The Killer of Little Shepherds

by Douglas Starr

  On December 2, the appeals court in Paris found no legal irregularities in the trial and upheld the conviction. The case moved to the office of Félix Faure, president of the Republic, who had the power to grant clemency. Charbonnier bombarded Faure’s office with reports and letters from supporting alienists. “Vacher is insane.8 That is the conviction of Dr. Toulouse and most of his colleagues,” he insisted in one of his missives. “That is the opinion of all men who reflect on it.”

  Two days later, he wrote again to Faure, worried that his client’s spirits had collapsed. Vacher, “who formerly would flood my office with correspondence, has completely stopped writing to me.”9 Vacher’s last communication had been a simple, terse telegram: “I am innocent. You are free to do what you have to do.” Charbonnier continued: “Isn’t this attitude strange on the part of the man who ought to be motivated by the instinct for self-preservation?”

  Meanwhile, Dr. Madeuf had stayed true to his commitment to use science to prove his case. He contacted Vacher’s brother and sister and asked for exclusive permission to autopsy their brother’s brain in the event of his execution.10 Eager to protect the family’s honor, they agreed. Furthermore, under the agreement, the three alienists who prepared the expert report on their brother could neither touch his body nor be present at the autopsy. If Madeuf could not prove Vacher’s insanity during the man’s lifetime, he would not abandon the effort after his death.

  In mid-December, three officials in the Justice Ministry who gave advice on presidential pardons reviewed the Vacher case. There, in the tranquil halls of Paris, hundreds of miles away from the screaming mobs and traumatized villagers, they looked dispassionately at Charbonnier’s documents, and saw merit. They concluded that the multiplicity and nature of the crimes “cast doubt on whether [Vacher] was in full possession of his mental faculties.”11 Rather than impose the death penalty, they recommended a life sentence of forced labor. This recommendation was a strange compromise. While recognizing the defendant’s insanity, it did not adhere to Article 64 of the French legal code, which stipulated that if the accused was insane at the time of the incident, a crime was not considered to have been committed. The panel was attempting to work around that provision: acknowledging the defendant’s insanity while somehow protecting the citizens from its consequences.

  The compromise could not work. President Faure knew that Vacher might escape, and should that occur, the public would demand not only Vacher’s execution but, politically, his own. And so Faure, deciding to let justice “follow its course,” declined to sign the recommendation.12 All avenues for appeal and clemency had closed. The execution was scheduled for December 31, 1898, in Bourg-en-Bresse. It would take place in a field a few blocks from the local courthouse, where the regiment had traditionally drilled.

  ——

  Louis-Antoine-Stanislas Deibler was never popular with the French public, although no one would have doubted his necessity.13 As the country’s executioner in chief, he rid society of some of its most dangerous elements. In the course of a forty-five-year career, Deibler dispatched more than 150 miscreants, nearly 80 in partnership with his son, who eventually succeeded him. He decapitated murderers such as Michel Eyraud, the mastermind of the case of the bloody trunk, and Victor Prévost, a policeman who killed a jeweler and his wife and was caught stuffing their body parts down a sewer. Deibler dropped the blade on the era’s most dangerous terrorists, too. Yet the public never found him particularly artistic. He cut a dour figure with his beard, top hat, old-fashioned overcoat, and ever-present umbrella. Also, he was clumsy and slow. During his first appearance as chief executioner, Deibler created a maladroit impression. The convicted man struggled violently—so much so that Deibler had no choice but to grab him by the hair, bash his head repeatedly against the ground, and then position the stunned prisoner in the apparatus. After that, Deibler never could shake the image of seeming gauche.

  In 1897, at the age of seventy-four, Deibler was performing a routine guillotinage, but on a criminal who had been positioned in such a way that when the blade fell, the man’s blood showered the executioner’s face. Deibler was never the same after that. He developed a phobia of blood, and would wash his hands compulsively, trying to remove the imaginary stains. He retired in December 1897. But Vacher was so important that the government called Deibler back for the last execution of his career.

  To some degree, Deibler’s unpopularity reflected a growing distaste for capital punishment, as social scientists questioned the moral effects of public executions and as the seeds of an abolitionist movement were sprouting. Execution—once employed for crimes as diverse as political agitation, theft, and derailing a train—was now rarely prescribed, and often waived for extenuating circumstances. The number of executions declined from more than seventy per year in the early part of the century to no more than four or five annually by the time of Vacher’s trial.14 However, the practice still enjoyed wide support.

  Even within the pro-execution majority, though, people searched for ways to make the punishment more humane. Certainly the guillotine was sure and swift, but did it cause even a moment of suffering? Witnesses had observed twitching in the faces of decapitated criminals, suggesting that the brain retained enough neural activity to give the executed person a brief awareness of his or her fate.15* Subsequent experiments with laboratory animals showed that the movements were nothing more than residual reflexes and bore no relation to consciousness or pain.

  Meanwhile, a new device appeared in the United States that promised to bring capital punishment into the modern era.16 In 1886, after a series of botched hangings in New York, the state’s governor convened a commission to choose a more compassionate form of execution. At the time, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were marketing competing systems to distribute electricity: Edison’s used direct current (DC) and Westinghouse’s used alternating current (AC). Eager to portray Westinghouse’s system as dangerous, Edison embarked on a campaign of publicizing AC-related deaths. An engineer from New York learned about the demonstrations and began working out of Edison’s lab to develop an efficient method for capital punishment. The result was a heavy wooden chair with electrical contacts positioned at the head and at the small of the back, designed to send more than a thousand volts of AC current through the body.

  The first electrocution took place on August 6, 1890, at New York’s Auburn prison, where William Kemmler was executed for murdering his mistress. It required two 1,300-volt shocks over several minutes to complete, the sight of which sickened observers. A year later, four murderers were put to death more efficiently at New York’s Sing Sing prison, and electrocution soon became de rigueur in the United States.

  Europeans shied away from this new American technology. Henri Coutagne, a colleague of Lacassagne, worried that the effects of the device were so undramatic—a spastic stiffening of the body—that it would not discourage potential murderers.17 Lombroso thought it cruel to make a prisoner wait in terror during the minutes it took to adjust and test the straps and electrodes.18 He proposed instead an overdose of chloroform or ether, “producing asphyxiation in the course of long and pleasant hallucinations.” The chaplain of La Roquette prison in Paris thought the very idea of electrocution appalling. Where was the simple purity in walking with the condemned man to the guillotine, hearing his prayers and final confessions, knowing the final moment would be quick? What manner of comfort could he offer the prisoner during those long minutes of being strapped to a chair?

  Electric execution is odious, and revolts me.19 I would never acknowledge that one could kill individuals, even criminals, like poor animals that were placed in a bell jar to be killed with an electric spark. It is against the laws of humanity and religion. One cannot refuse a man his final moments to collect himself before death.

  Lacassagne, who found the technology intriguing, wrote an analysis in which he reviewed all five of the American executions to date, along with the voltages, contact times, and postmortem st
udies.20 He noted that the first execution took not one shock, but two, and that rabbits electrocuted in the lab could sometimes be revived with artificial respiration. He concluded that although electrocution seemed a promising technology, it might not be as foolproof as the Americans would like to think. And so the guillotine remained the instrument of choice.

  December 31, 1898, in Bourg-en-Bresse was not the kind of day one would want to wake up to, especially if it was one’s last day on Earth: dismal and cold, with heavy gray clouds and bone-chilling sleet. But the weather did not discourage thousands from gathering at the Champs de Mars, site of the execution. Hours before dawn, Deibler and his team had begun setting up the guillotine in flickering lantern light.

  Executions attracted the worst kind of crowds. For years, lawmakers had tried to get the Justice Ministry to move all executions inside the prisons, but they were overruled by those who felt that public executions set an example. Still, lawmakers managed to persuade officials to stop advertising the events and to schedule them at short notice and inconvenient times.21

  Nonetheless, an estimated 3,500 spectators packed the two-hundred-meter-long square. People had been waiting shoulder-to-shoulder. So many had climbed the chestnut trees to watch that reporters compared them to clusters of fruit. Ladders poked up here and there in the crowd, and public benches had been piled into pyramids. As always at such events—inexplicably—the women had forced their way to the front. There was a usual ugliness to the crowd, a nastiness that reeked of barbarity. “The spectacle of the crowd teaming around the guillotine is sad and depressing!”22 wrote Alexandre Bérard, a public official in the department of Ain, who had attended executions as part of his official functions. He hated those spectators, who evoked in him and his fellow officials “feelings of disgust”:

  Capital execution, the supreme act of human justice, should be surrounded by a religious respect. But for the mob it is nothing but a thrilling spectacle, an occasion to demonstrate their vile appetite for blood. Surrounding the guillotine … prostitutes, pimps, con artists … those who have no moral sense and are drawn by an unseemly curiosity. For them, this is an occasion for a monstrous Saturnalia … an orgy [with] the most horrible and base instincts of the raging beast.

  At 6:15 a.m., Louis Ducher and three other officials entered the cell where Vacher was sleeping.23 Ducher touched his shoulder. “Your appeal and request for pardon have been rejected,” he said. “Get up and be quick about it.”

  Vacher awoke. “Okay, I am ready,” he said. “Do with me what you will.” He got up, dressed, and went to wash up. “Why did they make me leave the asylum before my complete cure?” he complained. The prison chaplain approached him with a crucifix. “Vacher, you have always shown religious sentiments. Would you like to reconcile yourself with God and accept the succor of religion?” Vacher reflected a moment but refused. “I am innocent and have no need of Christ. Death does not scare me. Soon I will meet God, and He will say mass for me.”

  He declined the traditional drink of rum. Then he walked to the room where Anatole Deibler, the chief executioner’s son, was waiting to ritualistically cut off his shirt collar and trim the hair on the back of his neck. “I should have gotten a haircut yesterday,” Vacher joked.

  As they walked him through the prison door, he proclaimed to some people waiting there, “Here comes the victim of the mistakes of the asylums!”

  Deibler’s son and another assistant led Vacher onto the waiting buckboard. The procession clip-clopped through the cobblestone streets—Vacher lying bound in the wagon, Deibler leading the horse, the priest walking and muttering prayers, and two dozen mounted police riding in security columns alongside. Vacher asked if he could address the crowd when they arrived at the square. Deibler, against protocol, agreed. The priest offered the crucifix to Vacher, who refused to kiss it, saying, “It’s useless.” When the priest again tried to exhort him with prayers, Vacher told him to be quiet so he could concentrate on preparing his remarks.

  Soon the narrow byway opened onto the expanse of the square. “There he is!” someone yelled out, and the crowd roared at the sight. “Death! Death to Vacher! Death to the criminal!” As Vacher approached the guillotine, the energy suddenly drained from him. Turning to the young Deibler, he said, “You know that I absolutely refuse to walk. I will not resist, but you’re going to have to carry me.” In that case, said Deibler, he would not allow Vacher to address the crowd. “So be it,” said the prisoner. “Too bad for society.”

  Those were the final words of Joseph Vacher.

  A cordon of soldiers had been surrounding the guillotine, watching Deibler and his assistants. They made an opening to allow the wagon through and then turned to face the mob. Vacher, now limp, seemed to lose track of his circumstances. The priest pressed the crucifix against his lips; he did not resist, nor did he kiss it. The aides hoisted Vacher out of the wagon and carried him to the death machine. He made an ungainly parcel, with his feet in the air and his head near the ground. They placed him on the hinged bench, the bascule, near the base of the guillotine and tipped it down to its horizontal position. Vacher was groaning like an animal whose leg had been caught in a trap. “The coward!” roared some people in the crowd. “He does not know how to die properly!” The executioners lowered the lunette, the wooden bracket that holds the prisoner’s head in position. At exactly 7:03, Deibler senior pulled a handle. There was a swoosh and a thunk; and the mob, which had never stopped screaming, burst forth with an even wilder, unanimous “Bravo! Bravo!” Slowly, they dispersed, excitedly chattering about Deibler’s farewell performance.

  Vacher’s body and head were taken to the local hospital. Madeuf was in charge now. He barred the three doctors who had prepared the expert report but permitted them to send representatives. (Lacassagne sent Dr. Jean Boyer, who had performed the autopsy on Pierre Laurent and had done the study of the bones in the well.) Despite being excluded, Lacassagne was more confident than ever of his conclusions—borne out, he asserted, by Vacher’s final moments. “He did not die like an insane person, with a haughtiness of the mystic or the dignity of an individual who thinks himself a martyr,” wrote Lacassagne, quoting a newspaper account.24 Like any normal person, Vacher was overcome by terror as he approached the guillotine. His very cowardice in the end demonstrated his sanity to Lacassagne.

  Over the next three and a half hours, the doctors carefully dissected the body.25 The heart and lungs were vigorous and strong. The stomach was empty, the digestive track clean. The reproductive organs showed evidence of venereal disease: The right testicle was almost completely atrophied and the left showed signs of an old operation. That would explain why, although Boyer had noted what appeared to be semen stains on the pants of Pierre Laurent, his microscopic exam found no spermatozoa. The killer of little shepherds must have been sterile.*

  Then the doctors turned their attention to the brain. A photographer made images and a craftsman made plaster casts. The doctors announced that the brain weighed a “normal” fifteen hundred grams and, to the naked eye at least, showed no abnormal adhesions or lesions. Commenting on the findings, Le Petit Journalconcluded that the debate about Vacher’s sanity effectively had ended. “The jurors of Ain can sleep without fear [knowing that] their verdict fell on a criminal and not an insane man.”26

  But the debate was not over. That night, Madeuf boarded the train for Paris, carrying a sealed cooking pot covered with official seals and stamps.27 In it was the head of Joseph Vacher.

  * Witnesses claimed that the severed head of Charlotte Corday blushed in indignation when the executioner’s assistant held it by the hair in front of the jeering mob and smacked it. (“Revue des livres: La Mort par la décapitation,” Annales d’hygiène publique et de médecine légale 3d ser., no. 2 [1889]: 187.)

  * Based on the autopsy, Vacher probably had advanced syphilis and advanced gonorrhea, which would have rendered him sterile.

  Part Three

  Aftermath

  The stor
y of this criminal, this series of heinous crimes, will always be noted as among the most astonishing examples of human perversity.

  —Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, 1899

  Twenty-two

  The Mystery of a Murderer’s Brain

  The arrest, conviction, and execution of Vacher brought little closure. After his confessions, reporters had traveled to the villages where the killer had struck to hear people’s reactions to the news. The journalists were especially keen to visit places where innocent citizens had been accused of the murders. Would their neighbors apologize?

  Jules Besse visited the area in southern France where thirteen-year-old Louise Marcel had been dragged into a sheep barn and slaughtered.1 The man who found the body, Charles Roux, had been falsely accused and imprisoned, after which his community shunned him. The trauma had broken the health of Louise’s mother. Besse reported that a neighbor tried to give her the news of the execution as she lay on her deathbed. She interrupted him, crying, “Have you come to tell me that they’re going to cut off the head of this criminal Charlot [Charles Roux]?”

  The neighbor tried to explain that Roux had not committed the murder; a man named Joseph Vacher had confessed.

  “Who is this Vacher?”

  “A drifter,” he said.

  The poor lady raised herself out of bed and began to laugh like a madwoman. “Ah! Ah! Vacher! A drifter! Ah! Ah! It’s Charlot, Charlot, Charlot! … Bring me this brigand, this butcher of children!”