The Killer of Little Shepherds

by Douglas Starr

  The truth is far less accommodating than television. Just as in Lacassagne’s day, the state of the art far exceeds its everyday practice.3 Many forensic laboratories are understaffed, overburdened, and lacking in proper equipment and training. In the United States, the average forensic laboratory has a backlog of more than four hundred cases that have been waiting more than thirty days for analysis. Recent studies have cast doubt on previously “infallible” procedures such as hair matching, bite marks, handwriting analysis, and even fingerprint matching. Indeed, more than half of the more than 230 people freed by DNA analysis in recent years were found to have been convicted by faulty science, or by poorly trained or dishonest examiners. In 2009, a committee of America’s National Academy of Science found so much to question about the precision of modern forensics that it recommended a wholesale revamping of the field: setting up new institutes to research, develop, and evaluate techniques; improving university training for medical examiners, and making crime labs independent of police departments. It also urged the establishment of standard procedures for all practitioners to follow rigidly, just as Lacassagne tried to do with his Handbook.

  As for that petrified brain of the killer in Paris—what secrets are locked in its lobes, gyri, and circumvolutions? History is littered with efforts to understand the criminal mind. During and after Vacher’s time, people tried to link the criminal instinct to flaws in heredity, an evil seed passed from one generation to the next. The famous “Jukes”* study, first published in the 1870s and then in a revised edition in 1914, suggested a hereditary link in an extended family of criminals.4 In 1912, the famous “Kallikak” study purported to track simplemindedness through several generations of an extended family.5 Both studies were later exposed as invalid—the Jukes were not a single family at all, and photos in the Kallikak study had been retouched to accentuate the subjects’ “idiocy”—although not before authorities used their conclusions to exclude many “undesirable” immigrants from entry at Ellis Island. Then there were the infamous “XYY” studies of the 1960s, which claimed a link between criminal behavior and an extra Y chromosome, as though maleness in itself disposed people toward violence.

  Only recently has valid evidence emerged that brain physiology might play a role in violent crime, as imaging technology has made it possible to see inside the living brain. Previously, scientists had to operate in the manner of Broca, finding a patient with a cognitive deficit and then, during autopsy, searching for a corresponding irregularity. Research became more sophisticated with the use of electroencephalographs (EEGs) to detect brain waves and with the study of neurotransmitters in laboratory animals. But the science was still largely inference-based, like the fable of the blind men using their hands to explore the contours of an elephant.

  In the 1980s and 1990s, however, the new technologies of the PET (positron-emission tomography) scan and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) made it possible to observe directly the functions of the living brain. What followed was a renaissance of neurological research, some of the newest of which has compared the brains of prisoners with those of “normal” people. Many prisoners exhibit a cluster of character traits, including lack of empathy, thrill-seeking behavior, poor impulse control, and an inability to follow society’s rules, collectively known as antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). The traits are so deeply embedded that most psychologists consider ASPD not an illness, but an unchangeable part of the personality.*

  Scientists who have scanned the brains of prison inmates with ASPD have found deficiencies in the brain area associated with higher thought processes and self-control.6 Located behind the forehead and just above the eyes, the prefrontal cortex, or PFC, seems to have a governing effect on our “lower” instincts, such as fear, selfishness, and violent impulses. (Witness the personality change of Phineas Gage from pleasant to surly when his prefrontal cortex was damaged.) Those impulses originate deep in our brain, coming from an evolutionarily primitive part called the amygdala. A growing body of research suggests that the PFC inhibits the wild impulses that emerge from the amygdala. When the PFC is damaged or deficient, or the connection between the two areas becomes disrupted, a person has difficulty with delayed gratification or impulse control. Such people lack the feelings that help others obey society’s rules, such as embarrassment, empathy, shame, or guilt. Other tests show that those individuals underrespond to both everyday life and stressful situations, making them at once thrill-seeking and fearless. (Scientists observe that response by measuring the electrical conductivity of the skin—a fascinating parallel to Lombroso’s electrical-shock experiments.)

  Unlike Lombroso, no one today thinks biology equals destiny. The studies of criminals’ brains have not been extensive or long-running enough to have made the transition from hypothesis to fact. Researchers also need to address the problem of the chicken and the egg—whether this brain deficiency creates the behaviors or if years of bad behavior lead to the deficiency: The brain changes from experience. Furthermore, no one denies the importance of upbringing. Someone raised in an abusive, neglectful, or impoverished environment is more likely to become a criminal than someone who is not. But now, just as in Lacassagne’s time, advances in science raise difficult questions about guilt and free will. As currently defined, “legally responsible” means that while committing a crime the perpetrator consciously knows it is wrong but goes ahead anyway. What if the new science indicates that certain people, knowing the wrongfulness of a violent impulse, lack the neural circuitry to resist it?7 Would that change the definition of legal responsibility? It’s the kind of question that fascinates neuroanatomists but terrifies those who must take responsibility for judicial decisions.

  Given the advances in forensics, neurobiology, and psychiatry, how would Vacher’s case play out today? Probably not much differently than it did in his time. He evaded capture for years, but so do modern serial killers; they’re good at what they do. Dennis Rader, the “BTK” killer who lived near Wichita, Kansas, murdered ten people over a seventeen-year period before he was arrested in 2005, and only then after he sent police an anonymous confession. Ted Bundy killed at least thirty young women over a period of five years. Andrei Chikatilo murdered fifty-two people over a period of twelve years in the waning days of the Soviet Union. Even when confronted by police, serial killers are good at evasion, as shown by Vacher and his modern counterparts. In 1991, police in Milwaukee were called to assist a bruised and naked fourteen-year-old boy fleeing from the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, only to have the murderer persuade them that the boy was his nineteen-year-old lover and that the two were simply having a spat. The police released them, after which Dahmer slaughtered the young man and several others in subsequent months. In the mid-1990s, Belgian police botched numerous chances to capture Marc Dutroux, the notorious head of a pedophilia-murder ring—even to the point of doing nothing when they thought they heard children’s voices in his basement. Like Vacher, Dutroux had been arrested, only to be released and then begin his killing spree.

  If Vacher went to trial today, the terminology of the case would be different, although the verdict probably would not change. The man whom Lacassagne labeled a “sanguinary sadist” now would be diagnosed as a psychopath, someone with no conscience or empathy, who feels no hesitation in killing, refuses to acknowledge the pain of his victims (“My victims never really suffered,” said Vacher), and even sees himself as the victim (“Here comes the victim of the mistakes of the asylums!”). Psychopaths are rare—when a therapist encounters one in a prison or an asylum, the call will go out to other staff members to come and observe. Like antisocial personality disorder, psychopathology is not considered a mental illness, but a deeply rooted part of one’s character. “When you sit in the presence of a psychopath, you know it,” a prominent forensic psychologist told me.8 “You feel you’re in the presence of an empty shell.”

  To read the affidavits and testimony connected to Vacher’s case is to follow the prototypical growth of a psych
opath: torturing animals as a child, finding it impossible to hold a steady job, getting into fights, abusing alcohol, imagining a relationship with a woman and trying to kill her after she rejects him, and then embarking on a multiyear killing spree, never bothered by guilt or remorse. His actions place him squarely in the company of other psychopathic killers, all of whom have been found legally responsible. What makes his case unusual, though, is that in addition to his underlying psychopathic personality, he appears to have suffered a mental disease—a “comorbidity,” as psychologists put it.9 The doctors at the Dole and Saint-Robert asylums both noted Vacher’s delusions of persecution, auditory hallucinations, and suicidal tendencies. Those symptoms suggest schizophrenia, a mental disease that can be treated with medicine, or that sometimes waxes and wanes over time. People with schizophrenia rarely commit violent acts.

  Vacher’s unusual combination of disorders might explain how Dr. Dufour of the Saint-Robert asylum could release him without any premonition of the tragedy to come. It is quite likely that the symptoms that Dufour observed arose from Vacher’s schizophrenia. It is also quite possible that after several months of gentle treatment at Saint-Robert, those symptoms temporarily abated, or that, given the propensity of psychopaths to manipulate, Vacher faked his cure with his mild behavior and flattering letters. In either case, if Dufour were alive today, he would be relieved to learn that he had not acted negligently, given the state of knowledge at his time. It was Vacher the psychopath who killed all those people, not Vacher the schizophrenic.

  Lacassagne would be gratified as well, for despite the criticism he took from his colleagues, the arguments he made would stand up in modern courts. According to most criminal codes, a person is considered legally responsible unless a mental illness renders him unable to discern the wrongfulness and illegality of his acts. Lacassagne’s analysis of the crime scenes demonstrated Vacher’s awareness. He stalked his victims, killed them efficiently, cleaned himself up, and quickly fled to another jurisdiction. His claims of being overcome by a rage would not stand up to modern scrutiny; countless spouse abusers who make the same argument are found competent to stand trial. One criminal psychologist observed that even if Vacher had been overtaken by rages, he sought out situations that would provoke them, as though he intentionally brought them on.10

  Today, as in his own time, Vacher would be found competent to stand trial, though he would be less likely to suffer the death penalty in most countries. Yet even today, common sense stumbles over a paradox: How can someone who commits such atrocities not be considered insane? As a nineteenth-century attorney pleaded, “A crime without motive? … But who is he who does not immediately respond: This man is mad!”11

  More than a century after that question was asked, we still ponder whether human behavior can ever be fully knowable. The legal and psychology professions have created careful distinctions between sanity and madness, legal responsibility and nonresponsibility. They are definitions with a purpose: to diagnose, to understand, to create legal protections both for society and the mentally ill. But they are acutely circumscribed; they fail to include the moral dimension of behavior—an antiquated term in this scientific age, but a valid one in the gray areas of human nature. The professionals themselves are the first to admit this. One neurologist spent hours describing the latest advances in his field, explaining how faulty brain circuitry might predispose someone to conduct heinous crimes.12 It brought to mind the work of Moritz Benedikt, the nineteenth-century Viennese neurologist who dissected the brains of executed criminals in his quest to find the center for morality. Have modern brain scientists come close to that goal? Have they glimpsed the neural circuitry of evil? The neurologist replied that he and his colleagues had come far, very far, in understanding the circuitry of the brain and how disruptions in those circuits could produce disastrous effects. But as to the origins of that malevolent impulse—that question, he said, still belonged to the philosophers and clergy.

  A criminal psychologist who has extensively interviewed serial killers confronted the same question. It was she who had spoken of meeting with psychopaths and feeling herself in the presence of “an empty shell.” After several hours discussing her observations, she brought up a single case in her career when she felt her scientific training briefly abandoned her. She was interviewing a notorious serial killer when, glancing into his eyes, she was overwhelmed by the feeling of “looking into pure evil.”13 She averred that, as a scientist, she knew she should avoid such vocabulary; she was trained to see and synthesize facts. But on that one occasion, the language of science could not encapsulate what she had seen. “I swear there was something different about this one—a feeling that I was looking into the abyss.”

  The pursuit of knowledge about crime has involved an epic journey through the centuries: from an earlier age, when all crime was sin, to more enlightened eras, when societies developed laws to define and control criminal behavior and scientists found ways to detect and decode it. A more nuanced, humane understanding evolved, in which circumstance and state of mind became important. Yet the deepest and most troubling questions about human nature stubbornly remain rooted in the spiritual and moral worlds. Perhaps it is part of the human condition that we cannot analyze or explain that which most frightens us. We will never understand why people like Vacher arise to bring chaos and violence into a world that we struggle to keep orderly and safe. We cannot account for the source of that impulse. We can only study it and try to keep it at bay.

  * Richard Dugdale, who conducted the original study, created the name Jukes to protect the family’s identity.

  * There is a certain degree of overlap and fuzziness in the terms antisocial personality disorder, sociopathy, and psychopathy. Those with any of these disorders share common characteristics: a deficit of empathy and an inability to follow rules or control impulses. Psychopaths, who have a more virulent form of the disorder, seem to have no conscience at all and will do whatever it takes to get what they want, even if that involves multiple murders. Sociopaths will also do what it takes, but they will exhibit a superficial intelligence and charm. None of these disorders is considered a mental illness, either by the psychiatric profession or by the legal profession.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank my agent, Todd Shuster, who saw promise in a topic that I’d just about given up on and guided me through its development. Without his instincts and intelligence, this book would not exist. My editor, Jonathan Segal, shared our vision and shaped the book with his usual combination of skill and tough love. I’m delighted to be working on our second project together and look forward to more. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Leonard Rosen—friend, writer, and kindred spirit. He helped develop this project from conception to birth over four years of working lunches, as we worked on our two books in tandem. Len saw themes and connections that eluded me, and offered indispensable encouragement and feedback. Many of the ideas in this work I credit to him.

  In France, I owe much to Angélique Andretto-Métrat, who did the initial groundwork for my visits, ferreted out contacts, accompanied me on research trips, served as a liaison with local experts, and provided ongoing intellectual feedback. Rémi Cuisinier, an amateur historian who lives outside Lyon and has written several books on local history (including one on the Vacher case), became my trusted guide and friend. He took me to villages, introduced me to people, and regaled me with lore that I never would have discovered on my own. Gilbert Babolat, mayor of Bénonces, a key locale in this story, introduced and endorsed me to local farmers, who would otherwise not have met or trusted this nosy American.

  Dr. Daniel Malicier, director of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University of Lyon (the position created by Dr. Lacassagne), enthusiastically supported this project, making available the resources of his institute, allowing me to sit in on criminal autopsies, and bringing important theses and documents to my attention. Muriel Salle, a Ph.D. student at the University of Lyon, who has been
working on a thesis about Dr. Lacassagne, generously shared all her research material and took me on a walking tour of Lyon to point out the key locations of his life story. Dr. Lacassagne’s descendants—Judge Elisabeth Biot in Lyon and Dr. Denis Muller in Villerest—generously shared their great-grandfather’s artifacts and family lore that had trickled down to them. A special thanks to Professor Marc Renneville and his colleagues, creators of a remarkable online archive about the history of criminology (www.criminocorpus.cnrs.fr), who welcomed me as a colleague and facilitated my research. Marc and his colleagues had put every edition of the Archives of Criminal Anthropology online, which has made Lacassagne’s work available. Dr. Michel Daumal, chief of the Saint-Egrève Hospital, formerly known as the Saint-Robert asylum, opened his archives, took me to the room where Vacher probably stayed, gave me a tour of the asylum, and discussed the evolution of psychiatric treatment methods. Dr. Pierre Lamothe, medical director of the Saint-Paul prison in Lyon, took me through the prison and discussed conditions during the late nineteenth century. His wife, psychologist Christine Lamothe, shared her Ph.D. thesis on the Vacher case and spent hours speculating on the murderer’s psychology. Historian Martine Kaluszynski of the Université Pierre Mendès-France in Grenoble, an expert on Dr. Lacassagne and his colleagues, shared everything she has written on the subject, and she interrupted her social schedule to spend a Saturday afternoon discussing Dr. Lacassagne’s life and times. Gérard Corneloup, resident historian at the municipal library in Lyon, who wrote his own book on the Vacher case, introduced me to the library’s vast archives and its extraordinary and helpful research staff. Thanks to Sophie and Olivier Roux, whose apartment became my headquarters in Lyon, and to the Roche family of Champis, whose friendship brightened every research trip.