It is Ryan here, and I have a question for you. What do you do when you win? Like? Are you at fist pumper, A wooo, A handclapper, a high fiver?
I kind of like the high five.
But if you want to hone in on those winning moves, check out Chumbuck Casino. At chumbacasino dot com, choose from hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly, plus free daily bonuses, so don't wait start having the most fun ever at Chumbu Casino dot com.
No pursiness is every d void for HIPLI lost terms conditions eighty plus.
Hello, It is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino dot com. I looked over the person sitting next to me, and you know what they were doing. They were also playing Chumba Casino. Coincidence, I think not everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumba Casino's home to hundreds at casino style games that you can play for free, anytime, anywhere, even at thirty thousand feet.
So sign up now at Chumbuckcasino dot com to claim You're free Welcome bonus at Chumbuck Casino dot com and live the Chumba Lane.
No pursiness is every d void over Hipy Loss Dating play host.
You are now listening to True Murder The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good evening, This is your host, Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them. A True crime Story and the Bird The Forensic Science The Killing of Little Shepherds with Douglas Starr was going to
be my guest this evening and hopefully he will. I gave him a reminder of our program this evening and he had it penciled in anyway, It's the story, true crime story and the birth of forensic Science with Douglas Starr. Let's hook up with him right now. Good evening, Douglas, Hi, Dan, how are you good? How are you doing good. Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Let me just do an intro and then we'll get into doing some questions, having some questions for you about this fine book.
In your book, you eloquently juxtaposed the crimes of French serial killer Joseph Vacker and the achievements of famed criminologist doctor Alexander Lacange. During Francis Bellapack from eighteen ninety four to eighteen ninety seven. Vacker is thought to have raped, killed and mutilated at least twenty five people, though he
would confess to only eleven murders. La Camsee, who headed the Department of Legal Medicine at the University in Lyons, was a pioneer in crime scene analysis, body decomposition and early profiling, and investigating and investigating suspicious deaths, all in an era when rural autopsies were often performed on the
victim's dinner table. Lecage contributions to the burgeoning field of forensic science, as well as the persistence of investigating magistrate he tent for Quet, who connected crimes while crisscrossing the French countryside, eventually brought Vacker to justice. Vacker claimed insanity, which then, as now was a vexed legal issue, and Lecange proved the systematic nature of the crimes. Star, who is co director of Boston's University Center for Science and
Medical Journalism, creates tension worthy of a thriller. In Lecange, he portrays a man determined to understand the how behind some of humanity's most depraved and perhaps take us once closer to the why the killing of little shepherds. With my special guest Douglas Starr, thank you very much for agreeing to this interview and welcome.
To the program. Oh it's good to be here.
And you can probably go back and correct me on the butchering of those French.
It's not hard, it's not easy. Rather so the bad guy was just a vashe.
Okay, there you go.
The hero of the book is Alexandra, Alexandra la Caasanya. See it's tough for me too, Alexandra la Caasanya like Lasagna, but la Casano okay. And the magistrate was Emil four K.
A meal okay, a meal for k yeah, four K okay, got it. I'll do a bit better and hopefully it's a learning process. Absolutely absolutely now to start for our for our listeners, A very important and fascinating part of your book is the evolution in the late nineteenth century of the various prevailing theories and techniques used to identify and classify criminals. It's amazing actually, and especially killers speculating on the mindset and their methods of operation. So take
us back to France at that time. Set the stage and tell us what was going on at that time with these theories and techniques and identifying and classifying criminals.
Take us back. Yeah, this is a really interesting time. And one of the things that grabbed me when I tripped over this case was how much like our own time it was. So it was the turn of the century and it was the Gilded Age in America, the Victorian England, the Victorian era in England, and in France they call it the belly poc the beautiful era. And science was flowering, the arts were flourishing. People seemed to prosperous. But under it all there was this tension, this unease
about the lower classes. There was great inequality. There was an international terrorist movement called anarchism afoot crime was grown. They had a tabloid press just like we have cable and other TV that was constantly amping people up. So it was a lot like our own. And one of the things people were very concerned about was this idea of crime and not just individuals but the criminal class.
So you're right, one of the things that really concerned people was finding out why did people behave this way?
Now, tell us a little bit about the You also go into the public executions and sort of the mood of the day. You said they had a tabloid press, but obviously a tabloid press comes with people have an appetite for the tabloid press, and obviously there is enough crime, or at least in people's minds, there's enough narrow do wells and enough Like you say that, people were alarmed at that time at a certain amount of crime. So tell us what the prevailing mood was at that time.
You share about x acutions, like I mentioned.
Yeah, you know, this is in because what we're doing is setting the scene and then we'll get to the details of the crime and the scientists. But the mood was very unsettled. Yes, there were public executions. They used the guillotine, you know, they felt it was the most humane thing to do In America, they used hanging, which could take ten minutes to kill someone. And we're beginning to experiment with this new invention called the electric chair.
That doctor Lauson actually wrote essays about it. He was intrigued, but he still thought it was kind of primitive. People kind of believed in capital's punishment, but the anti capital punishment movement was growing. They were having doubts. There was the school of thought that what if the person who credited the crime was insane, aren't we actually killing somebody who doesn't know any better. So again, almost as in every other area of society, the feeling was unsettled. Right.
You also talk about this an intellectual let that time, Caesar Lombroso, and he had his theories which were totally diametrically opposed to kind of ideas that Desange would have, and so tell us about their differences of it.
Very interesting because you know, these were also the same people that developed forensic science, and in addition to using evidence to say what happened, they wanted to find out
why it happened. Now, Darwin was still alive, Freud was alive, Pasteur was alive, So we had all this science in the air all these theories and Sesel Lombroso was a psychiatrist who worked in the Italian prisons and psychiatric institutes, and he came to believe over time that there is such a thing as a born criminal, that due to a glitch and evolution, some people still carried the seed of the primitive entity, and that they couldn't help themselves
but commit crime. And he actually thought he identified the part in the brain that was different in these people, because it was common to dissect the brains of executed criminals back then, and then it could be found in the facial features and there if somebody had a unibrow or ears that stuck out, or a big lantern jaw, this was a criminal type. And he would actually testify at trials as to who might be guilty just based on their physiognomy.
Incredible.
Yeah, Now, Laka Sonya, as you know, had the opposite feeling. He thought it was based on the person's circumstances and the way they were brought up. And this was the beginning of the nature nurture debate that, as you know, persists to this day.
Right now, you take us back to as well to a little bit of the history of lakasign and Lackasigna, and I hope he's not listening.
So anyway, he does have this ender who I found. We'll talk about that later. Oh very speak English.
Oh good, good. So anyway, what's he tell us a little bit more about his character, because there's other things that but came with it that he had a lot of theories and philosophies that were quite unique for the time. Tell us a little bit more about the character of this man.
Yeah, he was a renaissance man. I mean, think about what he looked like. He was a big guy, you know, a big barrel chested, you know, bergomeister type guy with a huge handlebar mustache. I almost couldn't find a picture of him not smiling, always surrounded by colleagues, surrounded by family. He represented everything that was good in that era to those people. He was a doctor. He was broadly educated.
He understood poetry, literature, and art. He had dozens and dozens of graduate students, and he developed some very interesting theories. And basically he was the center of a whole international group of scientists who were inventing the science of forensics. And they realized that witnesses don't always tell the truth,
but that the evidence doesn't lie. So he and this other group of people who were kind of an international brain trust bit by started looking at different pieces of evidence and using science to sort of reel back what
happened during the crime scene. Now, what specifically you've alluded to it, but what specific things that we could recognize today that people watching CSI for the first time five or ten years probably ten years ago now would would think, well, jeez, with blood spatter analysis, you know, tell us a little of some of the stuff that they were doing over one hundred years ago. It's quite amazing because everything except for fingerprinting and DNA, they basically had it nailed. So
you're right, they had a whole panoply of things. So body position on death rigor mortis, how long the person had been dead. They learned to identify insect populations on the body because they knew that once somebody died, their body became the host of successive ways of insect ecosystems.
Blood spatter analysis. La Casanya personally invented the science of ballistics in which he matched a bullet to a guy, you know, wound matching almost everything that we could think of as something they figured out like one hundred and twenty years ago. They were astonishing. And to think, by the way, this was an era before refrigeration, so they had to work fast. They worked without gloves, without masks. And the other big thing he did was standardized autopsies.
So even the rural doctors you mentioned, who were operating on a kitchen table knew to do the right thing.
It's amazing also too. What what I found was fascinating as well, is that, along with the prosecutor for Quette, they you know, Lacasagna basically was a pioneer in geographical profiling as well, because otherwise they never would have had a link. They had the rata base, so they were the innovators of that as well.
Yeah, and it's interesting, you know in these debates, you know, every four years they had a massive international meeting of criminologists. Of course, Elvis has been lost to history. It was great to revive it. And every four years there would be the same argument between Lombroso and Lakasanya, and Lombrosa would bring skulls and skeletons and brains to these exhibits.
They didn't let women in It was so horrifying. Lakasanya would bring charts and he did charts of if crop failures, economic av analysis, family structured because he was sure that it had to do with how the person was brought up. And this went on for years and years and years.
Wow, that's an incredible debate.
Isn't it. Yeah, I mean we're still talking about that.
Well, I think it comes up. I think that every few years you hear something about that they found some location in the brain that seems to be a predisposition.
But I've never found anything. I've never heard anything really conclusive about that, So you you don't see the sort of the proliferation of that idea, Thank god no. As you know, lately, neuroscientists have begun doing MRI scans of the brains of psychotic criminals and they are finding some very interesting patterns that the part of the brain that sort of acts like a grownup is not regulating the impulsive part of the brain as well as it should,
and it's possible that a component of this behavior may be inborn. And you'll notice I emphasize the word component because I think it still has a lot.
To do with upbringing. The thing that I want to emphasize though, is you read the book, you know the issues. Look how lively the debate was back then. Look how they really tried to get to the bottom of it. And it doesn't seem to me like society now is trying to get to the bottom of it. No.
Actually, I can see an actual aversion to looking at some of this. I don't see an increased fascination. I see an increased fascination in the fictionalization of a lot of these things, even criminal profiling, which has its obvious appeal. But at the same time, I don't see an increase
in people having a thirst for this. But then again, your book, I mean, you know, this book really does draw people in that probably would be interested because they've been watching CSI for ten years, and almost right from the beginning. When you read of all the things that were doing one hundred and twenty years ago, you're going, wow, I really did think that was just recent. Yeah, you know, you know, so it really must have been a golden age, because it certainly didn't catch on everywhere.
No, I mean, the United States was several decades behind these guys. But you know, you can't be first and everything Britain was behind. It was really at the time, scientists in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, to some degree Russia. They were at the center of this brand new science.
You know what I found interesting too, is that you talk about how everyone I guess I'm not sure if I can remember that Lombroso referenced it as well, but at least that Lakasagne did in terms of they all loved and actually took very seriously Sherlock Holmes, the fictional story.
Yeah, wasn't that. I mean in the same way that we like CSI. But so the Sherlock Holmes stories came out in the height of Lakasanya's career, and he sees it. He loved them so much so that he had a graduate student write a thesis comparing the science to Sherlock Holmes to the science of the day. And I was lucky enough to find a thesis in one of my trips to France and then find laka Asania's handwritten comments
all over it. So I had the impression of Lakasanya, the real life forensic expert having a debate with Sherlock Holmes, the fictional forensic expert. But the cool thing was, although Lakasanya enjoyed the stories, he felt the science fell short. You know, he felt Holmes was very quick.
Hello, it is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slock games on Chumpa Casino dot com. I looked over the person sitting next to me, and you know what they were doing. They were also playing Rumba casino coincidence, I think not everybody's loving having fun with it. Chump A Casino's home the hundreds of casino style games do you can play for free anytime, anywhere, even at thirty thousand feet. So sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot
com to claim you're free. Welcome Bonett, that's Chumbuck Casino dot com and live the chumberline necessary.
Dail I lost in terms conditions eighteen loss to.
Jump to conclusions. This business of drawing gigantic conclusions from a tiny piece of evidence was the opposite of the way they were And the biggest problem he had with Holmes was that Homes never conducted an autopsy, and of course the autopsy is central to any criminal investigation. So even though we enjoyed the stories, he didn't really take them seriously.
Right, But at the same time that those stories were written previous to those people being around at that time, So really you can give them a little bit of a break for having, you know, the time on their side. We'll say, let me are in terms of I'm dan with you on that one, because actually the stories came out. The first one was in eighteen eighty seven, right when these guys were and Sherlock Holmes actually talks about Lakasania's
colleague whose name was Bertil in Paris. So look, I'm a Holmes fan too, but true is true.
We gotta sorry, Sherlock.
Well, you know, the thing is is that, like you say, Lacasagne was doing groundbreaking work. I mean, you've got the other current scholar at the time thinking he's on the right trail here, and at the same time Lakazanne is doing groundbreaking work that we can compare to you know, one hundred and twenty years later, is still.
Very valid point. I think, you know, to me what really struck me and looking at this and of course you know, we enjoy the CSI thing. You know that the CSI show is fiction. Nobody has that kind of a laboratory. But it's exciting. It makes people terribly interested in this, and it's a kind of morality tale. And the lesson of CSI and the lesson of Sherlock Holmes is cool. People with science on our side will prevail over the forces of destruction and chaos. So that's the
lesson we take from these things. I'm happy and and when I know if it is fiction, and it's greatly enjoyable.
Yes.
Now, at the same time that all of this is going on, we have a person named Vachet. And but let's go back to as much history on and that you put in the book as well that you found through your research, so we can build the character of this extraordinary killer.
Okay, I missed a piece of what you said because your line cut out, So can you can you repeat a part of that question? Yes?
Sorry? What I what I asked was is that we would like to go back as far as you do in the book and from your research as well, go back and give us the character of Joseph Vasha, go back and give us his background story, and then tell us a little bit more about what he evolved into.
Yea. Interestingly enough, the way I learned about him was I was able to find the original court records in a countryside archive in rural France, cases and cases of handwritten testimony and affidavits from people who knew him when he was a kid, and then I later found the psychiatric records in one of the asylums where he had been. But if a modern psychologist were to look at him, they would say he is the classic psychopath. As a kid, he grew up in a relatively normal peasant family and
sixteen siblings. It was a big family. He seemed kind of normal until he was about ten, and then his family claimed he was licked by a rabid dog and they gave him some folk medicine, after which his personality kind of turned. I think it was just a coincidence, because rabies kills you, and anyway, and after that he became really malicious. If the kids played a trick on him, instead of laughing, he would try to kill them. He
broke the legs of animals on the farm. He also had clerical tendencies, so as a teenager he actually went to a monastery for a couple of years before he was expelled for sexual misconduct, and he would walk miles and miles to work off this rage that built up within him. So we really see from his early years sort of the early patterns of very dangerous young man.
Was there anything that's indicated that the influence of his parents at that time on his behavior.
I don't think so. And the reason I say is that some of the siblings came to the trial, and also when the news of his capture broke and there were articles all over the place, some of the siblings wrote to the newspapers about how absolutely humiliated they were and how they could never live this down and they were just shattered. And in the witnesses testimony, the villagers said that his parents were good, honorable, hardworking people. So
this guy just came out. I mean, you could believe in a born criminal if you knew a guy like this. He just showed up.
Right now. He gravitated or he joined the army, and he was fairly successful in the military. Tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, he achieved the rank of sergeant. He seemed to do well in a highly regulated, disciplined situation, as some people do, but he was also known for his brutality. He would really attack people who crossed him, and you know, a couple of times he had been referred to the doctor for some of this crazy behavior. Sometimes we have these terrible outbursts of rage. It was in the military, while walking through a park in eastern France. One day he came upon a young woman named Louise Barant, struck
up conversation. He could be very charming if need be, and started dating her, and soon in their relationship he proposed marriage and she backed off. And as time went on and she learned more about his character, it became clear to her that he was not somebody to be around, and she tried to reject him, tried to you know, again, he proposed marriage, and finally one time, when she rejected him, he pulled out a pistol and he shot her in
the head. And then he turned it on himself and shot himself in the head.
And what happened. He was not killed, but tell us about the disfigurement.
Yet neither of them was killed. She was obviously traumatized. He was taken to a hospital and then put in a mental asylum, and he caused a disfigurement and caused a paralysis. He shot himself twice actually, and it's amazing he didn't die. One of the bullets caused a paralysis in his right cheek, and the scar and his right eyelid would droop, and also there was always some kind of puss coming out of his ear. Started to be
so disgusting about it. But you know, he was not a handsome guy, and this made him actually really really difficult to look at. So he was in the asylum, and you know, we think of mental asylums as those days as tough places, but actually this was also the birth of modern psychology. So they learned to treat mentally ill people with gentleness and understanding. And the asylum itself is, you know, in the foothills of the Alps, beautiful setting
with crops and forests, and they talked them trades. So after just a few months he calmed down and he really seemed cured, and they let him out on April Fool's Day, eighteen ninety four.
You know, let's go back just a little bit. What I thought was fascinating the other parallels with today and yesterday when you talked about the techniques for you know, profiling and for crime scene analysis, what I thought was interesting. It's the same thing ninety days and the guy's cured from this, and you know, I mean that's that's a very liberal way of looking at any kind of sentencing.
And like you mentioned too, it almost sets the stage for his inevitable defense later because, as you said, they were still debating whether you could escape conviction because of your sanity. So he really was successful at trial and saying that he was insane and and that's why he was not as guilty of attempted murder.
That was his Yeah, early on, that was his thing. You know. I asked modern day forensic psychologists about this. I said, is it possible? I mean, could this guy have faked it? And we'll get into the details of this case later, but one of the things that interesting is they said it's possible that he was psychotic and schizophrenic, and schizophrenics you know split you know, people hear, hear voices and see illusions and behavior radically. They're not dangerous,
they're not going to hurt anybody. And it could be that under the gentle treatment at this asylum, the schizophrenia symptoms calm down, but he was still a psychotic killer at heart, and that's something that you can't fix. The other thing is it could have been that he was so cunning that he was able to fake his cure and get out. But in any case, yeah, after just a few months he was on the loose and it was five weeks later that he committed his first murder.
Now tell us what an our audience could handle it that.
Trust me, I.
Forgot the name of your show exactly so, and no one's complained. So I think if you could describe the extent of the savagery of Asher, because I think that's for most people not knowing this name un till your book comes out, and despite the international headlines of the trial and the case at that time, you know, if you could tell us a little bit about that.
You know, it's interesting because ten years before this, Jack the Ripper killed five prostitutes in one neighborhood of London, and Joseph Feschet killed anywhere from eleven to twenty five young people all over France at the time. He really was notorious. He was very cunning, and they called him the killer of little shepherds because he would stalk shepherds.
You know, he was raised in the high country and that's where he liked to hang out and he would drift around getting farm jobs, staying with people who had no suspicion of him. And then when the mood came over him, he'd head out into the fields where nobody was around, and he would see a shepherd. It was often a shepherd, there were some factory workers who may have been out on a picnic. Always the person was
completely alone, with nobody within sight or earshot. He would run up to the person very quickly, grab him around the throat so tightly that the person almost dropped instantly, you know, slit the person's throat, and then in the most horrible ways, disfigure and sexually molest the body. When he was done, he would hide the body, change his clothes, wash up, and walk twenty miles into the nest district
where no one ever heard of him. He was about to do this for three years, and he was so good at it because he planned so carefully, and communication between districts was so bad. By the time he was gone, the village would be in a total uproar, totally traumatized, and people in those days were so suspicious that they would often pick another villager who they hated anyway and accuse him of doing the crime. So there was a
tremendous amount of collateral damage from these crimes as well. Now, was there after one, two, or a couple murders in during this spree, this three year spree, was there a description created of Vachet. It took a while. For three years, nobody connected the dots. They didn't even know these killings were related. There was one guy in the city of Dijon, an inspector who started reading about him and thought maybe
it was kind of like copycat killings. But finally it came to an inspector named Emil four K, who you mentioned at the beginning of the show, in the small city of Billet, who had a killing in his district and noticed from the newspapers a similar killing in another district. Now four K, although a small time magistrate, followed the
modern methods and he started thinking. So he sent telegraphs all over France to all the magistrates and said, if you had any unexplained murders in your district, send me a description of what happened. And he sent another telegram to the same people said if you've had any strange looking vagabonds passing through, send me a description of them.
So eighty five dossiers came in and he started spending nights and weekends going through the details, and he made huge charts of all the physical characteristics of an unknown person, all the characteristics of crime scene, and in a blue pencil he started circling all the common elements. Took them weeks and weeks and weeks. He came up with a profile, a description of the suspect, and a description of the methods that was unbelievably precisely. It was probably the first
modern profile. And he sent a telegram saying, this is a guy who may be what they're calling the killer of little shepherds or Jack the Ripper of France. If anybody like this shows up, telegraph it to me at once.
And when did they? Finally, as they close in on him, tell us a little bit more about Vachet's behavior and what he continues to do. You say, he walks twenty miles into another community. The community is up in an uproar, but he's not there, so he gets to continue. Tell us some of the cities and I mean he's in the countryside, but tell us a little bit more about his travels.
He's you know, it was a time of great rural unemployment because industrialization put a lot of agricultural workers out of work. There was a blight on the wine, so there were literally hundreds of people wandering around the countryside looking for jobs, like migrant labors. So he could blend in and he'd get a job on a farm and stay with a family and then do a killing, and he'd disappear, and he would migrate north and south. You know, he was outside of Paris, he was outside of Leon.
He made a pilgrimage down to the Cathedral of Lords. He was in the Dordonia, literally all over the countryside, migrating. The interesting thing is the different aspects of his personality came out. So there was the testimony of one farm family who he stayed with, and they said what a kind and gentle man he was, and how he took their daughter on his knee and gave her penmanship and
mathematics lessons, and they saved the paper. I was able to look at the paper and his penmanship was beautiful, And they had no knowledge that a few days later he would go out and you know, disembowel somebody. After a while, he picked up an accordion, and he'd sit playing the accordion and joking around with children, and then
he'd do something so svage, like kill a dog. So you just had this this ticking time bomb wandering all over France until finally, in August of ninety seven, in an area called the Ardash, he attacks a woman who's trying to fight him off, and meanwhile, her husband's in the forest nearby, and the husband and the villagers get there and finally they grab this guy.
And then what happens after that.
Well, it's amazing. So he gets taken to the local jail, and he's spent tons of times in local jails and been let out after a few days because the justice system, you know, outside the big cities, was really primitive and nobody read their telegrams. And four K meanwhile said this telegram over, and this sheriff in this little town read the memo and he read the description. He looked at this prisoner and he goes, whoa this is? So he writes back to four K, he says, I have a
man who managined Judy was boring. Hello.
Then jud he discovered chumpa casino dot com.
It's my little escape.
Now Judy is the life of the party. Oh baby mama is bringing home the bacon.
WHOA, Take it easy, Judy, The Jumba life is for everybody. So go to chumpacasino dot com and play over one hundred casino style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prices.
Jump chumpi Casino dot com.
Noe's necessary. We're pomitted by e plus terms and condition to play. What every details?
It's your description. So four K sends him a telegraph. He says, send me a photograph, and the jailer writes back, there's only one photographer in town, and he took one look at this guy, and he was so terrified that he couldn't bring himself to point his camera at the guy's face. So four cases send me.
The prisoner send that's good enough for me.
Well, they chain him up and put him on a train and he arrives at the jail in four K and belly and four K begins one of the most amazing interrogations in the history of crime detection.
Yeah it's you know, it's interesting, well to share if it just comes down to good old fashioned police work. I know, that's overused expression, but that when we're talking one hundred and twenty years ago, it's amazing. How if you just took if you just took those facts away, it would be you could picture all kinds of scenarios.
Yeah, outside, you know what's interesting, Dan, In the eighteen nineties, it wasn't old fashion it is now. Yeah, eighteen nineties to put together a profile and send an all pro ands bulleting around. This was a new idea and in something that this guy for Kate, who followed the modern methods, gave it a try. It's amazing.
Yeah, these were real dedicated guys too. They really believed in what they were doing, and they were really very you know, very very energetic.
You're right, You're right.
I wanted to say too that that at the time they did realize they weren't foolish too. And I think just like now, they need to they need to know that they have enough evidence to proceed what to are faced with the same thing that these people were faced with.
They need to get a confession because there wasn't enough evidence at that time, tell us about the lack of evidence, what really what they only had, and then go into the strategy of how they thought they would question this person, what they needed from him.
Yeah, this is really interesting. You really raise an interesting point. Vache was so good that there was pretty much no physical evidence and pretty much no witnesses. All that they had was the crime scene analysis afterwards and the sketches and some of that. But you know, they didn't have
fingerprints yet. So four K starts questioning about Shay. Now, he was a follower of the great Vnese criminologist Hans Gross, and Gross wrote a lot of guides to police work, which I was able to find, and in one of them, he has a long manuscript on how to interrogate a suspect, And this immediately caught my eye because he said, when you interrogate a suspect, the stupidest thing you could possibly do is torture them or even cause them stress. I mean you could. Even this guy wrote this in the
eighteen eighties. He said, if you torture them, they'll tell you what you want to hear. So Gross wrote, you have to be clever, you have to win their confidence. You have to have them repeat the story in many different ways to see if they trip up, he said, and eventually they'll unburden themselves to you if you win their confidence. So four K starts questioning Vauchet, and you know, they were allowed to hold the prisoners for as long
as they want. And he's going on for days and days and days in Fashi is tough and he's not getting anywhere, and he realizes so he changes tax and four K says, look, they made a mistake in sending it to me. I now realize you're the wrong guy. So I am going to let you go, and I just need about three days to clear up some administrative paperwork. He said. Meanwhile, I'm writing a book about this phenomenon of the vagabonds who wander around France, which happens to
be true. By the way, he said, maybe you could be a colleague and help me with my books. So would you mind if, in order to pass the time, I interviewed you about your wanderings and your adventures. Was so flattered by the attention that he spent days and days telling him about where he went and when he was there and if it was snowing or if it was autumn and vac Que would four K would make maps and I was able to get copies of these
maps drawing the Vachet's too brilliant. And then at night he'd go back to his office and he'd plopped the murders and it was a match. Can imagine how he felt. And he said, when he saw this, it was, oh my god. So he gets this and finally he goes to Vachet and one day he confronts him and he said, okay, I've got you dead to rights, and he started he recites ten murders in the row, almost in a single breath, with all of the coincidence, all the evidence. He said.
Vachet staggered like a drunk and went white. And later that night, a guard knocks on four K's door as he's eating dinner and he hands him a piece of paper. It's a confession by Vachet. One of the most amazing interrogations you can imagine. He never lifted a finger, he was never armed, he never even shouted, and he got it. Yeah.
Well, that's the kind of brilliant ploys that you might see in some of the best true crime thrillers and that and that's very very rare you see anybody using that kind of extent of psychological you know, identifying this guy as a real narcissist and a real egomaniac, good perfect things, and then fooling him again. These guys are classic.
And I don't know how inherently they knew that, but they inherently figured out these guys awfully quick how they worked, and then used that to their advantage.
You're right, I mean to use psychology basically at the dawn of psychology. It was amazing. Now, as you know from reading the book, the confession was pretty incoherent, and immediately after the confession of actually clams up and starts decorating his cell like a crazy man. And it's clear this is the route he's going. And here's where four K realizes, you know, this is above his pay grade.
He's then all he could do. So that's when he calls in the fame is doctor Lakasanya and says, I got a case to beat all cases, and I am out of my league here and I need you to take this guy over and figure out whether he is insane or whether he's just the most cunning killer you know in our history.
That the hookup is kind of interesting as well, that when he came to that conclusion that he had done everything he could. He was just very aware of Lakazia Lakasanya's work at that time. Was it that prevalent that he knew? Tell us a little bit about how he came to that decision to do that, because it's an incredible decision and basically, why in his mind did he think that this was the person that he should contact.
Good question. Even though nobody today has heard of Lakasanya, in the eighteen nineties, everybody heard of Lakasanya. He was a household word. He had solved some cases that were considered miracles of crime scene deduction. You know, I mentioned in the book the case of the Bloody Trunk, in which he identified a body that had been buried for half a year, using the most minute examinations to identify the body and solve what had been considered the perfect crime.
And he did one after the other after the other. So pretty much anybody in France and sometimes in other countries as well, who had a case that was just overpowering, the first person they thought of was geez I hope I could get Lakasanya in on this one, because he was He was the man. So it wasn't a very hard decision for four k and luckily, Leon, where Laka Sonya worked, wasn't terribly far from his town and they were able to ship Vachet down to Leon where Lakasanya took over the case.
And Lakasagna was interested in this case for all the aspects of it.
Absolutely.
Now you start talking about that he clammed up before the trial, he was if you believe that he was faking or you know, he was, you know, giving a show for the authorities. What was he doing in prison before even the trial? What was his behavior like?
Well, they had him in the Saint Paul prison in the all for five months while they examined him, and he would he would do crazy stuff. I mean, he went on hunger strike. But then lak A Sonya found out that he actually bribed another inmate to slip him food. He would have these tremendous outbursts. His religiosity came back and he insisted on going to the chapel all the time.
And once on the way to the prison chapel, he made a break for it and he starts, you know, dashing up the hall and they tackle him in a melee ensues and they put him in his in his cell, and he kicked through the heavy metal door, the heavy wooden door, so they had to put him in a straight jacket and he would just have these towering outbursts. So, you know, here was a guy who was not on
the street and narrow. It's interesting. One of the things lak A Sonya did, even though he was such a great law enforcement guy and such as scientists, is he never forgot that criminals were human beings. So in addition to everything else he did, every Sunday morning he'd walk across town to the prison and he would chat with the prisoners and give them journals so they could write in the journals because he wanted to understand them. Because of this, even the prisoners he put away admired him.
You know.
Everybody loved the guy. And one of the interesting things was vache was the only prisoner he could not win over, and he talked to him for five months and couldn't crack him. And Vachet would manipulate him and he thought he'd get him going, and then Vachhet was, hey, I'm
fed up with this. You were a charlatan. Other times he would seem interested, and that was when Lakasania eventually made the huge step of realizing the path to understanding this guy's mentality wasn't to converse with him because he was just too good, but to go back and reanalyze all the evidence from the crime scenes and the autopsies to see if there was a method in.
What he was doing, and what did he find out about the mo the method of operandi, the method of operation For.
Joseph Ache, he was the one who figured out the pattern. I told you about this way of seizing the person in a certain way. If you grab the person by the throat, you could grab their vagus nerve it's not just strangulation or their carrotter art, and they will drop like a rock. And he figured out from all the autopsies and all the files and bodies he'd examined himself, the exact sequence, and that the sequence was almost identical in every crime because this guy figured out how to
do that. He figured out how Vachet stalked his victims and was able to kill them with no witnesses around, and how he made his escape in some he figured out that this guy had a very carefully thought out method and according to the standards of his day and ours. You couldn't be insane and be that clever. So he was convinced that Thatchet was sane.
Now, just like the times are so similar, Vaucher had somebody, an advocate, to try to win him a lesser sentence via this insanity. Please tell us a little bit about that. And this is the trial itself is incredible. You already talked about how even some of Vachet's family members he had the fifteen other kids came out or fourteen other kids came some of them came to the trials. Tell us about the mood of the trial itself. And the defense for.
The trial was a circus. I mean, you know, we talked about the O. J. Simpson trial and the Charles Managers. So this thing was and vacually wanted it to be a circus because he could make it crazy. He might get a crazy defense. Now, his defender was a lawyer named Charbonnet, who was vastly respected. He was an old, very dignified, very learned man, and he did not believe in the death penalty. And he also so truly believed that Esha was insane, and he made impassion to please
on his behalf. And we'll get to that in a minute, because his appeal was brilliant. The trial itself. Imagine it's in a small courthouse in this town of Binons. It's market day. It starts on a Wednesday. The court is jammed. There's a crowd outside. It would look like a crowd from the Frankenstein movie with everything except the pitchforks. They're screaming death to the assassin, Death to the assassment. They've got a crack regiment of troops outside trying to keep
the crowd at bay. Inside the courtroom, you know, it's like a circus. The media are jostling, they're people crowding, everybody's pushing, and here's this judge trying to keep control of it. And it was It was wild.
And what was Vachet doing too? How is he performing?
He was performing. He comes in wearing a white rabbit fur hat, which he said was the symbol of purity, and holding a sheaf of papers and broke claiming that he's an emissary from Jesus and Joan of arc And he is having outbursts and making grimaces and applauding inappropriately, and he's acting completely insane. And this is going on for two days while a parade of fifty witnesses each testifies about the little bit of time they may have
seen him. Again, no eyewitnesses to the Christ, but character witnesses, villagers on what they saw. People saw him coming and going. And it wasn't until the third day that doctor Lakasanya gave his testimony.
And what did that include? Tell us about his.
Does and' oh man, it was something. Now you got to realize Lakasania had actually written manuscripts on how a medical examiner should behave in court. He had this so figured one hundred and twenty years ago. He said, you dress in a business suit, you answer simply and directly. You talk to the jury in simple terms. By respecting their intelligence. He said, if the defense lawyer cross examines, you don't get mad. And he said, nor are you
an advocate or the police lawyer. You represent science, the cold hard truth of science. And the newspapers reported that when lectic Sanya walked in there was a hush. His dignity was enough to shut everybody up, and all of the stirring fell silent. And he gave his testimony, and he introduced a new word into the courtroom. That had
never been used in a courtroom before. That word was sadist. Now, the Viennase psychologist Craft van Ebbing had written a book about sadism, you know, people who inflict pain for their own pleasure. And all of Europe was a stir. You know, these were the Victorian times, but they had their naughty little secrets. And Lakasanya had a series of drawings showing the crime scenes that he passed to the jurors. He
described the method in great detail. He described the autopsies, He described the state of the bodies, and he said, this guy's son insane. He's a sadist, and he's a bloody sadist, and as such he must be put away. And all the newspapers wrote that was it. That. After that, there was nothing the defense could do. And at the end of the third day, at nine o'clock at night, I believe it was, the jury went out and they came back in twenty minutes with a verdict and the verdict was guilty.
And how did he react and how did the people react?
He did nae react. He asked the judge does that mean I get the death penalty? And the judge said, I yes, it would seem so. And then Vashet turns. He says, curses to those who would condemned me, and then the whole place erupts, and the crowd outside is cheering, you know, to death, to death, to death, and he walks out and then turns around says bye. And later a reporter followed him to a cell where he was
grumbling and he said, oh, my attorney was incompetent. He should have compared me to Joan of arc and when those people took my hat, it was ridiculous. And then five minutes later he was peacefully sleeping. Now the appeal was so interesting because this guy, Charbonnhay, was a great
attorney and people really respected him. He made a point and in his peal he wrote, you are prosecuting this man for a particular crime, and it was just one crime they were getting him for because they had that evidence, had jurisdiction. And this crime occurred about a year and a half after he was released for the asylum. And you say he was sane, he said, yet he killed his first victim five weeks after release from the asylum.
If we were trying him for that first murder. Would you then say he was insane a mere five weeks after his release, At what point do you think he was cured? And it was a compelling appeal, but the president of the country politically, there's no way he could let this guy out because the asylums were not very secure, and he didn't act on it, and the appeal was lost.
How much I wanted to go back just a bit death to let people know how much eel, if anything was used at the trial, and how effective was it, And did Lacazangne did he mention that or did he talk about that confession at all as part of his testimony.
They did, because parts of the confession were coajent. You know, in the confession he said, yes, it was I who killed all those people, but then there was all sorts of ranting, so they were able to use that part of it, and there will be to use a lot of testimony from people knew him when he was a kid and growing up, and they sort of built a
circumstantial case around it. But what really did it and what really fascinated me about this trial and the whole case, was the way Lakisani you'd forensic evidence to reveal this guy's state of mind, and I don't know if that had been done before. You know, as I said, they could use the evidence to determine what happened, but I'm not sure if they ever used evidence to determine why
it happened or what the guy was thinking. So in a lot of ways, in many ways, this case was a serious breakthrough.
Now, what was the fate of Vachet after his committal to prison? Yeah, well, I mean when did how long was it before he did was it?
Let me think the trial ended in late November and on December thirty first, eighteen ninety eight, he was sent to the guillotine, and I from newspaper and eyewitness testimony, I was able to recreate this scene and it was quite a scene, and he was going to say a few words, but in the end, he you know, he kind of fell apart. They had to drag him to the guillotine and there were thousands of people in the town square. It was an absolute medieval scene and when
the blade dropped, they just went crazy. Now, afterwards, they took his body to the local morgue where they conducted an autopsy, and then one of the doctors there doctor Meduf put the head in a cooking pot and took it on the overnight train to Paris because so many scientists wanted to get a look at this brain, to figure out what was going on in the mind of the worst serial killer in history up to that time.
You know, maybe there's a lesion. Because they'd found lesions on the brains of other insane people, maybe we could find something. So this opened up a whole new chapter in the study of this guy and this kind of person.
Well, now, Lakasanye, what did was he at the execution itself? And if not, or if he was, what was his reaction and what happened with his career after that? What did this do for his career?
Yeah, he wasn't at the execution, although he was outside of the autopsy. The family banned him from the autopsy. They just had strange feelings, and another doctor who felt Vachet was insane had turned the family against La Caasanya. But that didn't bother him. He was very sure of his results. After the execution, he wrote a book on the subject, a memoir which I was able to get, and his career continued to be internationally known. He solved
one case after the other. Really was his name was common all over the world, in criminological circles and in news circles. There was only one case he messed up. There was a woman who was a babysitter and she killed several children who were in her care by suffocation.
And he thought that she was not necessarily guilty and not necessarily sane, and in the end they caught her, and he wrote, you know, a very humble newspaper column saying, you know, even the best scientists can be fooled sometimes.
But that did nothing to diminish his stardom. He was respected and revered until at the age of eighty four, he was out for one of his morning walks and he was in a car accident, and he eventually died, and there was, you know, a great deal of press devoted to that as well.
What about email four.
Four K interesting? You know, he's one of these people that walks onto the stage and then a minute later walks off. Here he was really, he was the catalyst for solving the worst crime of his era, and perhaps because of jealousies or political configurations, his career never advanced. He was shuffled from one outpost to another. I mean he should have been promoted to national office in Paris after this deduction, but you know, there were a lot
of jealousies at the time. And finally, some years later he gave up and he wrote his own memoir of the case and somewhat bitterly wrote, you know, you would imagine that the guy who saw this case would be given a great post or a legion of honor, and sadly none of those things happened, and he just kind of disappeared from public view.
Interesting, and how did this debate of sanity versus insanity? What was its result and as an effect on at least legal system from that time on.
This case solved nothing in that regard. You know, they found no lesions, but then they also wrote, you know, other people wrote, well it may be not something that you could see. You know, at the time, the legal definition of sanity versus insanity was if you know the difference between right and wrong, If you know what you're doing is wrong and do it anyway, you're legally responsible.
It's still the definition today, despite the fact that certain brain scans are showing that some people, very small number, but some people may knowed the difference between right and wrong, but lack the ability to stop themselves. And you know, this is a sociopath, this is a psychotic. They know what they're doing is wrong, but it's possible that in some small proportion of these people they really lack the
capacity to stop themselves. And there's a whole field of law now emerging in the twenty first century called neuro law, and that is a new version of the law based on a better understanding of neuralgy and brain science, and kind of some legal scholars are talking about that, but you can imagine that the legal system doesn't want to go there because it would open up a whole canon worms in terms of who does and who doesn't get put away.
Well exactly, and then even more increased rule of psychiatry in courtrooms.
We don't know what to do with it. You know, it's really interesting. You and I look like a guy look at a guy like this, or you and I. I mean, I'm sure with your background, you know all the serial killers, and think about Jeffrey Dahmers or Ted Bundy. Now just between us, these guys are nuts, but legally they're not right. And I think there's a gap there, and it's a very uncomfortable gap, and it's like we're living in that gap thinking we know they're crazy, but
legally they're not. And it's a problem that we as a society haven't solved yet.
Well.
I think that, you know, part of it is that people believe that people are getting off if put in mental institutions and being living In Canada, I mean, people have really good examples of that. We had a horrific bus beheading and cannibalism. You probably heard about. This thing was on a Greyhound bus. This person was clearly insane. Yeah, but this psychiatric field here in this city, in this country has spoken to the parents and said, you know, on medication, within five years he should be out.
So where's where's the guy Now?
He's in an institution, he's in a mental institution. But within two years they're they're letting him out on walks. And so there was a because of the savagery of the of the crimes and the uniqueness and it just you know, and it made international press. But still, you know, there are people that believe that once you put somebody in institution, that there are those people who could let them out in a short period of time, and there are a lot of people of the of the mind
that where I clearly understand what you're saying. But you know, when you're a sociopath or a psychopath and you're normal, except you just don't think normal, you don't behave normal. The value of human life is not and their propensity to want to be famous at all costs. Even though this was one hundred and twenty years ago, this guy has those psychopathic tendencies easily.
Yeah, you know, it's a dilemma, you know. I think in the States, people overestimate how often the insenti defense is used. It's not used that you're often, and the people tend notot to get out. There's some states that have come up with a statute of guilty but insane, in which they get the full term, but it's in an institution where they're where their symptoms could be treated.
I don't have the answer, you know, looking at this case and then bringing things up to date, up to date in the twenty first century has just told me these are the questions. And I don't mean to take an easy way out, but none of us has the answer to this. What it mean was how so long ago these people were smart enough to ask the questions that we're now asking. Don't forget, Before these guys came on the scene, it was considered good and evil. You know, it was in the pocket of the clergy, and now
it's in the realm of science and law. So in that way, I guess we've advanced.
Yes, And I think to the really good examination of the death penalty is a again, a very reasonable thing to do. And I think the US, even though it's you know, it doesn't have a great reputation for open mindedness in that area. Then you still see that the appetite or the mood of the general population is that they're not so in agreement with the death penalty.
No, most states don't have it, you know. I was talking with the prosecutor in Texas, where they do have it, and I said, you guys are playing without a net. And as you know, we have the Innocence Project here which has turned over many, many cases, in some cases people wrongfully executed. So yeah, I don't think it's a good idea. It's too all or none, and people make mistakes.
Yeah, that's exactly the way I look at it too. I don't want to have that I know that the system pains itself and tries to portray themselves as well. We have these checks and balances. But despite all that, despite oversight, and despite appeal, innocent people of being convicted everywhere, and innocent people could die, let alone spending portions of their lives in prison. So I absolutely cannot, with any good conscious agree with the death penalty. But I do
really agree with life without any possibility of parole. And one of the things that I find interesting here in this country is that we've abandoned that idea. So really, yeah, yeah, because we don't even have we don't even have consecutive sentencing. So Robert Picton, Robert Pickton has a parole hearing.
Of course, you know, all other ways your country is so much more civilized in ours.
I think, Well, we do deal with we do actually believe in rehabilitation still, and we still what we do have is a tendency not to believe in mandatory minimums, and we really do we really do handle a less serious crime more reasonably, I think.
And you know, these guys in the eighteen nineties, the pioneers of forensic science would have agreed with you. I found a paper by one of them. It was so interesting because you know, they saw themselves as doctors, and they saw a crime as a kind of disease, and they thought, all right, how do we cure it? And one doctor wrote, if you had a patient with a heart attack or a broken arm, or an influenza, would
you give all of them the same medicine? He said, And yet we use the same medication for all crime imprisonment said, isn't there something better? And they really did believe in rehabilitation. And La Kasani, who was a strict law and order guy, he really believed in rehabilitation too. And it concerns me then in the US that seems like a popular and you know, there's still people and the greatest criminologist of all time never gave up believing that criminals were still human beings.
Well, I think what happens too is you do have these horrendous, horrific crimes that are high profile, and then you do have the media which feeds on that fear that is created by that, and then you have the politics that again feeds on that fear. So you do have a quandary where if anyone were to say, let's repeal that mandatory minimum, or let's consider rehabilitation of killers. It's political suicides.
It is, you know, that's why they couldn't go for the appeal with VSA, which is a very compelling case. The president would have lost his office immediately. So it sure is a highly fraud area.
Yes, absolutely, yeah, and you could see it everywhere that it will always be an issue that's contended or pardon me, debated.
So yeah, you're right.
Well, I want to thank you very much. I wanted to also mention that you have you have an earlier book which is you're renowned for. It's called Blood and Epic History of Medicine and Commerce. And I also want to tell people that have been listening you've been listening to Douglas Starr and this is his book The Killing of Little Shepherds, The True crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science. And I want to thank you very much Doug for coming on the program and talking about
your incredible book. It's been a very enjoyable interview. Thank you very much.
Thanks. I enjoy it very much.
Well, you have a good evening.
Thanks, So you have a we're off right.
No, we're still on, but go on.
Oh no, I was just gonna if you have a website. It would be terrific if you could connect to my website because it has pictures and documents and things people might like to see.
Absolutely, I'll put a link on my website for people to take a look and to broad talk.
Oh, kick people over your show so is www. Douglas Star all one word dot com. But thanks, you were obviously an expert in the area. Well, you know, I just read a lot and so I think a lot of people that read this, a lot of true crime fans get enough of an education. But totally, your book is unique in terms of giving us the history of forensic basically the history of forensic evidence and how they're
utilize how they utilize it in this incredible case. And so it's a great way of bringing people in to Again, a lot of people say I don't read true crime, Well, you know what, you don't have to read true crime to appreciate a well written and well researched book and a great story. You know, pers You've got everything going on here, So I appreciate it. All right. Well, thanks Dan, it was great conversation.
Thank you very much, and have a good evening. You even listen to the thank you you even listened to the program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history, and the authors that have written about them.
Good Night,