“Don’t be afraid, my little one,” said the president, motioning to Vacher. “He is well guarded.”
Vacher rolled his eye grotesquely at the witness and yelled, “Look at me!”
“Do not try to intimidate this child,” said the president.
“I’m not,” said Vacher. “You’re the one who is influencing him. What he’s saying is false.”
After the lunch break, Vacher returned quietly to his bench. He held up a hand-lettered sign: “Joseph Vacher, the great martyr of our turn-of-the-century society and instrument of divine will.” He shook it at the press section to emphasize its importance.
As the spectators filed in, they left their sense of decorum outside. Perhaps it was a reaction to the horrifying testimony and the sensational newspaper coverage, or a collective unraveling from years of pent-up terror, but whatever the reason, there was more noise on this day than on the previous one, more jostling and gossiping—so much so that it became difficult to hear witnesses. People seemed barely under control. The pushing and shoving spilled into the press section, but the reporters were too busy gossiping to notice. The president called in the regiment to eject the miscreants, but after a brief lull, the ruckus began anew. “It was absolutely scandalous,” wrote the Petit Journal correspondent. Many of the women, laughing and chatting, had elbowed their way to the front rows. At one point, a witness named Marcellin Bourdin described how, when they were adolescents, Vacher tried to anally rape him. The telling was so vivid, so coarse in its details, that several women fled the courtroom, their kerchiefs pressed to their faces. The president was unforgiving. “I’m sorry, mesdames, but you were warned. This is no place for you.”
There were light moments as well, usually when a witness poked fun at the authorities, purposely or not. At one point, Charbonnier was questioning a witness who had gone to elementary school with Vacher.
“You were in class with him. Was he intelligent? Did he win prizes?”
“In our school everybody won prizes,” said the witness, triggering laughter.
A Madame Declérieux had employed young Joseph Vacher as a home helper before he joined the Marist monastery. In her deposition, she had said that she’d been afraid to leave him alone with her children, and that she’d been glad when he finally left. But on the witness stand she became confused. When the president asked her whether her statement had been true, she said, “No, monsieur,” and the audience started laughing.
“Maybe you did not understand my question,” de Coston said, trying to be helpful. “What I said was, Were you glad when he left?”
“No, monsieur.” The audience laughed heartily. Vacher guffawed with his mouth open and slapped himself repeatedly on his forehead, as if to pantomime the woman’s feeblemindedness.
The day wore on, the testimony numbing. Of course there was no doubt that Vacher was the killer, but no one had clarified the key issue before the court: whether the defendant was legally responsible. Late in the day, several members of Vacher’s former regiment approached the issue when they spoke about his irrational behavior. Vacher’s former captain, Joseph Greihammer, testified that although Vacher had been regular and punctual with his service, his brutality toward his underlings inspired such concern that it was necessary to report him to the company commanders. A soldier named Louis Guiermet, who had been Vacher’s sergeant when he entered the regiment, described how Vacher had attacked him with a razor, roaring like a beast. “It was a terrible cry, the likes of which I have never heard and which I will never forget.”
“You are mistaken,” said Vacher. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I was furious at not having been named corporal and wanted to kill myself.”
De Coston: “You wanted to kill yourself in the person of your sergeant?” Laughter.
“I maintain that I did not want to hurt you,” Vacher said to the witness. “I respected you then, and still do to this day.” Then, motioning to his former captain, he added, “I can’t say the same about that one.” More laughter.
The final and most dramatic witness of the day was Séraphin Plantier, whose battle with Vacher had led to Vacher’s arrest. He recounted the attack on his wife and his wild brawl with the defendant. At the end of his testimony, the president thanked him in the name of the court. “You have done a great favor to society,” he said.
“For me, too!” Vacher exclaimed. As the audience applauded Plantier, Vacher stood up and clapped the loudest of all, yelling, “Bravo! Bravo!”
“Except,” he added, “it was a little too late.” And then, tapping the shoulder of one of the guards, he said, “These are the guys who should have arrested me.” The audience dissolved into hilarity yet again, and on that note the day’s session concluded.
Twenty
Judgment
At the beginning of the third day of the trial, Vacher entered the courtroom and held up two signs he had printed in red crayon:
“To my parents, poor victims of the mistakes of the asylums.”
“I did not sleep one hour last night, but here I am, ready to fight.”1
This was to be the day of the doctors, the witnesses who might finally shed light on the question of Vacher’s sanity. The bailiff called Dr. Lacassagne. He entered the courtroom with the gravitas of a man of his illustrious reputation, wearing a long, dark jacket, a white shirt, and a black tie. “The doctor’s outfit should always be dignified, as for a man practicing our strict profession,” he once wrote.2 “You would recognize it as resembling that of professors of the faculty.”
Lacassagne had given much thought to the appearance and conduct of doctors in court. Truth be told, not everyone gave medicolegal specialists the respect they deserved. There had been several mistaken judgments over the years that had damaged the young profession’s credibility. In the United States, where the adversarial legal system made it customary for each side to hire its own authority, people saw medical experts as corruptible quacks.
Lacassagne felt that in order to maintain the profession’s credibility, the expert should take great care in how he presented himself. Several years earlier, he had published a lengthy journal letter to his students and colleagues on exactly how they should appear and behave. Preparation was key: The doctor should never testify offhandedly, but should rigorously prepare by reading and rereading his report before the court date. He should study it so carefully that he would be able to discuss it conversationally with the jury, without committing the “grave error” of reading every word or dwelling on every detail of the analysis. Therefore, he should make a broad but logical presentation, outlining his assignment, listing the findings, and describing the reasoning that led him to his conclusions. He should use examples and illustrations along the way.
The manner of the expert’s delivery was almost as important as the substance. It would be wrong “to seem passionate, and to come across like an auxiliary prosecutor,” wrote Lacassagne. The expert should “neither plead nor accuse.” It would be “pedantic and ridiculous.… to give a lesson to the jury on a scientific subject and speak to them as though they were students.” The doctor should use ordinary language and avoid technical expressions and jargon. “The members of the jury are good people who need clarification, but who may not be current with scientific terms,” he said. “One can be clear without being pedantic.”
The medical expert should demonstrate “prudence, sangfroid, and patience,” he wrote. “You should never advance facts of which you are not absolutely sure.” When cross-examined by judges or lawyers, “before responding, take time to reflect … take care to repeat the question to yourself, to prove that you have really understood it. Respond to all objections with calm.” He urged his colleagues to remember that lawyers “are only exercising their profession. Don’t blame them if they pose questions to us that are embarrassing and entangling.”
Lacassagne concluded that the medical expert must remain “cool and calm,” a model of impartiality whose scientific analysis would reveal the objective
truth. After all, it was the truth that should stay in the minds of the jury, despite “the talented oratory of the prosecutor, or the irresistible charm of the defense attorney.” Properly presented, science alone would provide the basis for determining innocence or guilt.
Lacassagne’s demeanor exemplified those instructions as he entered the courtroom—his dress sober, his stride confident, his gaze conveying authority and intelligence. To the judge’s questions, he responded clearly and without arrogance; to the jury, he spoke simply and with respect. He never raised his voice or became agitated or perturbed. He felt that he represented the cool light of science, and he wanted the jury to feel that, as well. Evidently, he succeeded. According to the correspondent for Le Lyon Républicain, “his deposition was made with great precision and organization and made a vivid impression on the listeners.”
The boisterous crowd had gone quiet when Lacassagne was sworn in. The bailiff handed each juror a copy of the sketches Lacassagne had commissioned to illustrate the crime scenes. No one recorded the jurors’ reactions, but one can assume they were horrified. When they recovered their composure, his testimony began.
Lacassagne described the role of the experts in this case, as well as his own job of analyzing Vacher’s behavior during the years of the killing spree. He began his narrative with Vacher’s release from the Saint-Robert asylum and described how he killed his first victim, Eugénie Delhomme. He described the forensic signs that portrayed the strangling, throat slitting, and mutilation of the body. “We found this characteristic in all the crimes that followed,” he said. Then he guided the jury through the horrifying sketches, taking them through the subsequent crime scenes one by one. He described in detail the murder of Louise Marcel and that of Augustine Mortureux, whose shoes and earrings were stolen, and how Vacher used an umbrella to hide Mortureux’s body. He continued with the murder of the widow Morand, then that of Victor Portalier, and described how the killer had used a razor to mutilate the boy’s corpse. Each time, he explained how the physical evidence at the crime scene helped him recreate the killer’s methods and state of mind.
Vacher, who had been sitting quietly for a time, now started shaking his fist at the doctor and trying to interrupt him by yelling, “Hou! Hou! Hou!”
Lacassagne moved on to the other crime scenes. He directed the jury’s attention to the sketch of Marie Moussier, who was found murdered in September 1896. He pointed out the half-moon of hatch marks on the left side of her nose, which indicated the wound pattern left by the killer’s teeth. No other cadaver exhibited those marks. The evidence showed that contrary to Vacher’s claim that he always bit his victims, she was the only victim who actually was bitten. Lacassagne noted that in the case of Victor Portalier, the mutilations were carried out with a knife or a razor, “not with the teeth, as the accused would pretend.”
“Hou! Hou! Hou!” hollered Vacher. “Wait a minute! Wait a minute while I respond! Hou! Hou!”
His yelping made a strange, rhythmic counterpoint to Lacassagne’s calm analysis. Lacassagne led the jury through the sketches of the remaining crime scenes. The common elements were so clear, he said, that it was impossible not to notice the “systematic nature” of the killing spree. “Vacher chose the sex and the age of his victims.” Gasps of horror rose from the audience. Lacassagne continued, explaining about blood patterns and the positions of wounds.
“Oh, that’s very strong!” said Vacher.
Lacassagne ignored him. “Everything was thought out by Vacher,” he continued. He explained that Vacher’s system was so brutally efficient that “none of the victims could move once the attack began.” After the murder, Vacher would disguise himself by changing his outfit and coiffure. He would put great distances between himself and the bodies, which he took care to hide “prudently” in the woods. In short, the crimes of Vacher “were not those of an alienated man, but of a sadistic, antisocial individual. He is responsible.”
“He lies!” yelled Vacher. “Come on, that’s false! Oh, my aching head!” He raised his arms in supplication to the sky and then poked his right cheek repeatedly, as if to emphasize the role of the bullet.
“The jury paid no attention to him,” wrote the correspondent for Le Lyon Républicain. “They were captivated by the powerful reasoning of Dr. Lacassagne.”
De Coston asked if Vacher bore any signs of degeneracy.
“Absolutely not. He carries no sign of hereditary damage. He is responsible.”
The judge asked about the dog bite and the remedy. Lacassagne responded that it would not be possible for a dog bite, even a rabid one, to produce the kind of transformation Vacher alleged. “In any case, he was not bitten, but licked.” He knew of no cases in which a folk remedy produced the alleged effect.
Vacher stood up with a big piece of paper, but the judge motioned for the guards to sit him back down.
Now the judge asked Lacassagne to explain sadism, which was an entirely new concept to the court.3 The doctor proceeded to give testimony that was so shocking that although newspapers alluded to his remarks, not a single one chose to recount them in detail. (Lacassagne later reproduced the substance of his testimony in a book.)
In 1892, Richard von Krafft-Ebing scandalized and titillated Europe with his study of deviant sexual behavior. Entitled Psychopathia Sexualis, it daringly explored the era’s taboos. (It quickly sold out in numerous editions and was translated into several languages.) Among the many perversities Krafft-Ebing described was sadism, which he named after the Marquis de Sade, who had practiced and written about sexual cruelty at the turn of the previous century. According to Krafft-Ebing, the two strongest impulses in human beings were anger and the sexual urge, and it was not unusual for them to be interwoven. Often these impulses overlapped in mild, healthy ways—thus the playful wrestling of lovers and young married couples, he wrote. In certain individuals the anger component became overwhelming. Those people could achieve “the state of exaltation, an intense excitation of the entire psychomotor sphere,” only by pairing or replacing the sexual act with acts of extreme cruelty.
Lacassagne explained that several varieties of sadists existed. There was the “imaginary sadist,” who, although perverted, confined his sadistic deeds to his mind; then there was the “active sadist,” who pinched or pricked women with pins. (Sadists were overwhelmingly male.) And there were “sanguinary sadists,” who committed true horrors—either torturing their victims before and during sex or killing them and sexually mutilating their bodies. These included several well-known lust murderers: Gilles de Rais, the fifteenth-century killer of children; the still-at-large Jack the Ripper of London; Vincenzo Verzeni of Italy, convicted of attacking three women and suspected of killing and mutilating three more; or young Jesse Pomeroy of Boston, fifteen years old at the time of his sentencing, who killed three children and tortured several others. All employed similar methods—murder followed by the sexual gratification achieved by mutilating the corpse. Lacassagne noted that lust murders tended to be crimes of repetition. Each attack was “accomplished in the same circumstances, executed in the same way, and showed an identical operating procedure.” Clearly, Vacher’s crimes fit that pattern, said Lacassagne, which put him in the category of a “sanguinary sadist.” Alienists did not consider sadists insane, he said, and neither should the court.
After an hour of speaking, Lacassagne stepped down. The effect of his testimony was “terrible for the accused,” according to the reporter from La Dépěche de Toulouse.
Next, Lacassagne’s colleague Dr. Fleury Rebatel took the stand. He testified about his study of Vacher’s youth and family history, which indicated that the defendant was of sound body and mind. His shooting of Louise Barant might have demonstrated temporary insanity, but his time at the Saint-Robert asylum had cured him. Dr. Auguste Pierret, the third member of the study group, spoke of Vacher’s “genuine preoccupation” with proving his insanity. “He kept saying words like ‘the proof that I am irresponsible is …’ Never does
a real alienated person act that way. Vacher is a simulator, perfectly conscious of the responsibility that he incurred.”
The last witness of the morning was Dr. Lannois, who with the aid of an X-ray, found that the bullet lodged in Vacher’s ear canal did not press on any nerves that would cause cerebral problems or insanity.
The court was adjourned for lunch. The guards were leading Vacher to a holding cell when a woman burst from the crowd and threw herself upon him, hugging and sobbing. It was his sister Olympe. “Oh, my poor brother!” she cried. “It was Dr. Dufour who, by letting you free, is the cause of this dishonor to our family!” The guards pried her off and led him away.
With the court in recess, the correspondents dashed off to file their morning dispatches. Most agreed that whatever hope Vacher might have harbored had been obliterated by the medical experts’ testimony. “The audience that just ended was by far the most important of the affair,” Le Lyon Républicain said of the morning’s proceedings. “It totally destroyed a system of defense in which Vacher pretended to be irresponsible for his acts, in which he said he was sick but not criminal. After the depositions of the experts there is nothing left of the defendant’s assertions.”
Still, a sliver of hope remained for Vacher. Two doctors who doubted his sanity were scheduled to testify that afternoon. When the court reconvened, the bailiff called Dr. Bozonet to the stand. It was Bozonet who had examined Vacher at the prison in Belley and opened the door to Dr. Madeuf, who had come from Paris to examine the prisoner. Questioned by the judge, Bozonet testified that his observations of the defendant led him to a conclusion of “diminished responsibility.”
The president offered Bozonet little of the reverence he had shown for Lacassagne. He asked Bozonet how much time he had spent with the prisoner.
The Killer of Little Shepherds Page 25
