robot acting”

“When the cleaning is summary, we will find typical traces of a movement of a sponge or mop, says the expert. We feel that there is an almost complete preparation. It’s amazing to think of so many things. We all have crime scenes in mind where people have thought of doing such and such a thing, but in such a complete way, I don’t remember having seen it… The victim is in his bed. And we put the blanket or the sheets in a certain way to prevent the blood from leaving. This will be confined near the wound.” Here, not a single trace…

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès is suspected of having repeated exactly the same gestures in the five bedrooms. After killing his wife and the four children one after the other, the bodies were swaddled in sheets, duvets and mattresses, then transported in a sort of sarcophagus which prevented blood from escaping. “I even had the impression at one point that there was no longer any human spirit, that it was a robot that was acting. We say vulgarly: ‘I put my brain a little aside and now it’s my body doing the work.’ And it really feels like that.”

Excerpt from the series “The disappeared > Episodes 1 & 2”, broadcast in “1:15 p.m. on Sunday” on April 9, 2023.

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