The Crimes of Paris

by Dorothy Hoobler; Thomas Hoobler

  Another innovation was the Bertillon Box, a sort of portable forensics unit that was small enough to slip into a coat pocket. Someone else had already used plaster of paris to make impressions of footprints; Bertillon went a step further in making metallic copies that were more durable and easily displayed to juries.

  Bertillon also discovered that pure rubber, similar to that used by dentists, was a valuable crime scene tool. For example, if Bertillon wanted to copy the marks on a doorjamb or window frame made by a crowbar or “jimmy,” he would place softened rubber over the surface. When the rubber was pressed down, it would penetrate all the grooves. After the material had hardened, it would be removed carefully to show all the grains and indentations of the wood. Employing this as a negative mold, Bertillon would then make a positive one with plaster of paris. He could use this to identify the specific jimmy that had been used.

  The instrument he was proudest of, however, was the dynamometer, which was designed to measure the force used by a house burglar to break locks on doors or windows. It was not, as even Bertillon’s biographer admits, a particularly useful instrument — merely one that satisfied the urge to quantify every aspect of a crime scene. It was a hit at the time, however, even being mentioned in a Fantômas story.

  iv

  Bertillon could not have achieved the fame he did had his system not produced tangible results. One of his greatest successes came in March 1892, after a bomb exploded on the boulevard Saint-Germain outside the home of a judge who had presided over a trial of a group of anarchists the previous year.

  To find out who had planted the bomb, police at first employed their tried-and-true method of using informants. A woman identified in police files as X2S1 pointed the finger at Chaumartin, a teacher at a technical school in the suburb of Saint-Denis. The informant had learned from Chaumartin’s gossipy wife that he had planned the bombing, although the act was carried out by a man named Léon Léger. Taken into custody, Chaumartin confessed his role in showing Léger how to build the bomb but said the other man had stolen the dynamite and hatched the plot. He told the police where Léger was staying and described him as a man about five feet four inches in height, with a dark beard and a sallow complexion. Chaumartin also informed them that Léger’s real name was Ravachol. That too was only an alias, though it was the name by which he became best known.

  Ravachol had fled by the time police reached his quarters, but all over Paris and the surrounding area, short men with dark beards were stopped and questioned — to no avail. The newspapers were screaming for results in solving the outrage. “France is in the hands of impotent men who do not know what to do about the barbarians in our society,” complained a writer for Le Gaulois.18 The new prefect of police, Henri Lozet, called Bertillon in and presented him with the only lead that had turned up: police in the town of Saint-Étienne recalled having arrested a man calling himself Ravachol on suspicion of theft. Ravachol was apparently a career criminal; smuggling, burglary, murder, and even grave robbing were among the offenses he had been suspected of committing. Fortunately, the police in Saint-Étienne had taken his measurements and description according to Bertillon’s method. On March 24, Bertillon received the data from the filing card in Saint-Étienne: “Claudius François Koenigstein, alias Ravachol; height: 1.663; spread of arms: 1.780; chest: .877; length of head: .186; breadth of head: .162; length of left foot: .279; left middle finger: .122; left ear: .098; color of left iris: yellowish verging upon green.” 19 Bertillon was certain that this precise data, circulated through the arrondissements of Paris, would eventually bring Ravachol to justice.

  Before Ravachol could be apprehended, however, he struck again. Two weeks after the first bomb, a second exploded in the basement of a house, 35, rue de Clichy, home of the state prosecutor who had conducted the case against the anarchists. There seemed to be no doubt that this was the work of the same man who had planted the first device.

  Anarchists weren’t shy about declaring their allegiances, and several anarchist newspapers proclaimed the bomber as a new hero of the movement. The police responded by rounding up all known anarchists, but none had physical measurements that matched those of the elusive Ravachol. Someone, however, disclosed an additional physical detail about the wanted man: he had a scar on his left hand. A few days later, once this description had been circulated, the owner of a restaurant on the boulevard Magenta noticed a customer with such a scar and immediately notified the police. When uniformed officers arrived, the man drew a pistol; fortunately he was not able to fire it, and after a struggle, the police cuffed him and led him away. On the way to the local police station, he tried to break free, shouting to others in the street for help: “Follow me, brothers! Vive l’anarchie! Vive la dynamite!” 20

  Later that day, the suspect was brought to the headquarters of the Sûreté, where Bertillon prepared to photograph and measure him. The man again resisted, pointing out that his face was bruised and bleeding; in his struggle to escape, the police had beaten him. Bertillon courteously offered to put off the photography session if the man would allow his measurements to be taken. Impressed, he agreed. To Bertillon, the photograph was secondary to his beloved system of measurements, which never changed once a subject reached adulthood, and when the suspect’s measurements proved to be the same as those taken by the police in Saint-Étienne, Bertillon knew he had Ravachol in custody.

  However, the evidence against Ravachol in the two Paris bombings was flimsy; he denied everything that Chaumartin said, and Chaumartin was himself the only person to have confessed to a role in the bombing. Furthermore, another bomb was set off while Ravachol was in jail — at the very restaurant where he had been arrested, killing the owner who had turned him in.

  Nervously, the judges sent Ravachol to Saint-Étienne, where the pending charges against him seemed to offer a stronger case. Here, in fact, faced with the evidence, Ravachol gave up trying to deny his crimes and proclaimed himself the anarchist bomber. He defended himself by claiming that his violence was aimed at ending the suffering of the weak. “My object,” he declared, “was to terrorize so as to force society to look attentively at those who suffer.” 21

  Sentenced to the guillotine, he was brought back to Paris for the execution on July 10, 1892. He sang as he was paraded through the streets of Paris: “If you want to be happy, hang your masters and cut the priests to pieces.” His final words, “You pigs, long live the Revolution!” were cut off when the blade of the guillotine severed his neck. 22

  Bertillon was hailed as the savior of Paris. The capture of Ravachol earned him the Legion of Honor and a new position as head of the Bureau of Identification, which he would hold till his death. The general feeling was that his key identification had provided the only link between the criminal in Saint-Étienne and the Paris bomber and that without that identification, Ravachol might have continued his deadly career. The publicity did much to encourage police departments in other countries to adopt anthropometric identification systems.

  v

  After the Ravachol case, Bertillon’s reputation was secure, and the use of his system became as routine a procedure as fingerprinting is today. One notable case was solved personally by Marie-François Goron, the head of the Sûreté and one of Bertillon’s admirers. Goron, who had already gained fame for solving the Gouffé case, was asked by the Belgian government to try to find a swindler, Karslake, who was reputed to be in Paris. Goron immediately sought to question people who were rumored to have had dealings with Karslake. One in particular, Charles Vernet, struck him as being familiar — something in his attitude and manner awakened suspicion. But Vernet was a wealthy gentleman who had made a fortune on the Paris Bourse. His manner with Goron was open and indicated that he was willing to assist the police. Still, Goron could not shake his suspicions.

  Goron began to search through police records from the time he had first joined the force. Finally he found what he was looking for. When he had been the police commissary of the Pantin Quarter i
n northern Paris, some twelve years earlier, a young clerk named Moulin had been stabbed to death after a fierce struggle in his home. The sounds of a fight had awakened a lodger on the floor below, who opened his door in time to see a man running down the stairs. The next day the police arrested a man named Simon, who was identified by the neighbor. Because the evidence was slight, he evaded the guillotine but was sentenced to twenty years at the French penal settlement at Cayenne in French Guiana.

  Goron felt certain that Vernet, the wealthy stock trader, was that very man, but Simon should still have been serving his term on the blistering hot island prison. Checking further, Goron found that Simon had attempted to escape from Cayenne, accompanied by a fellow convict named Aymard. The pair had tried to make their way to the South American mainland, but pursuers found the body of Simon. Aymard had disappeared, but was presumed dead as well. Reading further, Goron found that the dead man’s face was battered beyond recognition; he had been identified only by his jacket, which bore the number assigned to Simon when he arrived at Cayenne.

  Goron was not convinced. He was certain that if the Bertillon method was used, it would show Simon to be alive and prospering in Paris under the alias Vernet. The escaped prisoner could easily have switched jackets with Aymard after beating the man’s face so that it was unrecognizable. However, Vernet’s wealth and influential friends made him powerful enough that Goron could not simply march him into Bertillon’s laboratory and have him measured — one of the flaws in the method. Moreover, since Simon was legally dead, Goron would face the inertia of the police bureaucracy in trying to prove Simon was alive and still active. Goron had little to go on except his own intuition.

  Vernet frequently appeared at society functions, cementing his reputation as a cultivated gentleman. Goron himself was a man of artistic and literary tastes and felt comfortable traveling in upper-crust society. Through a friend, Goron arranged for Vernet to be invited to a reception given by a distinguished woman sculptor at which some of the latest scientific achievements would be demonstrated. Goron and a “nephew” — actually a young detective — would also attend. When they arrived, Goron was carrying a parcel, which he put aside. Vernet, in formal evening dress, bowed graciously to the detective. The lights were turned down as the guests observed a demonstration of the then-new cinematograph, an early form of motion picture. When that was over, a scientist showed some of the uses of an electrometer, which measured electrical charges. This was at a time when electricity was still a strange and powerful force whose many uses were yet to be discovered, and the audience was fascinated. Then the hostess called on Goron to present his part of the evening’s entertainment.

  The detective chief stood and made a little speech about the evolution of criminal investigation.

  Years ago, the man whose duty it is to fight the enemies of society had only his own powers to rely upon. Between him and the criminal it was skill against skill, art against art. Then came the modern inventions — -railways, steamers, the telegraph, the telephone — and matters grew worse for the detective. Alas! it was the murderers, the forgers, who had the advantage, inasmuch as they could steal a long march upon Nemesis, and get their accomplices to use the telegraph and the telephone for their benefit.

  The question, therefore, was to discover a system by which society and not its foes would reap the advantages. Ladies and gentlemen, this system has been found, and the man to whom we owe it, and whose name will go down to posterity, is M. Bertillon. 23

  Goron’s nephew handed him the package, which he opened. Here, Goron explained, were the instruments used in the new science of bertillonage, “for the identification of those who, having previously fallen into the hands of the police, expect to escape detection by changing their names or altering, as they think, their appearance.” 24

  The name Bertillon sent a thrill of excitement through the room. When Goron asked for individuals willing to be measured, several young women were the first to volunteer. Alphonse Daudet, a well-known writer, offered his own physiognomy for the measurements. While Goron was at work, he noticed Vernet moving to the door.

  “Ah, there’s M. Vernet,” he cried. “Don’t go away. Come and be measured.”

  The financier shook his head with a smile. “No, thank you,” he responded. “I have seen the thing done before.”

  Seemingly joking, Goron appealed to two American girls who were standing by the door. “Catch him, ladies. Don’t let him escape.”

  By this time, all eyes were on Vernet, and he was unable to get away without causing a scene. “This is a bad joke,” he told Goron.

  “Oh, it’s part of the fun,” returned the detective.

  Vernet was compelled to put the best face on things. He shrugged and permitted Goron to take his measurements. Goron recorded them on a blank Bertillon card and handed it to his “nephew,” who had in his pocket another card with the measurements of the supposedly dead convict Simon. After a brief comparison, he nodded to Goron, who took Vernet by the arm and led him to another room.

  “I advise you not to make a scene,” Goron said. “I know you to be Simon, an escaped convict, and the suspected murderer of Aymard. You will have to come with me. My ‘nephew’ over there is a detective, and I have three others within call. Say good-bye to your hostess and follow me.”

  Vernet’s nerve had taken him from Cayenne to Paris, and he tried to bluff his way through this setback as well. Drawing himself up, he told Goron coolly, “This is a mistake, which I will make you regret.” 25

  After Bertillon himself had confirmed Goron’s measurements, however, Vernet confessed. He was sent to prison to await transport back to Cayenne. It was a fate he could not endure. He hanged himself in his cell.

  vi

  Harry Ashton-Wolfe, a British citizen who worked for several years with Bertillon, later wrote a number of books about his experiences. Ashton-Wolfe was a friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and he portrayed Bertillon as very much in the mold of the world’s most famous literary detective. 26 In “The Clue of the Blind Beetles,” Ashton-Wolfe described how a package containing the body of a man was found in the Bois de Boulogne, on the western edge of Paris. Indications were that the victim had been struck on the head from behind by a club or hammer. He wore only a shirt and trousers, but other items of clothing had been enclosed in the package with him.

  Even though the ground was soft from recent rains, there were no traces of footprints or wheels. The wrapped package was heavy and unwieldy, and if it had been left there by one man, he must have been enormously strong. Bertillon took a stroll toward the Seine, which loops around the Bois, and found markings of a boat on the riverbank. Leading away from it were shapeless impressions, made, Bertillon deduced, by a man who had tied a thick cloth over his boots to conceal his tracks. Since the paper of the package was dry, it had to have been left there after midnight, when the rain had stopped.

  Using a cable attached to the battery in his automobile, Bertillon activated a new device he had recently assembled. “A short arc, enormously magnified by complex lenses and reflectors, produced a concentrated beam of dazzling brilliancy, which could be focused to any angle,” Ashton-Wolfe wrote. While he held the lamp, Bertillon attached a mask containing magnifying lenses to his face and examined the body. Spotting something on the victim’s shirt, he called for a collodion slide, which was a sticky glass plate used to pick up tiny bits of evidence — in this case, what appeared to be insects. The body was then sent for an autopsy while the clothes went to Bertillon’s laboratory.

  Ashton-Wolfe described the results: “In the hair, which, although still dark at the roots, was grey at the points, were fragments of coal, sand, and sawdust. The microscope proved the coal to be anthracite; the sand, silicate, ferruginous silicate, and quartz; and the sawdust, when split with a microtome, turned out to be composed of pine and oak. The stains on the shirt were also coal, intermingled with traces of mildew. When I carried my report to my chief, I found him at work on the collodi
on slide.” 27 Bertillon reported that “the two tiny insects we found on the shirt are Anophthalmi, a species of blind beetle. Moreover, they are quite colorless — absolutely devoid of pigment. They’ve bred for generations in the dark. Taken together with the coal and sand, I should say that it proves the body was hidden for a time in a cellar or a vault. It only remains to find it.” 28

  Ashton-Wolfe commented that if they had to search all the cellars in Paris, it would be a long process. Bertillon frowned and told him, “I see you forget the formulae that apply to every premeditated murder: Who profits by the crime? and Seek the woman. One or the other will lead us to that cellar.” 29

  Chemical analysis of the dead man’s clothing provided another clue. The coat and vest were covered with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which were the bacteria used in fermenting alcohol. Bertillon surmised that the cellar they were looking for might well be in a café. Because a boat was used to transport the body, the café must be near the Seine. The oak and pine sawdust indicated that the same cellar must be used for sawing firewood.

  Bertillon’s darkroom technicians produced a reconstructed photograph of the victim’s face, and detectives began to show it around the city’s cafés. Bertillon instructed Ashton-Wolfe how to proceed. “Say that you are searching for a relative.… Take care not to let it appear that you fear something has happened to him.” 30 Bertillon believed the man was an accountant or a clerk. His boots and hands showed no signs of manual labor, and his right sleeve was fresher-looking than the left. This indicated that, like many people in clerical jobs, the victim wore a protective lustrine sleeve on the end of the arm he used to write with. A typist, on the other hand, wore lustrine sleeves on both arms. 31