Investigation and previously unpublished documents“The American Trail” is the sequel to the book “Xavier Dupont De Ligonnès: a cop at the heart of the case”, released in February 2026. 20,000 copies were printed.What if the key to the Ligonnès mystery lay on the other side of the Atlantic? April 2011. In Nantes, five bodies are found buried under the patio of a family home. The father, Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, has vanished without a trace. For fifteen years, all of France has been searching for this man, who has become the country’s most famous fugitive. Suicides, monasteries, solitary escapes… every lead has been explored. Every one, or almost.A former police officer deeply immersed in the case, the author pieces the investigation back together and brings to light a disturbing hypothesis: that of a flight to the United States. Messages announcing an imminent departure for America, memories resurfacing from a past trip to Texas, a mysterious flight from Nice to New York in the days of his disappearance, a troubling account from San Francisco’s Chinatown… Little by little, another scenario emerges.What if Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès had been planning his disappearance for months? What if he had left Europe to start a new life under a different identity?From Nice Airport to Texas, from Florida to California, Gilles traveled to the United States in 2026 to track down the murderer, meeting friends and business associates who had worked with Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès.This investigation takes the reader on the American trail of a man who may have pulled off one of the greatest criminal escapes of our time. A fascinating investigative account, following the clues closely, that reopens one of the most mysterious cases of the 21st century. Gilles Galloux was an investigator with the Central Office for Combating Crime Related to Information and Communication Technologies (OCLCTIC), which is the Cybercrime Unit of the Judicial Police. He was assigned to the case on April 29, 2011, when the Nantes Judicial Police requested an urgent digital forensic analysis of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès’s online activities. He was tasked with analyzing Xavier’s pseudonyms, usernames, connections, and activities on religious forums, particularly Cité-Catholique; linking IP addresses, logs, and digital traces to Xavier’s movements; working with data from telephone operators; securing court orders regarding digital leads; and coordinating the “digital manhunt.” Now retired, Gilles Galloux continues his research and is assisting Canal+ in the preparation of a new series dedicated to the case.
