“One theory is that Xavier was caught up in stuff we don’t really understand and the letters that Xavier wrote were all forced,” he said before posing an alternate scenario where Xavier was innocent.
“There were professional killers who did all of this and killed Xavier’s family and later killed him and framed Xavier for the murder of his own family. And really this is just something that Xavier was caught up in his financial desperations,” he said.
“We don’t know who these players are and what their motivations really were, but it’s one idea how this was done so professionally and still explains the disappearance of Xavier – that he really was murdered, but away from the home in a way that was designed to [frame him].”
Jeter added: “[The argument is] he wouldn’t have the skills to pull something like this off. The areas where the graves are were dug in a low terrace. It would be a ton of physical labour to remove this soil. Xavier reportedly had a bad back and there’s just no way that he could have done that himself."
However, Jeter is first to point to one key hole in the theory: “[It] doesn’t point to who really did do it. There’s nobody who has a really great story about a motivation that makes sense out of this.”
So far, so outlandish. But then Jeter posed another (seemingly unlikely) theory: the bodies found weren't actually those of the DuPont family.
“When the autopsies were done on the bodies, it was pretty obvious to everyone involved that, ‘look, we’re missing a mother and four children and two dogs. And lo and behold, here’s a mother and four children and two dogs. And they roughly match ages and genders.
"'There’s no real need to really go and dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ on this because it’s kind of obvious what happened here. Let’s wrap this up quickly, let’s allow the bodies buried quickly and let the families have some peace.’
“But in that process, there was DNA evidence that the bodies that were found were all related to one another. But there was no actual evidence that said, ‘This actually is Agnes, Arthur, Thomas etc.' There was no evidence that specifically identifies who they are, just that they were related […] There was no visual identification.”
Although Jeter appeared open to testing each theory, he conceded Xavier was still the most likely culprit in his family’s deaths. “We all agree that the vast majority of the evidence doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle-room for who committed these murders,” he said.
Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, who has an international arrest warrant against his name since 2011, told family and friends via letter that he’d moved to Australia with his family. Days after this letter was received, the bodies of his four children and wife were found under the porch of their French home.
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