Witches, Magic, Murder, & Mystery · Megan and Kara

364. MYSTERY: Where is Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès?

·27 min·12 clips

Kara and Megan open in their familiar conversational mode. They joke about having to re-record after drifting into a tangent-heavy stretch, and that false start ends up fitting the episode well because it shows how naturally their talk wanders before it snaps back to the case. The story centers on Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. Before the hosts get to the darkest parts, they spend time on the family itself, sketching a household that looked normal from the outside, private, and shaped by strict Catholic values. The oldest son is discussed first, with the episode noting that he was brought home under the pretense of a family emergency, fed dinner, and then killed. Anne comes next. She is described as outgoing, sociable, athletic, warm, and active in choir and theater, with teachers calling her bright, enthusiastic, and easy to get along with. Benoit gets especially tender treatment. The episode paints him as sweet, goofy, affectionate, and still unmistakably a kid, with a love of video games, biking, joking around, and the family dogs. That detail about the dogs matters. The hosts mention that the dogs were found buried with the children, and the image makes the family’s private world feel erased rather than just broken. Again and again, the show returns to how ordinary the family seemed from the outside. Teachers and friends described the children as polite, well-behaved, close to one another, normal, kind, and friendly, which makes the collapse of the household even harder to sit with. Kara and Megan react like people hearing it in real time. They recoil, laugh, interrupt each other, and let the conversation stay loose without losing the dread at the center of it. The mystery never really closes. Instead, the episode spends its ending on the lingering question of Xavier’s fate, including the possibility that he built a new life, has another family, or is living with people who know nothing about who he used to be. The final note is frustration. What stays with the listener is the empty space where answers should be, and the sense that this is still one of those cases people cannot quite let go of.

As heard by us

A conversational, unsettling look at a case shaped by absence and unanswered questions.

The episode follows the case of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès through the family he left behind, and that choice gives the story its bite. Kara and Megan do not breeze past the children; they slow down and sit with who each one was, which makes the loss feel heavier than a simple…

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Why you'd press play

You want a warm, conversational true-crime ride through the DuPont de Ligones family mystery, where an ordinary-seeming home gives way to something far darker.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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