Documentary team explores the Big Bend for clues
The Big Bend was abuzz last week when Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson posted a BOLO—be on the lookout—on Facebook asking people to report any sightings of a French murder suspect on the lam from his home country. Why? Because an admittedly obsessed French investigator had traveled here, interviewed Dodson and relayed information that the suspect had previously been in Alpine in 1990 and might have returned there 15 years after he fled his native country.
A French film crew, accompanied by the investigator—Gilles Galloux—arrived in the Big Bend last week looking for clues on the whereabouts of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, alleged to have killed his entire family in 2011 in Nantes, in Western France, before fleeing the country—never to be seen by friends or police since. The horrific crime is known in France as the “Nantes Massacre,” and Dupont de Ligonnès is alleged to have drugged and then shot his wife, four children and two dogs before burying them under their home’s porch. The bodies were not located for about two weeks, since Dupont de Ligonnès had sent correspondence to the children’s school saying they were moving out of the country, and friends of the wife were told she was ill.
“In making this film, I am not trying to track down the killer, but to understand the story of an ordinary man who, after murdering his entire family, managed to evade the police and disappear,” said Adrien Pinon, the film’s director, after he sat down for a conversation with Big Bend Sentinel in Marfa. “It is one of the most fascinating and mysterious true crime cases in the world.” Accompanying Pinon and Galloux was a former best friend of Dupont de Ligonnès who did not want to be named at this time.
Through a Facebook group, the longtime investigator in the case, Galloux, managed to obtain photographs from Alpine in 1990 that show Dupont de Ligonnès hanging out with women in Alpine and Fort Davis. One photo, notably, is with two women, Dupont de Ligonnès, and another male friend, Michel Rétif, at Crystal Bar. Those photographs eventually led to the names of the women, along with another woman who owned a ranch where the suspect stayed at one point. Galloux said he is not revealing last names yet, at the request of the women, but they are Mindy, Laura, Melissa and Corrinne in his book: Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. A cop at the heart of the case. Investigation and unpublished documents. Galloux said Laura is the only one who still lives in Alpine. The other man at the Crystal Bar is now deceased, he said.
“Yes, I’m obsessed,” Galloux said, sitting at a picnic table outside the Sentinel cafe in Marfa last week. “I think about it every day.” In his book, Galloux describes how he became involved in the case: “In 2011, I was an investigator with the French Judicial Police’s central office for combating cybercrime at the heart of the digital search for the fugitive. I worked on analyzing his pseudonyms and identifiers, exploiting connections, logs and IP addresses, as well as data from the Internet and telephone operators.”
After Sheriff Dodson’s first post, it was updated to note: “Xavier was possibly observed in 2020, in South Brewster County, with a black Labrador. If you have any information, please contact us.” The dogs that Dupont de Ligonnès killed with his family were Labrador retrievers. The note led the documentary team down to Terlingua on Friday to film footage there and take a tour of the area.
Galloux’s book outlines several letters sent by Dupont de Ligonnès to acquaintances, including one to Michel Rétif before his family’s bodies were found, that said, “Take good care of yourself … you’ll come and visit us at our ranch in a while … ;-))” The woman Mindy told the investigator that Dupont de Ligonnès and a Rétif had visited her on a ranch near Alpine around 1990. Rétif committed suicide in 2018.
Galloux said it’s not as if he believes Dupont de Ligonnès is still in Alpine, although the Dodson South County comment was interesting. But as he wrote in his book: “You can’t understand a case of this nature without going back to the scene. You have to walk where the man walked. Look at what he was looking at. Understand what he wanted to show and what he wanted to hide.”
See the online version for more photos at bigbendsentinel.com.