2 “IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY”: Gérard Corneloup, Joseph Vacher: Un Tueur en série de la Belle Époque (Brignais, France: Éditions des Traboules, 2007), p. 295.
3 DR. LOMBROSO, WHO CLASSIFIED VACHER AS AN EPILEPTIC: Alexandre Lacassagne, “Vacher l’éventreur,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1889): 653.
4 DR. FOURCHON LAUNCHED A BROADSIDE: Corneloup, Joseph Vacher, p. 296.
5 “I HAVE NO TROUBLE BELIEVING”: Pierre Bouchardon, Vacher l’éventreur (Paris: Albin Michel, 1939), pp. 226–27.
6 MORAS, WROTE A SIXTY-EIGHT-PAGE REPORT: ibid., pp. 225–26.
7 DE COSTON SENT A LONG AND ANGRY REPORT: ibid., p. 224.
8 “VACHER IS INSANE”: ibid., p. 222.
9 “WHO FORMERLY WOULD FLOOD MY OFFICE”: ibid., p. 223.
10 HE CONTACTED VACHER’S BROTHER AND SISTER: ibid., pp. 223–24.
11 “CAST DOUBT ON”: ibid., p. 227.
12 DECIDING TO LET JUSTICE “FOLLOW ITS COURSE”: ibid., p. 229.
13 LOUIS-ANTOINE-STANISLAS DEIBLER: Jean-Claude Farcy, “La peine de mort en France: Deux Siècles pour une abolition (1791–1981),” available at www.criminocorpus.cnrs.fr/article117.html; “Louis Antoine Stanislas Deibler,” available at http://site.voila.fr/guillotine/Louis.html; “La Dernière Exécution à Dijon de Louis Deibler,” Le Bien Public, February 15, 2004; Léon Blanc, “Notes sur l’exécution de Busseuil,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1894): 375; Le Petit Journal, December 30, 1898.
14 THE NUMBER OF EXECUTIONS DECLINED: Jean Laponce, “In the Shadow of de Sade: French Medical Responses to a Case of Serial Sexual Homicide During the Belle Époque” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2002), pp. 131–32; Farcy, “La Peine de mort en France.”
15 A BRIEF AWARENESS OF HIS OR HER FATE: Laurent Mucchielli, “Criminology, Hygienism, and Eugenics in France, 1870–1914,” in Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective, ed. Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 222.
16 A NEW DEVICE APPEARED IN THE UNITED STATES: Theodore Bernstein, “The First Electrocution,” Wisconsin Engineer (December 1974/January 1975), pp. 14–15; Craig Brandon, The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999); John Miskell, “Executions in Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York: 1890–1916,” available at www.correctionhistory.org/auburn&osborne/miskell/
html/auburnchair_report.html.
17 WORRIED THAT THE EFFECTS OF THE DEVICE: Arthur MacDonald, “Psychological Literature: Criminological,” American Journal of Psychology (1891): 126.
18 LOMBROSO THOUGHT IT CRUEL: Mucchielli, “Criminology, Hygienism, and Eugenics in France, 1870–1914,” pp. 207–29.
19 “ELECTRIC EXECUTION IS ODIOUS”: Pierre Darmon, Médecins et assassins à la Belle Époque: La Médicalisation du crime (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989), p. 192.
20 LACASSAGNE, WHO FOUND THE TECHNOLOGY INTRIGUING: Alexandre Lacassagne, “Les Exécutions électriques aux états-Unis,” Bulletin du Lyon médical 70 (1892): 414–15, 446–52.
21 STOP ADVERTISING THE EVENTS: Alexandre Bérard, “La Publicité des exécutions capitales,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1894): 125.
22 “THE SPECTACLE OF THE CROWD”: ibid., p. 130.
23 AT 6:15 A.M., LOUIS DUCHER AND THREE OTHER OFFICIALS: Details concerning Vacher’s execution are taken from the following sources: Le Petit Journal, December 30, 1898, and January 1, 1899; Le Temps, January 1, 1899; Le Figaro, January 1, 1899; Le Lyon Républicain, December 31, 1898; Le Progrès, January 1, 1899.
24 “HE DID NOT DIE LIKE AN INSANE PERSON”: Alexandre Lacassagne, Vacher l’éventreur et les crimes sadiques (Lyon: A. Storck, 1899), p. 295.
25 THE DOCTORS CAREFULLY DISSECTED THE BODY: ibid, pp. 296–96; Le Figaro, January 1, 1899.
26 “THE JURORS OF AIN CAN SLEEP WITHOUT FEAR”: Le Petit Journal, January 1, 1899.
27 A SEALED COOKING POT: Le Figaro, January 2, 1899.
22. THE MYSTERY OF A MURDERER’S BRAIN
1 JULES BESSE VISITED THE AREA: Émile Fourquet, Vacher: Le Plus Grand Criminel des temps modernes par son juge d’instruction (Besançon, France: Jacques et Demontrond, 1931), pp. 116–18.
2 “BREATHE MORE FREELY”: ibid., pp. 355–56.
3 ALBERT SARRAUT OF LA DÉPĚCHE DE TOULOUSE: ibid., p. 206.
4 FOURQUET WISHED HE COULD HAVE TAKEN VACHER: “Le Tueur de bergers,” Le Lyon Républicain, October 20, 1897.
5 BESSE VISITED THE VILLAGE OF ÉTAULES: Jules Besse, Le Tueur de bergers (Paris: Schwarz, 1897), pp. 707–66.
6 TOULOUSE DECIDED THAT IN THE INTEREST OF OBJECTIVITY: “Bulletin: L’Affaire Vacher,” Revue de médecine légale et de jurisprudence médicale 6 (1889): 66–67.
7 CHARLES GUITEAU: “The Guiteau Trial,” American Journal of Insanity 38 (1881): 301–47.
8 THAT OF CZOLGOSZ SHOWED “NO EVIDENCE”: Carlos F. MacDonald, “The Trial, Execution, Autopsy and Mental Status of Leon F. Czolgosz, Alias Fred Nieman, the Assassin of President McKinley,” American Journal of Insanity 58, no. 3 (1902): 369–86.
9 MORITZ BENEDIKT DISSECTED: Jan Verplaetse, “Moritz Benedikt’s Localization of Morality in the Occipital Lobes: Origin and Background of the Controversial Hypothesis,” History of Psychiatry 15, no. 3 (2004): 305–28.
10 LACASSAGNE ABHORRED THE LEGAL PROVISION: Alexandre Lacassagne, “L’Affaire Gouffé: Constatations et réflexions posthumes,” Archives de l’anthropologie criminelle (1891): 199–200.
11 MUTUAL AUTOPSY SOCIETY: Jennifer Michael Hecht, The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 1–40.
12 “THE MOST DEVELOPED AND MOST COMPLETE”: ibid., 29.
13 DR. BOYER, OF LACASSAGNE’S LABORATORY: Le Petit Journal, January 12, 1899.
14 “ADHERENCES” ON THE BRAIN: Le Petit Journal, January 3, 1900.
15 “COMPLETE RESPONSIBILITY”: Le Petit Journal, January 7, 1900.
16 A BOOK ENTITLED VACHER: Alexandre Lacassagne, Vacher l’éventreur et les crimes sadiques (Lyon: A. Storck, 1899).
17 “YOUR WORK ON VACHER IS VERY PROFOUND”: Letter from Gabriel Tarde to Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, April 6, 1899, Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Fonds Lacassagne, file MS 5283, pp. 131–32.
18 CALLED THE STUDY “A CLASSIC”: Letter from Paul-Louis Ladame to Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, March 23, 1899, in ibid., 153.
19 ON JUNE 15, 1899, LABORDE AND HIS COLLABORATORS: J. V. Laborde et al., “étude psycho-physiologique, médico-légale et anatomique sur Vacher,” Bulletins de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris 10, no. 10 (1899): 453–95.
20 “SLIGHTLY LARGER THAN AVERAGE”: ibid., p. 476.
21 “NO ALTERATIONS CHARACTERISTIC OF DISEASE”: ibid., p. 481.
22 LOMBROSO … PREDICTABLY CLASSIFIED VACHER AS A BORN CRIMINAL: “Societé médico-psychologique, séance du 31 juillet 1899,” Annales médico-psychologiques: 457–58; Cesare Lombroso, “Le Cerveau de Vacher,” La Revue scientifique 2 (1899): 56.
23 “WHAT A PHONY!”: Letter from Léonce Manouvrier to Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, August 22, 1899, Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Fonds Lacassagne, file MS 5283, p. 34.
24 “BUT EVERYONE KNOWS THAT LOMBROSO SEES BORN CRIMINALS”: Émile Gautier, L’Année scientifique et industrielle (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1900), p. 398.
25 TOULOUSE AND HIS TEAM RELEASED A FULL VERSION: Toulouse et al., “Histologie du myélencéphale de Vacher (Société médico-psychologique, séance du 31 juillet 1899),” Annales médico-psychologiques (1899): 455–59.
26 “BUT ONE CAN BE A DIRTY OLD MAN”: Gautier, L’Année scientifique et industrielle, p. 398.
27 TOULOUSE HAD VOICED DOUBTS: Toulouse et al., “Histologie du myélencéphale de Vacher,” p. 459.
28 LABORDE, ON THE OTHER HAND: J. V. Laborde et al., “étude psychophysiologique, médico-légale et anatomique sur Vacher,” Bulletins de la Société de l’anthropologi
e de Paris, pp. 481–94.
29 ON MARCH 20, 1900, LABORDE PRESENTED AN UPDATED VERSION: J. V. Laborde, “Le cas de Vacher, état mental, criminalité, responsabilité, examen du cerveau (séance du 20 mars),” Bulletin de l’Académie de médecine, 3d. ser., vol. 43 (1900): 341–348.
30 THE CONFERENCE ERUPTED: ibid., pp. 348–51; “Le Cerveau de Vacher,” Le Matin, March 21, 1900; “Académie de médecine—Le cerveau de Vacher,” Le Petit Temps, March 21, 1900; “Académie de médecine,” Le Soleil, March 21, 1900.
31 “HIS ARGUMENT IS WEAK”: Letter from Dr. Auguste Motet to Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, March 21, 1900, Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Fonds Lacassagne, file MS 5283, p. 37.
32 “I SAID THAT ONE COULD DISCUSS”: Letter from Léonce Manouvrier to Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, August 22, 1899, in ibid., p. 34.
33 “I THINK LABORDE HAS GOTTEN”: Letter from Paul Dubuisson to Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, March 23, 1900, in ibid., p. 29.
34 “I ENERGETICALLY PROTESTED”: Letter from Dr. Auguste Motet to Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, March 21, 1900, in ibid., p. 37.
35 “AFFAIRS OF THIS TYPE”: Letter from Alphonse Bertillon to Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, undated, in ibid., p. 46.
36 “EH BIEN, my dear sir,” L’écho de Paris, January 5, 1899, cited in Pierre Bouchardon, Vacher l’éventreur (Paris: Albin Michel, 1939), p. 246.
37 “LABORDE’S INTERVENTION IS VERY ANNOYING,” Letter from Paul Brouardel to Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne, March 29, 1900, Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Fonds Lacassagne, file MS 5283, p. 27.
38 “WE ARE CONVINCED AT HAVING TOLD THE TRUTH”: Lacassagne, Vacher l’éventreur, p. iii.
39 “WHAT’S CLEAR IS THAT THE MOST SOPHISTICATED SCIENCE”: Gautier, L’Année scientifique et industrielle, p. 399.
23. POSTSCRIPT
1 BY THE MID-1920S, NEARLY FORTY MILLION PEOPLE: Social Security Board, Unemployment Compensation: What and Why? (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1937).
2 FRENCH GOVERNMENT BUILT A ROCKET-LAUNCH CENTER: “Installation of CSG in French Guyana,” available at www.cnes-csg.fr/web/CNES-CSG-en/4681-installation-of-csg-in-french-guiana.php.
3 THE LAST PUBLIC EXECUTION: Jean-Claude Farcy, “La Peine de mort en France: Deux Siècles pour une abolition (1791–1981),” available at www.criminocorpus.cnrs.fr/article117.html.
4 SAINT-PAUL PRISON IN LYON: “Un transfert de détenus sans précédent à Lyon,” Le Figaro, May 3, 2009.
5 INTERNATIONAL POLICE COMMISSION: Alexandre Lacassagne, Vacher l’éventreur et les crimes sadiques (Lyon: A. Storck, 1899), p. 306; see also http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/291580/Interpol?view=print.
6 HE HAD TRAVELED TO LEO TOLSTOY’S VILLAGE: Paolo Mazzarello, “Lombroso and Tolstoy: An Anthropologist’s Unwitting Gift to Literature,” Nature 409 (2001): 983.
7 ZOLA, TOO, HAD LITTLE PATIENCE: Alison Abbott, “Hidden Treasures: Turin’s Anatomy Museum,” Nature 455 (2008): 736.
8 “AGITATOR OF IDEAS, AND EXCITER OF WILLS”: Alexandre Lacassagne, “Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909),” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1909): 883.
9 THE LIMITATIONS OF BERTILLON’S SYSTEM: Raymond B. Fosdick, “The Passing of the Bertillon System of Identification,” Journal of the American Institute of Law and Criminology 6, no. 3 (1915): 363–69.
10 BERTILLON PLEDGED HIS BRAIN: “Bertillon’s Brain Weighed,” New York Times, February 16, 1914.
11 “THE PUBLIC AND PRESS … CLAMOR FOR THE MAGISTRATE”: Émile Fourquet, Vacher: Le Plus Grand Criminel des temps modernes par son juge d’instruction (Besançon, France: Jacques et Demontrond, 1931), p. 357.
12 LUIGI RICHETTO: Philippe Artières, Gérard Corneloup, and Philippe Rassaert, Le Médecin et le criminel: Alexandre Lacassagne 1843–1924, exposition de la Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon (Lyon: Bibliothèque municipale, 2004), pp. 188–91.
13 HENRI VIDAL: Alexandre Lacassagne, Jean Boyer, and Fleury Rebatel, “Vidal le tueur des femmes,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1902): 645–98.
14 CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS: Marc Renneville, “Alexandre Lacassagne: Un Médecin-anthropologue face à la criminalité (1843–1924),” Gradhiva 17 (1995): 134.
15 “THE OGRESS” JEANNE WEBER: Jürgen Thorwald, The Century of the Detective (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), pp. 156–75; “Notes et observations médico-légales: Affaire Weber,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle (1908): 329–99.
16 “HISTORY ALWAYS REMINDS US”: Thorwald, The Century of the Detective, p. 156.
17 “OLD PEOPLE,” HE WROTE: Artières, Corneloup, Rassaert, Le Médecin et le Criminel, p. 54.
18 “TAKE CARE NOT TO BURN YOURSELF OUT”: Le Progrès, September 25, 1924.
19 “HE LIVED HIS LIFE”: ibid.
20 “I HOPE TO SERVE”: Louis Vervaeck, “Le Professeur Lacassagne,” La revue de droit pénal et de criminologie (1924): 929.
EPILOGUE. THE VIOLENT BRAIN
1 SITS IN A DISPLAY CASE: Observations and notes courtesy of Eva Zadeh, Paris.
2 “CSI effect”: Kit R. Roane, “The CSI Effect,” U.S. News & World Report (April 17, 2005); Tom R. Tyler, “Viewing CSI and the Threshold of Guilt: Managing Truth and Justice in Reality and Fiction,” The Yale Law Journal 115 (2006): 1050–85.
3 THE STATE OF THE ART FAR EXCEEDS: National Research Council, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2009), pp. S4–S24.
4 “JUKES” STUDY: Nicole Hahn Rafter, The Criminal Brain: Understanding Biological Theories of Crime (New York: NYU Press, 2008), pp. 106–8.
5 “KALLIKAK” STUDY: Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), pp. 168–71.
6 SCIENTISTS WHO HAVE SCANNED: Antonio R. Damasio, “A Neural Basis for Sociopathy,” Archives of General Psychiatry 57 (2000): 128–99; Adrian Raine and Yaling Yang, “Neural Foundations to Moral Reasoning and Antisocial Behavior,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (2006): 203–13; Adrian Raine, “The Biological Basis for Crime,” in Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control, ed. James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia (Oakland, Calif.: ICS Press, 2002), pp. 43–74; author’s interview with Dr. Daniel Press, neurologist, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.
7 LACK THE NEURAL CIRCUITRY TO RESIST: Robert M. Sapolski, “The Frontal Cortex and the Criminal Justice System,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 359 (2004): 1787–96.
8 “WHEN YOU SIT”: Author’s interview with Ilizabeth Wollheim, Ph.D., clinical and forensic psychologist.
9 “COMORBIDITY”: ibid.
10 ONE CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGIST OBSERVED: Author’s interview with Tali K. Walters, Ph.D., forensic psychologist.
11 “A CRIME WITHOUT MOTIVE?”: Laurent Mucchielli, “Criminology, Hygienism, and Eugenics in France, 1870–1914,” in Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective, ed. Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 212.
12 ONE NEUROLOGIST SPENT HOURS: Author’s interview with Dr. Daniel Press.
13 “LOOKING INTO PURE EVIL”: Author’s interview with Tali K. Walters.
Bibliography
VACHER CASE: PRIMARY SOURCES
Archives départementales de l’Ain. Located in the region’s capital city of Bourg-en-Bresse, these archives contain thousands of pages of court records and supporting documents related to Vacher’s murder trial, including affidavits, psychiatric reports, testimony, and investigator’s notes.
Artières, Philippe. Écrits d’un tueur de bergers. Lyon: Éditions à Rebours, 2006. A collection of Vacher’s writings, including his letters and confession.
Besse, Jules. Le Tueur de bergers (Paris: Schwarz, 1897). A voluminous account of Vacher’s life and crimes. Although parts of the book seem dramatized, Besse scrupulously documented and listed his interview sources for certain sections, such as the attempted murder of Louise Barant.
Bibliothèque municipal
e de Lyon, Fonds Lacassagne. Located in a special wing of the library, this archive contains more than twelve thousand documents, books, case files, and manuscripts donated by Alexandre Lacassagne in 1921.
“Dossier administratif de l’affaire Vacher.” Located in the Archives départementales du Rhône in Lyon, this file contains documents relating to the Vacher investigation and trial, including Fourquet’s interview notes, maps on which he traced Vacher’s travels, and the psychological report of Drs. Lacassagne, Pierret, and Rebatel.
Fourquet, Émile. Vacher: Le Plus Grand Criminel des temps modernes par son juge d’instruction. Besançon, France: Jacques et Demontrond, 1931. A firsthand account by the magistrate who brought Vacher to justice.
Lacassagne, Alexandre. Vacher l’éventreur et les crimes sadiques. Lyon: A. Storck, 1899.
Laurent-Martin. Le Roi des assassins: La Vie errante et mystérieuse de Vacher l’éventreur. Paris: Librairie Universelle, 1897. A contemporary account of Vacher’s life and crimes, written after Vacher’s capture but before the trial.
Newspaper reports: Contemporary accounts of the investigation, trial, and aftermath appeared in many newspapers, including La Dépěche de Toulouse, La Croix, Le Figaro, Le Temps, Le Matin, Le Petit Journal, Le Petit Parisien, Le Progrès (Lyon), and Le Lyon Républicain.
VACHER CASE: SECONDARY SOURCES
Bouchardon, Pierre. Vacher l’éventreur. Paris: Albin Michel, 1939.
Corneloup, Gérard. Joseph Vacher: Un Tueur en série de la Belle Époque. Brignais, France: Éditions des Traboules, 2007. Deloux, Jean-Pierre. Vacher l’assassin: Un serial killer français au XIXe siècle. Paris: Claire Vigne, 1995.
Laponce, Jean. “In the Shadow of de Sade: French Medical Responses to a Case of Serial Sexual Homicide During the Belle Époque.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2002.
Tavernier, René, and Henri Garet. Le Juge et l’assassin. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1976.
The Killer of Little Shepherds Page 35