Silent Witnesses

by Nigel McCrery

  When he failed to return home that day, Parkman’s family reported him missing. Meanwhile Webster came home at 6 PM before attending a party that evening at the house of some friends, the Treadwells. He seemed in good spirits and certainly showed no outward signs of distress.

  A few days later, on November 26, Parkman’s family offered a $3,000 reward for information leading to his being found. Twenty-eight thousand copies of a missing person notice were printed and posted all over the district.

  At this point one of the college janitors, a man named Ephraim Littlefield, began to play an important role in the story. Littlefield lived with his wife in the basement of the medical college, right next to Webster’s laboratory. Some people had started to become suspicious of Littlefield, linking him to Parkman’s disappearance. Littlefield, in turn, was becoming suspicious of Webster’s behavior. He would later testify that, on the day of Parkman’s disappearance, he had heard the sound of running water coming from inside Webster’s rooms and found the door to them locked. He said that later that day he had seen the professor carrying some kind of bundle and that Webster had asked him to make up a fire. Webster had also asked him a number of questions about the dissecting vault.

  On November 28, Webster arrived at the college early. Littlefield, alerted by his strange behavior on previous days, kept track of his movements. Webster made no fewer than eight trips from the fuel closet to the furnace and back. The heat from the furnace became so great that the wall on the other side of it grew hot to the touch. When Webster left, Littlefield broke into his rooms through a window and discovered that even though he had only refilled them recently, all the kindling barrels were empty. He was now convinced that something was amiss, and determined to find out more.

  On the following day, which happened to be Thanksgiving, Littlefield began to smash his way through the wall underneath Webster’s bathroom. He had noticed that when police officers looked around the college as part of their inquiries, Webster seemed to draw their attention away from the bathroom. It was an area that Webster alone had access to. Littlefield broke his way through two layers of brick before stopping, exhausted. The following day he resumed his work and managed to break through the wall completely. He crawled inside the space between the toilet hole (which was several feet below) and the walls. It took a few moments for him to adjust to the darkness, but once he did he looked around. On top of a mound of dirt off to one side, he caught sight of something out of the ordinary. He squinted at it, then, with a lurch of horror, realized what he was looking at: a human pelvis, a dismembered thigh, and the lower part of a leg.

  The police were called immediately and Marshal Francis Tukey attended the scene. The remains were removed from the room and laid out on a board, and the coroner, Jabez Pratt, was sent for. In the meantime Webster was arrested at his home in Cambridge. He denied all knowledge of the crime, expressing anger that the police would even consider him capable of such a brutal act. When they told him what Littlefield had discovered, however, he exclaimed, “That villain! I am a ruined man!” He nevertheless then tried to blame the janitor for the crime, before later attempting to commit suicide by taking strychnine in his cell. The dose he took was not strong enough, though, and he succeeded only in making himself ill.

  The police began the hunt for the rest of the body. When the sink in Webster’s room was scrutinized, they found that it appeared to have been gouged in several places. There were also strange acid stains on the floor and steps of the furnace area. A button, some coins, and some bone fragments, including a jawbone with teeth, were discovered inside the furnace. Finally a foul-smelling chest was found, also in the furnace area. It contained a hairy, armless, legless, and headless torso. There was a thigh stuffed inside it, while the heart and other organs were missing. A right kidney and some blood-soaked clothing that belonged to Webster were later found elsewhere in the room.

  The grim task of identification was left to Parkman’s wife, who was able to confirm that the body was her husband’s from markings near the penis and on the lower back. Later Dr. Jeffries Wyman, the noted American naturalist, arrived to look at the bone fragments. He wrote a detailed report in which, amongst other things, he estimated the height of the man the bones came from to be approximately 5 feet 10 inches, a perfect match with Parkman.

  Parkman was buried on December 6, 1849. It was one of the biggest funerals the state had ever seen, with thousands of people lining the streets. It is also a measure of the public attention the case had attracted that by this time more than 5,000 tourists had also visited the crime scene. Webster’s trial began on March 19, 1850, and ran until April 1. It is estimated that, during that period, over 60,000 people attended the court, with tickets being handed out to the waiting crowds on a rotating basis. Journalists came from as far as London, Paris, and Berlin to report on the story.

  During the trial the defense argued that the body was not Parkman’s and questioned whether a wound discovered in the breast of the body had been a killing blow, since there was little blood near it—if it was not a killing blow, then there was no proof that anyone had actually murdered this person, whoever he was.

  When Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., the dean of Harvard Medical College, took the stand, he rebutted this, testifying that a wound between the ribs would not necessarily cause a great deal of blood loss. He also said that the body had been dismembered by someone with knowledge of anatomy and dissection, and noted that the build of the corpse was similar to that of Parkman.

  A booklet detailing the judicial proceedings of the trial of John Webster for George Parkman’s murder. The case captured the public imagination and drew a great deal of media attention.

  Various other expert witnesses were called to the stand. Dr. Charles Jackson gave evidence about the burning of corpses, noting that the “furnace in the laboratory would have carried off the odor of burning flesh, if any had been consumed there.” Dr. Jeffries Wyman demonstrated his findings from the bones and showed that they could be assembled into a whole skeleton. Parkman’s dentist, Nathan Keep, tearfully revealed to the court how the jawbone found precisely matched a plaster imprint he had kept of Parkman’s jaw, and then showed how the loose teeth found in the furnace matched Parkman’s plates: an inscription on the mold left no one in any doubt that Keep had made them for Parkman.

  Despite attempts by the defense to rebut the evidence, on April 1, 1850, Webster was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. On May 4, his lawyers submitted a petition for a writ of error against Judge Shaw and his instructions to the jury. The writ was denied. Webster then appealed to Governor George N. Briggs for a pardon, asserting his innocence. This also failed and Briggs signed the death warrant.

  Finally, in June, Webster wrote a confession, although he maintained that he had killed Parkman in self-defense after a fierce argument over his debt. He stated that Parkman was in such a rage that he thought he was going to attack him. In order to defend himself he had struck Parkman with a nearby length of wood, killing him. Webster was taken to Boston’s Leverett Street Jail on August 30, 1850, and there publicly hanged. He was buried in the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. In an act of selfless compassion, Parkman’s widow was the first contributor to a fund created for Webster’s impoverished widow and daughters. Littlefield collected a $3,000 reward for providing information about Parkman’s disappearance and was able to retire comfortably.

  The Parkman-Webster case has been stitched into the scientific, cultural, and legal fabric of US society. It stands as one of the first cases where the use of forensic science—and in particular dental evidence—led to the solving of a murder. The cultural impact of the case can be seen in the fact that even Charles Dickens, visiting Massachusetts for the first time, insisted on being shown the room where Parkman met his fate. Historians have maintained an interest in the case into the twentieth century and beyond, and renowned historian Simon Schama centered his book Dead Certainties around it. There nevertheless remain doubts over the way t
he trial was handled. Some have said that Webster was dealt with unfairly by the judge; others claim that it was an unfair trial that nevertheless returned the correct outcome.

  Although the Parkman case and others like it show the gradual emergence of a systematic approach to the treatment and identification of corpses, it is perhaps the French pathologist Jean Alexandre Eugene Lacassagne who deserves the most credit for transforming it into an exact science. Lacassagne was born in Cahors in 1843 and attended the military academy at Strasbourg before going on to qualify as a military surgeon. He became familiar with wounds of various kinds, including observing operations on gunshot wounds, during his time on campaign in North Africa. On leaving the army in 1878, he wrote Précis de Medicine Judiciaire (A Summary of Judicial Medicine), drawn from his experiences as an army physician. As a result of this, in 1880 he was invited to take up the newly founded chair in forensic medicine at the University of Lyon. During his time as head of the department, his expertise was called upon by the authorities to help conclude a great variety of cases. He also coined the phrase “One must know how to doubt,” and drummed it into the heads of all his students.

  Lacassagne’s greatest case occurred in August 1889. A local official in Millery, a small town just south of Lyon, was asked to investigate a foul stench coming from near the river. With the help of several council workers, he eventually traced it to a canvas bag, which had been dumped in some bushes. With rags pressed firmly to their noses—the smell was truly appalling—they dragged the bag from its hiding place. The official then loosened the ties holding it together.

  If the smell had been bad, the sight that confronted them was far worse. Inside were the naked and decomposing remains of a dark-haired man, wrapped in oilcloth and string. The police were summoned at once and the corpse was taken away to the Lyon City Mortuary, a rotting old barge anchored in the middle of the Rhône River. Dr. Paul Bernard then conducted a postmortem—gruesome work. Due to the state of the body, it was at first difficult to establish a cause of death, but he was eventually able to conclude that the man had been strangled. Bernard estimated that he was about thirty-five years old.

  A few days after the discovery of the body, a wooden trunk was also found. From the stink of rotting flesh that clung to it, it was assumed that the body had been stuffed inside it at some point. Although it had been in the water for some time, it still contained a useful clue: fragments of a railway label indicating that it had been sent to Lyon’s Perrache train station from Paris on July 27.

  News of the macabre case made headlines all over France, with other European newspapers also picking up the story. Assistant Superintendent Marie-François Goron of the Sûreté in Paris was put in charge of the case. Searching through the missing person files, he came across a name, Toussaint-Augsent Gouffe, a forty-nine-year-old bailiff and a notorious philanderer. He had been reported missing on July 27 by his brother-in-law, Landry.

  Gouffe lived on Rue Montmartre with his three daughters. His sex drive was legendary, and he spent most nights searching the cafés and clubs of Paris for potential partners. On a Friday he would often stay out all night, having inveigled his way into some woman’s bed, leaving the day’s takings in his office. The warden of the office building was therefore rather surprised when, at about 9 AM on Saturday, July 27, he heard Gouffe going up the stairs. When he heard him coming back down again a short while afterwards, the warden went to meet him in order to exchange a few pleasantries. However, it wasn’t Gouffe at all, but a stranger who immediately ran from the building. Thinking that it must have been a robbery, the caretaker went upstairs to check on the office and was mystified to discover that Gouffe’s takings of around 14,000 francs were still there.

  To be sure that the victim was indeed Gouffe, Goron arranged for Landry to view the corpse. With so many decomposing bodies situated around the mortuary barge, the smell was overwhelming; Landry glanced quickly at the remains before running outside and being violently ill. He also informed Goron that the body could not be that of his brother-in-law because the hair on the chest of the body was black and Gouffe had chestnut hair.

  This was a disappointing setback for Goron but he was not a man to be easily dissuaded. He questioned Bernard again but the doctor confirmed that the corpse did indeed have black hair, not auburn. Still convinced that the body was Gouffe’s, Goron asked Bernard to collect several strands of hair from the dead man’s head. He then immersed them in distilled water. It did not take long for the water to wash away the outer coating of dust, blood, and dirt that had become stuck to the hair, revealing that its true color was indeed auburn. Bernard was both amazed and terribly embarrassed. In the time it took for this discovery to be made, the body had already been buried in a cemetery at La Guillotière, on account of its rapidly worsening state. Goron ordered it to be exhumed immediately, and in mid-November it was delivered to Lacassagne’s laboratory at the university. It was not unusual for Lacassagne to be called in when it seemed likely that other doctors might have overlooked something, and he had also been away when the body was originally discovered. He began his work.

  By now the remains were in a truly terrible state. The genital organs had completely decomposed, most of the facial and body hair had disappeared, and parts of the skull were missing. Lacassagne’s first task was to scrape the outer layers of flesh from the remains—the decay of the body was so advanced that it would not have been possible to learn anything further from this.

  Bernard had botched things with the initial autopsy. He had used a hammer instead of a saw to take off the top of the head, which meant that Lacassagne could not check for head trauma; he had destroyed the sternum with a chisel so chest trauma could not be found either; he had also left the body with bones out of place, and organs had been removed and put into a basket. Still, Lacassagne was able to observe that the right knee was deformed and that parts of the bones there to which muscles attach were underdeveloped. He also found evidence of a tubercular infection of the leg during youth. Taken together, these things meant that the man had almost certainly walked with a limp. Having been given this information, Goron was quickly able to establish from Gouffe’s relatives and his shoemaker that he did indeed walk with a limp.

  Lacassagne also scrutinized the teeth of the body, after which he estimated the deceased to have been in his early fifties, certainly not thirty-five as Bernard had suggested after the original postmortem. Gouffe was, as we know, forty-nine. Breaks in the thyroid cartilage confirmed strangulation as the cause of death, although Lacassagne considered that it had been done manually rather than with a cord or a garrotte as Bernard had thought. The final test was the hair. Lacassagne used a microscope to compare some hair that had been taken from the corpse with some taken from Gouffe’s hairbrush. They matched in color and were both 0.13 mm in diameter. Both Lacassagne and Goron were now completely convinced that the remains were indeed those of Gouffe. Had it not been for Lacassagne’s determined and systematic approach, it is very likely that this would not have come to light, especially given the inaccurate information arising from the first postmortem and the confusion caused by the filthy hair.

  But while they now knew for certain who their victim was, they still needed to find a killer. In the hope of jogging someone’s memory, Goron commissioned a copy of the trunk the body had been carried in, which was then put on public display. An estimated 35,000 people filed by to see it, and thousands of photographs were also circulated around the world. This might have seemed like a long shot, but it worked—Goron received a letter from a Frenchman now living in London, who had seen a photograph of the trunk in the paper. In the letter, the man explained that an ugly, balding man calling himself Michael, along with his daughter, had stayed with him the previous June. They had bought a trunk just like the one in the photograph from a shop near Euston Road and had taken it with them when they finally returned to Paris.

  The description of the man calling himself Michael fitted one that Goron had been given of
a man called Michel Eyraud, with whom Gouffe had been seen drinking a couple of days before his disappearance. With them was Eyraud’s beautiful mistress (not, in fact, his daughter) Gabrielle Bompard. Given Gouffe’s eye for attractive women, it seemed this might well be the lead that Goron had been looking for. When he received the information, Goron at once ordered a search for Eyraud and Gabrielle, but they had come to nothing.

  Once again, Goron turned to the newspapers for help. Luckily they couldn’t get enough of the story and relished the chance to become involved. Soon they were full of descriptions, drawings, and background information, all pertaining to Eyraud and Bompard. Then, completely out of the blue, Goron received a letter from Eyraud stating that he was now living in New York and wondering why Goron was implicating him in the murder of his friend, of which he denied all knowledge. He went on to offer an alternative theory, mentioning Bompard as his former mistress and suggesting that perhaps she was in some way involved in the murder. He also promised to return to Paris and hand himself over to Goron.

  The surprises didn’t stop there. A few days later, Bompard appeared at the police station with her current lover in tow. Goron described her as being small and pretty, with grey eyes and excellent teeth. He later reflected that “corruption literally oozed from her.” She had come to denounce Eyraud as Gouffe’s murderer and admit that she had been his willing accomplice.

  When Goron questioned her, she was very frank and straightforward. The murder, she said, had been committed in one of the rooms at 3 Rue Tronson de Coudray. Although she said she knew this to be a fact from what Eyraud had told her, she claimed she hadn’t actually been present at the time of the crime. She had then traveled to the United States with Eyraud. While there she left Eyraud for another man (the one she had brought with her to the police station), and Eyraud had apparently planned to murder and rob this usurper. However, she told her new lover about Eyraud’s scheme and together they escaped back to Paris. It was he who had then persuaded her to tell the police what she knew. Goron appreciated her bravery in coming forward, but he nevertheless instructed the prefect, Loze, to arrest her and hold her in custody.