14 AN IMPROVEMENT OVER THE LIFE VICTOR PORTALIER: “Rapport d’enquěte, Gendarmerie nationale à Trévoux” (interviews with Marie Lachal, Victor Mamian, parish priest M. Morel, Claude Sevrat, and M. Chambon), September 10, 1895, in Archives départementales de l’Ain, 146–49, “Renseignements sur la mère de Portalier.”
15 VICTOR’S REMAINS: Fourquet, Vacher, pp. 182–87; “Un Crime horrible,” Le Progrès, September 3, 1895.
16 “WE ARRIVED AT A HUGE WALNUT TREE”: Alexandre Lacassagne, Vacher l’éventreur et les crimes sadiques (Lyon: A. Storck, 1899), p. 90.
17 “WHAT DEMON PUSHED THIS MONSTROUS MURDERER”: “Le Tueur de bergers,” Le Progrès, November 6, 1897.
18 MORE THAN 150 ARMED PEOPLE: Fourquet, Vacher, p. 187.
19 HE SENT OUT A STRIKINGLY AC CURATE DESCRIPTION: “Homicide à Bénonces commis le 31 août 1895, signalement de l’auteur présumé,” Archives départementales de l’Ain, 1–145, “Pièces de forme.”
20 MARIE PINET: Testimony of the widow Portalier to tribunal in Trévoux, September 8, 1895, Archives départementales de l’Ain, 146–49, “Renseignements sur la mère de Portalier.”
21 “PLEASE GIVE THEM BACK TO ME”: ibid.
22 “I MUST HAVE SUBTLY CHANGED COLOR”: Testimony of Claudine Suchet, September 10, 1895, Archives départementales de l’Ain, 146–49, “Renseignements sur la mère de Portalier.”
10. NEVER WITHOUT A TRACE
1 RUE DE LA VILLETTE: The details of this case are taken from Alexandre Lacassagne, “Affaire de la rue Villette,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1901): 33–42.
2 LACASSAGNE URGED GREATER COLLABORATION: Alexandre Lacassagne, “Une Nouvelle Série des archives,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1893): 5.
3 HE DEVOTED EIGHTY-ONE PAGES: Hans Gross, Criminal Investigation: A Practical Textbook for Magistrates, Police Officers and Lawyers: Translated and Adapted to Indian and Colonial Practice from the System der Kriminalistik (Madras: A. Krashnamachari, 1906), pp. 149–230.
4 INTERNATIONAL UNION OF CRIMINAL LAW: Jean-Henri Bercher, “étude médicolégale de l’oeuvre de Conan Doyle et de la police scientifique au XXe siècle” (master’s thesis, Faculté de Médecine et de Pharmacie de Lyon, 1907), p. 66.
5 “LOCARD EXCHANGE PRINCIPLE”: W. Jerry Chisum and Brent E. Turvey, “Evidence Dynamics: Locard’s Exchange Principle & Crime Reconstruction,” Journal of Behavioral Profiling 1, no. 1 (January 2000).
6 MICROSCOPE TECHNOLOGY MADE A HUGE LEAP IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: “Carl Zeiss—A History of a Most Respected Name in Optics,” available at http://www.company7.com/zeiss/history.html.
7 “THIS HAPPENS MORE FREQUENTLY THAN ONE WOULD BELIEVE”: Gross, Criminal Investigation, p. 134.
8 CITED A CASE IN NORWICH, ENGLAND: Frank Winthrop Draper,A Text-Book of Legal Medicine (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1905), p. 187.
9 GROSS CITED THE CASE OF A JACKET: Gross, Criminal Investigation, p. 145.
10 J. IZAAK VAN DEEN: Alexandre Lacassagne, Vade-mecum du médecin-expert (Lyon: A. Storck, 1892), p. 60; Alfred Swaine Taylor, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, 12th ed. (New York: Lea Brothers, 1897), p. 281.
11 GEORGE GULLIVER: Allan McLane Hamilton, A System of Legal Medicine (New York: E. B. Treat, 1900), p. 172; Alexandre Lacassagne, Précis de médecine judiciaire, deuxième édition (Paris: G. Masson, 1886), pp. 218–25.
12 “I … MYSELF SPENT THREE WEEKS”: Dr. Albert Florence, “Du sperme et des taches de sperme en médecine légale,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1895): 418.
13 “INCONTESTABLY THE PROCEDURE OF CHOICE”: ibid., p. 249.
14 FOOTPRINTS LEFT IMPORTANT CLUES: Lacassagne, Précis de médecine judiciaire, pp. 233–36.
15 A SURPRISING NUMBER OF MURDERERS WENT BAREFOOT: Lacassagne, Vademecum du médecin-expert, p. 57; R. Forgeot, “étude médico-légale des empreintes peu visibles ou invisibles et révélées par des procédés spéciaux,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1891): 387–404.
16 “THERE IS A PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE FOOT”: Henri Coutagne and Albert Florence, “Les Empreintes dans les expertises judiciaires,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1889): 25.
17 “MAN OF DISTINCTION”: Coutagne and Florence, “Les Empreintes dans les expertises judiciaires,” p. 42.
18 “METRIC PHOTOGRAPHY”: Louis Tomellini, “Photographie métrique (système Bertillon),” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1908): 149.
19 “THE EYE SEES ONLY”: Bercher, “étude médico-légale de l’oeuvre de Conan-Doyle,” p. 84 (Lacassagne’s handwritten comment).
20 “HIS CONVERSATION, I REMEMBER”: Jennifer Michael Hecht, The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 165.
21 “RECOGNIZING, AS I DO”: ibid.
22 “ONE MUST KNOW HOW TO DOUBT”: Jürgen Thorwald, The Century of the Detective (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), p. 128.
23 “A VERITABLE ROBINSON CRUSOE OF LEGAL MEDICINE”: Bercher, “étude médico-légale de l’oeuvre de Conan-Doyle,” p. 11.
24 “IF A HERD OF BUFFALO HAD PASSED”: Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, in The Illustrated Sherlock Holmes Treasury (New York: Chatham River Press, 1986), p. 649.
25 “THERE IS NO BRANCH OF DETECTIVE SCIENCE”: ibid.
26 SOMETIMES THE OPINIONS OF HOLMES AND LACASSAGNE WERE STRIKINGLY SIMILAR: Bercher, “étude médico-légale de l’oeuvre de Conan Doyle,” pp. 16–19.
27 “ACCURATE BUT UNSYSTEMATIC”: Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, p. 642.
28 BERCHER FOUND IT PARTICULARLY GALLING: Bercher, “étude médico-légale de l’oeuvre de Conan Doyle,” p. 20.
29 LACASSAGNE ALSO INVESTIGATED A SUDDEN DEATH: Alexandre Lacassagne, “Empoisonnement par la strychnine—erreur pharmaceutique,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1888): 503–19.
30 “ONE CAN LEARN CRAFT”: Bercher, “étude médico-légale de l’oeuvre de Conan-Doyle,” p. 13 (Lacassagne’s handwritten comment).
31 THE KILLER OF MADAME FOUCHERAND: Lacassagne, “Affaire de la rue Villette,” pp. 33–42.
32 “THESE OBSERVATIONS GAVE NO RESULTS”: ibid., p. 39.
33 IT HAS BEEN HANGING IN THE DISPLAY CASE: Author’s notes, recorded a École nationale supérieure de Police, Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d’Or, France, June 23, 2006.
11. IN PLAIN SIGHT
1 “HE TOLD ME THAT HE’D HAD AN ACCIDENT”: Émile Fourquet, Vacher: Le Plus Grand Criminel des temps modernes par son juge d’instruction (Besançon, France: Jacques et Demontrond, 1931), pp. 190–93.
2 BODY OF ALINE ALAISE: Alexandre Lacassagne, Vacher l’éventreur et les crimes sadiques (Lyon: A. Storck, 1899), pp. 29–31, 92–95.
3 FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD SHEPHERD NAMED PIERRE MASSOT-PELLET: Details regarding the murder are taken from the following sources: ibid, 196; “Un Berger assassiné,” Le Progrès, October 12, 1895.
4 PIERRE WATCHED THE SHEEP: M. Laurent-Martin, Le Roi des assassins: La Vie errante et mystérieuse de Vacher l’éventreur (Paris: Librairie Universelle, 1897), pp. 152–53.
5 PUBLIC OPINION ALIGHTED ON A SUSPECT: Fourquet, Vacher, pp. 198–205; “Le Tueur de bergers,” La Dépěche de Toulouse, October 26, 1897, November 6, 1897; “Le Tueur de bergers,” Le Petit Parisien, October 23, 1897.
6 “BUT, JUDGE,” HE REPLIED: Fourquet, Vacher, p. 198.
7 “YOU COULD IMAGINE SUCH SAVAGE AND BARBARIC DEMONSTRATIONS”: Laurent-Martin, Le Roi des assassins, p. 162.
8 “CLOUD OF VAGABONDS”: Jules Besse, Le Tueur de bergers (Paris: Schwarz, 1897), pp. 806–7.
9 MEDIEVAL-ERA FEARS AND SUPERSTITION: Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 22–37.
10 “DO NOT BELIEVE IN WITCHES”: Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1976), p. 21.
11 “IN THE NAÏVETÉ OF HIS UNJUST MARTYRDOM”: A
lbert Sarraut, “Le Tueur de bergers,” La Dépěche de Toulouse, November 6, 1897.
12 TWELVE-YEAR-OLD ALPHONSINE DEROUET: Tribunal de Belley, “Tentative de viol,” in “Dossier administratif de l’affaire Vacher,” Archives du Rhône; Lacassagne, Vacher l’éventreur et les crimes sadiques, p. 7.
13 WHEN THE GENDARME STARTED QUESTIONING: Lacassagne, Vacher l’éventreur et les crimes sadiques, p. 7.
14 FRENCH POLICE WERE BARELY COMPETENT: Raymond B. Fosdick, European Police Systems (New York: Century, 1915), pp. 73–133; P. J. Stead, The Police of France (New York: Macmillan, 1983), pp. 54–72; Howard G. Brown, “Tips, Traps and Tropes: Catching Thieves in Post-Revolutionary Paris” in Police Detectives in History, 1750–1950, ed. Clive Elmsley and Haia Shpayer-Makov (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2006); Clive Elmsley, “From Ex-Con to Expert: The Police Detective in Nineteenth-Century France,” in Police Detectives in History, ed. Elmsley and Shpayer-Makov, pp. 61–77; author’s interview with Clive Elmsley.
15 “IN OUR TIME, IN THE MIDDLE OF FRANCE”: Laurent-Martin, Le Roi des assassins, p. 170.
16 EUGÈNE-FRANÇOIS VIDOCQ: The informaton on Vidocq and his methods is taken from Elmsley, “From Ex-Con to Expert,” pp. 64–77.
17 “VIDOCQ OF THE WEST”: Robin Walz, book review of Dominique Kalifa’s Naissance de la police privée, in H-France Review 1, no. 21 (2001), www.h-france.net.
18 “MY PROGRAM NEVER VARIES”: Besse, Le Tueur de bergers, p. 818.
12. BORN CRIMINAL
1 SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY: Otis T. Moon, “Anthropology in Paris During the Exposition of 1889,” The American Anthropologist 3, no. 1 (1890): 27–36; Thomas Wilson, “Criminal Anthropology: A Report on the Second International Congress of Criminal Anthropology, Held at Paris, August 1889,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, July 1890, pp. 617–86.
2 “DO CRIMINALS PRESENT ANY PECULIAR ANATOMICAL CHARACTERISTICS?”: Wilson, “Criminal Anthropology,” p. 625.
3 THEY ATTENDED LAVISH PARTIES: Alexandre Lacassagne, “Deuxième congrès international d’anthropologie criminelle,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1889): 517–22.
4 CORDIALITY BECAME STRAINED: Paul Topinard, “Essais de crâniométrie à propos du crâne de Charlotte Corday,” Anthropologie, January-February 1890; Pierre Darmon, Médecins et assassins à la Belle Époque: La Médicalisation du crime (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989), pp. 9–15; Albert Bournet, “Chronique italienne,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1890): 341–43; Moritz Benedikt, “étude métrique du crâne de Charlotte Corday,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1890): 293–313.
5 CESARE LOMBROSO: Alexandre Lacassagne, “Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909),” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1909): 881–94; Mary Gibson, “Cesare Lombroso and Italian Criminology,” in Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective, ed. Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 137–58; Nicole Hahn Rafter, “Criminal Anthropology in the United States,” in Criminals and Their Scientists, ed. Becker and Wetzell, pp. 159–81; Cesare Lombroso, Criminal Man, trans. Mary Gibson and Nicole Hahn Rafter (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 1–41; Marvin E. Wolfgang, “Pioneers in Criminology: Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909),” The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 52, no. 4 (1961): 361–91.
6 “HE HAS A MILD, ATTRACTIVE FACE”: Arthur Griffiths, Fifty Years of Public Service (London: Cassell, 1904), p. 382.
7 “INFERIOR RACES IN BOLIVIA AND PERU”: Gibson, “Cesare Lombroso and Italian Criminology,” p. 39.
8 “AT THE SIGHT OF THAT SKULL”: Robert A. Nye, Crime, Madness and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National Decline (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 99–100.
9 “THEORETICAL ETHICS PASSES OVER THESE DISEASED BRAINS”: Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), p. 139.
10 “MATTOIDS”: Lombroso, Criminal Man, trans. Gibson and Rafter, pp. 284–87.
11 ABOUT 40 PERCENT OF LAWBREAKERS: Mary Gibson, “Cesare Lombroso and Italian Criminology,” p. 145n. Gibson points out that Lombroso’s estimate of the percentage of born criminals ranged from a high of just over 50 percent to a low of 33 percent, depending on the edition of his book.
12 HE DESIGNATED THE BROTHERS: Lombroso, Criminal Man, trans. Gibson and Rafter, p. 351.
13 “BEAUTIFUL FACES”: Havelock Ellis, The Criminal (London: Walter Scott, 1892), p. 80.
14 “BANK SNEAKS” AND “PICKPOCKETS”: Benjamin P. Eldridge, Our Rival the Rascal: A Faithful Portrayal of the Conflict Between the Criminals of This Age and the Police (Boston: Pemberton, 1893), p. 353.
15 “A GENTLE, PAINLESS DEATH”: Peter Quinn, “Race Cleansing in America,” American Heritage Magazine 54, no. 1 (2003), www.americanheritage.com.
16 ARTHUR MACDONALD: James B. Gilbert, “Anthropometrics in the U.S. Bureau of Education: The Case of Arthur McDonald’s ‘Laboratory,’ ” History of Education Quarterly 17 (1977): 169–95.
17 “A FIENDISH METHOD”: “Ousted a Criminologist: Head of National Education Bureau Objected to Scientist’s Plans,” New York Times, February 21, 1903.
18 “I DO NOT FEEL CONVINCED”: Ida M. Tarbell, “Identification of Criminals: The Scientific Method in Use in France,” McClure’s Magazine, March 1894, pp. 355–69.
19 “THE COUNT IS A CRIMINAL”: Leonard Wolf, The Annotated Dracula (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1975), p. 300.
20 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY: The overview of the international conferences and the competing schools of criminology is taken from the following sources: Martine Kaluszynski, “The International Congresses of Criminal Anthropology: Shaping the French and International Criminological Movement, 1886 to 1914,” in Criminals and Their Scientists, ed. Becker and Wetzell, pp. 301–15; Nye, Crime, Madness and Politics in Modern France, pp. 100–131; Olivier Bosc, “Nous nous sommes tant aimés. Cesare Lombroso et Alexandre Lacassagne: émulation, friction et collaboration entre Turin et Lyon,” Gryphe 8 (2004): 24–27.
21 GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING EXHIBITS: Auguste Motet, “Rapport sur l’exposition d’anthropologie criminelle,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1886): 88–96; Andreas Broeckmann, “A Visual Economy of Individuals: The Use of Portrait Photography in the Nineteenth-Century Human Sciences” (Ph.D. diss., University of East Anglia, 1995); Actes du premier congrès international d’anthropologie criminelle (Rome, novembre 1885) (Turin, Rome, Florence: Bocca, 1886–1887), pp. 501–10.
22 “ADOPTED WITH ENTHUSIASM”: Alexandre Lacassagne, “Gabriel Tarde: Discours prononcé à l’inauguration de son monument à Sarlat, le 12 septembre 1909,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1909): 895.
23 ARM SPANS OF EIGHT HUNDRED CRIMINALS: Alexandre Lacassagne, “Rapport de la taille et de la grande envergure: étude anthropologique sur 800 hommes criminels,” Extrait du Bulletin de la Société d’Anthropologie de Lyon (Lyon: Pitrat âiné, 1882), pp. 1–7.
24 LACASSAGNE SAW THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CRIMINAL: Marc Renneville, “L’Anthropologie du criminel en France,” Criminologie 27, no. 2 (1994): 185–209.
25 CONFERENCE IN ROME: Actes du premier congrès international d’anthropologie criminelle.
26 EXOTIC NEW INSTRUMENTATION: David G. Horn, “Making Criminologists: Tools, Techniques, and the Production of Scientific Authority,” in Criminals and Their Scientists, ed. Becker and Wetzell, pp. 321–24.
27 THE INSENSITIVITY OF CRIMINALS: Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, p. 126.
28 “AN EXAGGERATION AND A FALSE INTERPRETATION”: This and subsequent quotes from the debate are taken from Actes du premier congrès international d’anthropologie criminelle, pp. 55–56, 113, 164–68, 174–76.
29 “BARREN OF ANY FOUNDATIONS IN FACTS”: Darmon, Médecins et assassins à la Belle Époque, p. 96; Nye, Crime, Madness and Politics in Modern France, p. 109.
30 “THEY SAY I AM DEAD AND BURIED”: Arthur Griffiths, Fifty Years of Public Service, p. 383.
31 DURING THE GOUFFÉ AFFAIR: Le Gaulois, December 16, 1890, cited in “Opinion de Lombroso sur Eyraud et Gabrielle Bompard,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1891): 38–42.
32 “LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE!”: Edmond Locard, La Malle sanglante de Millery (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), p. 89.
33 CABANÈS MADE A CURIOUS DISCOVERY: Augustin Cabanès, Curious Bypaths of History (Paris: Charles Carrington, 1898), pp. 187–98.
34 “AN ABSOLUTE PROOF CANNOT POSSIBLY EXIST”: ibid., p. 194.
13. LOURDES
1 “INCALCULABLE CROWD”: Robert Hugh Benson, Lourdes (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1914), p. 8.
2 “THE GREAT DOCTOR OF OUR BODIES AS WELL AS OUR SOULS”: Letter from Joseph Vacher to Louise Barant, June 8, 1897, in Philippe Artières, Écrits d’un tueur de bergers (Lyon: Éditions à Rebours, 2006), p. 57.
3 “FACES WHITE AND DRAWN”: Benson, Lourdes, p. 12.
4 MARIE MOUSSIER: Émile Fourquet, Vacher: Le Plus Grand Criminel des temps mo dernes par son juge d’instruction (Besançon, France: Jacques et Demontrond, 1931), pp. 221–23.
5 HE CAME UPON THE BOY’S FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD SISTER, ROSINE: “Horrible assassinat d’une fillette,” Le Petit Parisien, October 4, 1896.
6 “ALL OF A SUDDEN, I FOUND THE ROUTE THAT I RECOGNIZED”: Fourquet, Vacher, p. 231.
7 TRAUMATIZED BY HIS ATTACK: Letter from Auguste Pierson, solicitor in Baumeles-Dames, to Dr. Dufour, March 6, 1894, from the files of the Saint-Robert asylum; Jules Besse, Le Tueur de bergers (Paris: Schwarz, 1897), p. 291.
8 “DEAR LOUISE, I DON’T KNOW IF YOU ARE STILL IN YOUR PARENTS’ VILLAGE”: Letter from Joseph Vacher to Louise Barant, in Artières, Écrits d’un tueur de bergers, pp. 49–51.
9 “OH! VIRGIN MARY”: Joseph Vacher, “Inscription tracée sur la neige,” in ibid., p. 47.
10 “A COUNTRY OF GOOD ORANGES AND NICE PEOPLE”: Letter from Joseph Vacher to Louise Barant, June 8, 1897, in ibid., pp. 56–57.
The Killer of Little Shepherds Page 33
