The Killer of Little Shepherds

by Douglas Starr

  “But I assure you, mother Marcel, it was Vacher,” the neighbor said. “He confessed; he recounted it all!”

  “Charlot must have paid you to say that.… Shut up! … Get out! Charlot was the assassin; leave me in peace.”

  For his part, Charles Roux wrote to Fourquet that although he could “breathe more freely” since the confession, many of his neighbors still treated him warily.2 “I will never forget what they did to me,” he wrote.

  Things had improved slightly for Bernardin Bannier, the stolid, gruff farmer who had been falsely accused of murdering the shepherd Pierre Massot-Pellet in the hills of the Ardèche and whose house had been mobbed and stoned by his neighbors. Shortly after Vacher’s confession, Albert Sarraut of La Dépěche de Toulouse visited the town.3 The mayor told him that things had gotten calmer since the real killer confessed, but “the hate persists nonetheless.… [Bannier’s] enemies will not leave him alone. Even if one would have brought Vacher here to re-create the crime, they will settle for nothing less than the departure of Bannier.”

  Fourquet wished he could have taken Vacher to all the villages where the murders had occurred.4 He had to settle for exchanging letters with the falsely accused and local officials, assuring them that the real killer had been found.

  Besse visited the village of Étaules, near Dijon, where Augustine Mortureux had been killed as she walked through the Bois du Chêne.5 The townspeople and the unscrupulous local journalists who had scapegoated Eugène Grenier had eventually forced him to move to another village. Besse found Grenier’s country house abandoned and vandalized. He tracked down Augustine’s mother, sisters, and father and exhausted his patience trying to convince them that Vacher was the killer. “One knows what one knows,” a married sister proclaimed. The mother gave a long monologue about the horror of losing her daughter and how she’d gladly sacrifice her own head if it meant that Grenier would face the guillotine. As Besse departed, she kept shouting, “Don’t try to confuse us! Vacher had nothing to do with it! It was Grenier!”

  Grenier, who had moved to his wife’s village about twenty-five miles away, told Besse he had obtained a small measure of retribution when the editors of Le Bourguignon Salé retracted their stories and profusely apologized. The competing paper, Le Bien Public, refused to do likewise, until Grenier went to their offices and showed them the newspapers from Lyon announcing Vacher’s confessions. Only then did they publish a tiny article about Vacher, buried almost invisibly on page three. “When I tell people my story, they are so astonished they think I invented it,” said Grenier. “But no! It is real! My wrinkled forehead and white hair bear witness.”

  ——

  On arriving in Paris, Madeuf gave the left half of Vacher’s brain to Dr. Édouard Toulouse at the Villejuif asylum.* With his known opposition to capital punishment and support of Charbonnier’s appeal, Toulouse decided that in the interest of objectivity he would divide the brain into several parts and distribute each to a man with a particular expertise.6 He gave one piece to Dr. Jean-Baptiste Vincent Laborde, head of physiology in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. He shared his portion with Dr. Léonce Manouvrier, a professor in the school of anthropology in Paris. Toulouse also gave tissue samples to several other anatomists in Paris for them to conduct microscopic exams. He sent a photo of the brain and some tissue to Lombroso, who had been pestering him with requests. Altogether, at least half a dozen scientists possessed pieces of the brain. Each would produce a study that would be united into a definitive report.

  Their research reflected a fascination with the structure and function of the human brain in the late nineteenth century. Propelled in large measure by Paul Broca’s discovery of the organ’s speech center and the famous case of Phineas Gage,* scientists were learning that discrete parts of the brain controlled various functions. Criminologists wondered whether some portion of the brain might promote or inhibit violent behavior. In many countries, it became a matter of course to dissect the brains of executed criminals. In the United States, for example, surgeons dissected the brains of Charles Guiteau, who assassinated President Garfield, and Leon Czolgosz, who killed President McKinley.7 Guiteau’s brain was found to be riddled with lesions, while that of Czolgosz showed “no evidence whatever of disease or deformity.”8 (Both men were hanged.) In Vienna, neurologist Moritz Benedikt dissected scores of brains of criminals and noncriminals in an attempt to find the anatomical seat of the conscience.9 Doctors in France autopsied every criminal brain they could get hold of, providing that the criminal or next of kin gave permission. Lacassagne abhorred the legal provision.10 He felt that condemned murderers should have no choice in the matter—cerebral autopsies would be useful to science and would serve as a further discouragement to criminals.

  The most sought-after brains were those of intellectuals, which were rare and difficult to obtain. In 1876, a colleague of Broca at the Society of Anthropology in Paris tried to ameliorate the situation by organizing a group called the Mutual Autopsy Society—a circle of colleagues who pledged to dissect one another’s brains after they died.11* Its members included many of the era’s great intellectuals, including the anthropologist Paul Topinard, Laborde, and three members of the Bertillon family—Alphonse, his father, and his brother. Broca took part in several of the society’s dissections and donated his own brain to the group when he died. One of the most prominent members was Léon Gambetta, a statesman revered for his oratorical abilities. After observing the dissection of Gambetta’s brain, Laborde declared that Gambetta’s speech center was “the most developed and most complete that had ever been witnessed.”12

  It was no surprise, then, that so many interested parties wanted a piece of Vacher’s brain: Its tissue might hold the secrets that would explain one of the century’s most notorious killers. Madeuf and other opponents of capital punishment also had a political motive. They hoped that finding lesions or deformities would discredit Lacassagne’s report and prove that, just as with Menesclou, a man with brain damage had been unjustly put to death. Yet given all the manhandling Vacher’s brain had endured during the examination to date, it is hard to imagine what these scientists expected to discover. Dr. Boyer, of Lacassagne’s laboratory, who had taken part in the original autopsy, said the only thing the new studies would prove would be the folly of the microscopic exams.13

  Boyer’s reservations notwithstanding, the press eagerly anticipated the studies. On January 3, Le Petit Journal leaked the titillating news that Toulouse had found certain “adherences” on the brain.14 Several days later, the newspaper came out with a contradictory report, saying that Manouvrier had found neither lesions nor depressions and that he believed in the killer’s “complete responsibility.”15 Laborde, meanwhile, promised that his group would provide some definitive answers in the next several weeks.

  In early 1899, Lacassagne published a book entitled Vacher l’éventreur et les crimes sadiques (Vacher the Ripper and Sadistic Crimes), which told the story of Vacher’s killings and his capture and reviewed the evidence that had persuaded Lacassagne that Vacher was only faking insanity.16 The book included Lacassagne’s pen-and-ink sketches of the crime scenes. Even those simple drawings have the power to shock, and they impress the reader with their repetitive similarity. Lacassagne included writings from other authors on vagabonds and sadism, as well as an eyewitness account of Vacher’s execution.

  The book received laudatory reviews in the scientific and legal communities, but some colleagues, while admiring it, also expressed doubts. “Your work on Vacher is very profound and seems—at first reading—quite prudent,” wrote the jurist, sociologist, and philosopher Gabriel Tarde, a friend of Lacassagne.17 “But I find myself on the fence on this problem of mental alienation.” Dr. Paul-Louis Ladame, a neurologist at the University of Geneva, wrote a letter to Lacassagne in which he called the study “a classic.”18 Ladame opposed the death penalty, but he admitted that, given the evidence, “it was impossible for you to pronounce anything other than what you foun
d.” Still, he pondered the question of sanity and free will: If someone seemed genuinely programmed to kill, could he still be called legally responsible? By means of analogy, he asked, “Are tigers responsible?”

  On June 15, 1899, Laborde and his collaborators published the first in their collection of reports, which found no significant abnormalities.19 In one study, Manouvrier noted that Vacher’s brain actually was “slightly larger than average,” although he ascribed no particular importance to that observation.20 He noted the complexity of the folds, which gave the impression of “rather elevated organization.” Overall, though, his findings were “negative” for pathology.

  Laborde, too, found “no alterations characteristic of disease”; on the contrary, he found that certain brain areas seemed highly developed.21 The speech region, or Broca’s area (located under the left temple, about two inches behind the eye), actually seemed larger and more convoluted than normal. Apparently mistaking Vacher’s incoherent ramblings for eloquence, he linked the murderer’s speech centers to an elevated verbal capacity. Laborde also found a highly developed motor center of the brain, which he linked to Vacher’s ability to walk long distances.*

  Lombroso, who had been hard at work microscopically examining his tissue samples, weighed in with a study that predictably classified Vacher as a born criminal.22 He announced that he found an atrophy of certain layers of the frontal lobe (the most “evolved” part of the brain, behind the forehead) and an unusual proliferation of microscopic pyramidal cells, which were thought to play a role in excitation. Such findings, he asserted, were characteristic of “epileptics and born criminals.” The French were dismissive. “What a phony!” wrote Manouvrier after reading Lombroso’s article in La Revue scientifique.23 The commentary would have a “stupefying effect if we didn’t already know the value of his affirmations.” A French journalist wrote, “But everyone knows that Lombroso sees born criminals everywhere.”24

  By late July, scientists were getting no closer to consensus. Toulouse and his team released a full version of their study, which only added to the growing confusion.25 Despite the “adherences” they originally reported, they now found the brain to be relatively normal, despite a couple of unexpected anomalies. One of these was a thickening of the meninges, the membranes between the brain and the skull, often seen in the brain of syphilitics. Another was the proliferation of amyloid corpuscles—tiny starchy bodies commonly found in the brains of the elderly but almost never in someone Vacher’s age. The killer seemed to have the brain of an old man.* One writer quipped that perhaps it was the brain of a dirty old man. “But one can be a dirty old man, even in a young skin, without feeling the need to eviscerate young people by the dozen.”26

  As the discussions moved forward, the arguments became more convoluted, the passions more heated, and the public less patient with what the scientists had to say—especially since no lesions or deformities had been found in Vacher’s brain. Toulouse had voiced doubts from the beginning about finding such abnormalities.27 He had spent years working with patients at the asylum, many of whom died in confinement. None of their brains had revealed any lesions or deformities: Why should Vacher’s be any different?

  Laborde, on the other hand, had reversed his original premise to continue to make the case against capital punishment.28 He asserted that the lack of any lesions did not demonstrate the absence of insanity; it proved only that Vacher’s madness arose from invisible, functional causes. Brain structure did not matter anymore; it was the killer’s history and symptoms that proved derangement. The fact that Vacher’s crimes were premeditated and systematic “does not take away from their fundamentally delusional character,” he wrote. The man was insane, and rather than being sent to the guillotine, he should have been imprisoned for life, with no possibility of release. Since no suitable facility existed in France, the government could set up a colony for people like Vacher, perhaps in “a little corner of Devil’s Island.” Then Laborde took a swipe at Lacassagne, asserting that the professor and his colleagues would have concluded the same had they not been so influenced by “popular opinion” and the “multiplicity and horrible nature” of the crimes.

  On March 20, 1900, Laborde presented an updated version of his report to the Academy of Medicine in Paris.29 Once again, he cast doubt on Lacassagne’s ability to remain objective in such a highly fraught case. He returned to his discussion of Vacher’s advanced speech centers. And then, perhaps caught up in his own soaring rhetoric, Laborde took his arguments too far. In making his point about Vacher’s speech centers, he compared them to those of Léon Gambetta, who, in addition to his other distinctions, happened to have been a boyhood friend of Lacassagne. Indeed, under different circumstances, argued Laborde, Vacher could have become a statesman or orator.

  With the use of that comparison, the conference erupted.30 Was Laborde really suggesting that a sexually depraved murderer had something in common with a founding member of the modern French Republic? The very idea insulted the other members, and threatened the credibility of the profession. Laborde had never seen Vacher or heard his rants about being an anarchist of God; how could he make such an outrageous comparison? “His argument is weak, logorrheic, and shows that he knows absolutely nothing,” declared Dr. Auguste Motet, to loud applause. Manouvrier, who had seen the brains of both Vacher and Gambetta, previously had stated that the two organs had nothing in common.31 “I said that one could discuss the question of mental alienation indefinitely [and not] arrive at a scientific solution,” he wrote to Lacassagne.32 As for his own feelings about Vacher’s legal responsibility: “I see no reason to pit myself against the competent opinion of the experts who were there and could examine the case with their own eyes.”

  People were gearing up for a battle. “I think Laborde has gotten in over his head in this affair,” Dr. Paul Dubuisson wrote to Lacassagne the day after the meeting.33 “When are you coming to Paris to defend yourself against Laborde? Let me know soon so I can help in your fight.”

  Motet wrote to Lacassagne, describing his confrontation with Laborde and the applause he’d received when he defended the professor. “I energetically protested … that [your] expertise was conducted with all prudence, with all science, and with all the conscientiousness that you bring to every affair that you take part in.…34 My dear friend, is that enough to avenge you regarding these grotesque incidents surrounding the examination of the brain of Vacher?”

  Alphonse Bertillon wrote to Lacassagne that “affairs of this type” only served to make cerebral autopsies “forever seem ridiculous” and tarnished the public image of their profession.35 “I think Laborde missed an excellent opportunity to shut up.”

  There is no record of how Lacassagne responded. Perhaps with his expert testimony and his book, he felt he had written everything he needed to say about the affair. Or maybe he sensed that the public had tired of the matter. The monster was dead, citizens were safe, and it was time to move on. The popular press lost interest, as well. Indeed, if the press of the day portrayed public sentiment, people saw this kind of endless discussion as sophistry typical of the intelligentsia. The newspaper L’écho de Paris reflected that view with a satirical column lampooning both alienists and jurists. It was no accident that the dunce cap passed so effortlessly from one expert to the other:

  MAGISTRATE: Eh bien, my dear sir, have you examined the brain of Vacher?36

  DOCTOR: I know it like the inside of my own pocket.

  MAGISTRATE: What is the result of this study?

  DOCTOR: I will publish it in several days.

  MAGISTRATE: In the meantime, just give me the headlines.

  DOCTOR: You will see it in my review. That way you will understand it better.

  MAGISTRATE: Will I be upset to know who it is that we have condemned to death?

  DOCTOR: … You condemned someone to death without really knowing?

  MAGISTRATE: I just need to know whether we condemned a wretch capable of all these crimes, or a lunatic
, a simple lunatic.

  DOCTOR: Maybe you should have learned that first!

  MAGISTRATE: First it was important to avenge society.… Now that society has been avenged, these little scientific discussions become more interesting. And they can help us for the next time.…[So], yes or no, have we guillotined an insane man?

  DOCTOR (coolly): No.

  MAGISTRATE: Good! Because I have to say, that was bothering me a bit.

  DOCTOR (exploding): No, Monsieur Magistrate, you did not cut off the head of an insane man! … You cut off the head of something better than that.… You cut off the head of a child, a veritable baby; a creature less responsible for his acts than a two-year-old, a man incapable of even killing a fly. That’s what was clearly revealed by the brain of Vacher, sir!

  MAGISTRATE (stunned): Nevertheless, he was the killer of shepherds … that is undeniable!

  DOCTOR: Yes, he might have disemboweled some shepherds … the examination of his brain does not say that he did not … but [it also] indicates as clear as day that he would not have been capable of doing any harm to a fly sitting on the head of one of those shepherds.

  Paul Brouardel, by then an elder scientific statesman and the recently elected president of the French Association for the Advancement of Sciences, knew that continued argument would be damaging. He urged his colleagues to de-escalate. “Laborde’s intervention is very annoying,” he conceded, yet to continue any further debate “would only reflect badly on us all.”37

  In truth, they could have argued indefinitely. The mystery of what had motivated Vacher could no more be solved by dissecting his brain than it had been by interviewing him during his lifetime. Lacassagne had spent months trying to penetrate the man’s thinking. Failing to make any headway with discussion, he turned to the physical evidence from the crime scenes. There he found a pattern: a systematic ability to plan; the work of a criminal who, despite the “rage” that overtook him, was conscious of his actions and stood the test of legal responsibility. One might argue that however methodical, Vacher nonetheless acted under a compulsion; or that perhaps he was only intermittently sane, as his encounters with the country’s mental health institutions would suggest. Yet given the laxity of the country’s asylums, Lacassagne felt that he must not err on the side of the defendant; there simply was no secure place to imprison him. The scientist retreated; the protector stepped forward … and so to the guillotine. Yet even Lacassagne seemed to worry if his analysis, although legally justified, was morally correct. “We are convinced at having told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” he wrote somewhat defensively.38 “After having been made aware of our efforts we hope one would come to agree that if we were mistaken, it was certainly in good faith.”