Fun fact

Librarything now records the size and dimensions of a person’s books. According to them, if all the books listed in my library were stacked up, they would be 235.8 feet tall — taller than the Statue of Liberty, but not quite as tall as the Taj Mahal. See for yourself.

Bodies found at home of missing French family

A French family of six disappeared from Nantes, France early this month: Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes, a business manager, age 50, his wife Agnes, a school assistant, age 49, their 16-year-old daughter, Anne, and their three sons, Tomas, Arthur and Benoit, ages 21, 18 and 13 respectively.

They appeared to be an ordinary middle-class Catholic family. Yet something strange was going on: right before his disappearance, Xavier told some people that he was a secret agent and had to go into witness protection. The family had reportedly made arrangements to move to Australia, or at least said they had, which is why it took nearly two weeks before anyone realized they were in fact missing. They took their kids out of their private school and settled the bill.

Police have found three bodies on their property, and in one case a leg severed and placed apart from the rest of the corpse. (The first article I linked to just mentions a leg, but they have since turned up more. The next article contains photos of the family.) This article (which is in French; I translated it with Google), says they think the bodies are those of Agnes, Arthur and Tomas, and the apparent cause of death was gunshot wounds, though they’re still investigating. Presumably the cops are also searching for three more bodies. I don’t have much hope that anyone in that family remains alive.

Of course I don’t know a whole lot, but on the face of it, it sounds like a possible family annihilation on the part of the father, aka John List or Robert Fisher.

This is a very tragic and horrific situation. I feel sorry for the extended family.

A new/old NCMEC case

I always get a bit of a thrill whenever the NCMEC puts up a new poster for a very old case, especially one I haven’t heard of before. They’ve done it again: April Nicole Williams. She was just three and a half months old when she was allegedly abducted from Washington DC by some strange woman on December 7, 1983.

A sketch of the suspect is included. It’s notable that the woman, who was black, had red hair. There are some red-haired black people (Maurice Jefferson comes to mind) but I suppose the abductor’s was probably dyed.

Now I really want to look up this case in the news archives, but what’s the point? I can’t write it up until I get my computer back.

I do wish they would hurry up. I have borrowed my father’s laptop but it’s old and slow and has Windows 2000 and the mouse is one of those little button things in the center of the keyboard which is very annoying.

I hope the NCMEC also puts out an AP for April. Her baby picture is not going to be of much help in identifying her; all babies look alike. She would be 27 years old today. If she was abducted by a stranger like the poster says, there’s no reason to suppose she’s not still alive and out there somewhere, just like Carlina White.

Some depressing correspondence

I got an email from some poor woman who has vastly overestimated my abilities and the Charley Project’s scope. She wants me to “re-open” her daughter’s case, produce a current AP (her daughter disappeared a quarter-century ago), etc. Her husband just died and she wants to know her daughter’s fate before it’s her time to go. When I say this is depressing I mean it’s depressing to me to have to tell her I can do none of those things, and it’s probably going to be depressing to her to hear that.

Obviously she went to the Charley Project frontpage in order to get my contact info, but I guess she didn’t read the part that explains that the site is for publicity only. I don’t try to solve cases; I only catalog them and let others do the solving. But this is hardly the first time people have assumed I’m some kind of detective or what.

Maybe I’ll refer her to the Doe Network. I think they do APs.