Mysteries and Histories

In April 2011, the Dupont de Ligonnès family disappeared from their home in Nantes, France. On April 21, police uncovered a horrifying secret beneath the terrace: the bodies of Agnès and her four children, Arthur, Thomas, Anne, and Benoît. All five had been shot, wrapped, and buried alongside the family’s two dogs.
One person was missing: husband and father Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, who became the prime suspect. Investigators traced his journey south to Roquebrune-sur-Argens, where he was last seen on April 15, leaving a hotel car park on foot. His car stayed behind and his trail ended there.
Fifteen years later, Xavier remains missing. Did he die soon after disappearing, or escape to begin another life? Despite searches and reported sightings, neither possibility has been established, leaving five murders without a trial, and one of France’s most haunting mysteries without an ending.

In the early 1870s, young boys in Boston survived brutal attacks by another child: Jesse Pomeroy. At just 12, he was sent to reform school for torturing children but after his early release, the violence escalated into murder.
In 1874, 10-year-old Katie Curran disappeared, and four-year-old Horace Millen was found murdered. Pomeroy, then 14, was arrested for Millen’s death before workmen discovered Katie’s body hidden in the basement of his mother’s shop. He confessed to killing her, too.
Sentenced to death, Pomeroy instead received life imprisonment in solitary confinement after his sentence was commuted in 1876. His case horrified the country and sparked an uncomfortable question: how should society punish a child responsible for such calculated cruelty?

His name is on some of the most famous plays ever written, but could William Shakespeare have been a cover for someone else? Centuries after his death, gaps in his biography fuelled theories that the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon could not have created such extraordinary works.
Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, have all been proposed as the hidden author. Supporters point to supposed codes, biographical parallels, and aristocratic knowledge, but none has produced convincing evidence that another writer secretly created Shakespeare’s plays.
Contemporary references identify Shakespeare as a writer, and mainstream historians accept his authorship. This episode explores how a literary legacy became a conspiracy and why the search for a hidden genius can seem more compelling than the evidence in plain sight.

Throughout the 1980s, women and girls were found murdered near Ohio highways and truck stops. Several victims were sex workers, and investigators suspected a killer who travelled the interstate routes. One chilling lead gave the case its name: a truck driver reportedly used the CB radio handle “Dr. No.
Witness accounts and similarities between the deaths suggested a connection, but investigators struggled to establish which murders belonged to the same series. The truck stops offered a disturbing advantage: an offender could encounter a victim and leave the area before anyone realised she was missing.
Decades later, DNA linked former trucker Samuel Legg III to several truck-stop killings from the 1990s, prompting claims that Dr. No had been caught. But those discoveries did not conclusively identify the offender behind the earlier series. The “Dr. No” mystery remains unresolved, including whether one killer was responsible for all the deaths attributed to him.

In August 1951, hundreds of people in the French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit fell ill with stomach pains, insomnia, and terrifying hallucinations. Some believed animals were attacking them; others became dangerously disoriented. Several people died, and dozens were admitted to psychiatric hospitals as doctors struggled to explain the outbreak.
Investigators traced the poisoning to bread from a local bakery. Doctors initially blamed ergot, a fungus that contaminates grain and can cause convulsions and hallucinations. But that explanation remained disputed, with later researchers proposing mercury contamination or other chemicals used in flour production.
The incident became known as the “cursed bread” affair. Claims of a secret CIA experiment involving LSD added another layer of intrigue, but remain unproven. More than 70 years later, the precise cause of the poisoning is still debated, a haunting mystery rooted in something as ordinary as a loaf of bread.