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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder The Most Shocking
Speaker 4: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 5: Good evening, This is your host, Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 5: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime
Speaker 5: History and the authors that have written about them. A
Speaker 5: True crime Story and the Bird The Forensic Science The
Speaker 5: Killing of Little Shepherds with Douglas Starr was going to
Speaker 5: be my guest this evening and hopefully he will. I
Speaker 5: gave him a reminder of our program this evening and
Speaker 5: he had it penciled in anyway, It's the story, true
Speaker 5: crime story and the birth of forensic Science with Douglas Starr.
Speaker 5: Let's hook up with him right now. Good evening, Douglas, Hi, Dan,
Speaker 5: how are you good? How are you doing good. Thank
Speaker 5: you very much for agreeing to this interview. Let me
Speaker 5: just do an intro and then we'll get into doing
Speaker 5: some questions, having some questions for you about this fine book.
Speaker 5: In your book, you eloquently juxtaposed the crimes of French
Speaker 5: serial killer Joseph Vacker and the achievements of famed criminologist
Speaker 5: doctor Alexander Lacange. During Francis Bellapack from eighteen ninety four
Speaker 5: to eighteen ninety seven. Vacker is thought to have raped,
Speaker 5: killed and mutilated at least twenty five people, though he
Speaker 5: would confess to only eleven murders. La Camsee, who headed
Speaker 5: the Department of Legal Medicine at the University in Lyons,
Speaker 5: was a pioneer in crime scene analysis, body decomposition and
Speaker 5: early profiling, and investigating and investigating suspicious deaths, all in
Speaker 5: an era when rural autopsies were often performed on the
Speaker 5: victim's dinner table. Lecage contributions to the burgeoning field of
Speaker 5: forensic science, as well as the persistence of investigating magistrate
Speaker 5: he tent for Quet, who connected crimes while crisscrossing the
Speaker 5: French countryside, eventually brought Vacker to justice. Vacker claimed insanity,
Speaker 5: which then, as now was a vexed legal issue, and
Speaker 5: Lecange proved the systematic nature of the crimes. Star, who
Speaker 5: is co director of Boston's University Center for Science and
Speaker 5: Medical Journalism, creates tension worthy of a thriller. In Lecange,
Speaker 5: he portrays a man determined to understand the how behind
Speaker 5: some of humanity's most depraved and perhaps take us once
Speaker 5: closer to the why the killing of little shepherds. With
Speaker 5: my special guest Douglas Starr, thank you very much for
Speaker 5: agreeing to this interview and welcome.
Speaker 6: To the program. Oh it's good to be here.
Speaker 5: And you can probably go back and correct me on
Speaker 5: the butchering of those French.
Speaker 6: It's not hard, it's not easy. Rather so the bad
Speaker 6: guy was just a vashe.
Speaker 5: Okay, there you go.
Speaker 6: The hero of the book is Alexandra, Alexandra la Caasanya.
Speaker 6: See it's tough for me too, Alexandra la Caasanya like Lasagna,
Speaker 6: but la Casano okay. And the magistrate was Emil four K.
Speaker 5: A meal okay, a meal for k yeah, four K okay,
Speaker 5: got it. I'll do a bit better and hopefully it's
Speaker 5: a learning process. Absolutely absolutely now to start for our
Speaker 5: for our listeners, A very important and fascinating part of
Speaker 5: your book is the evolution in the late nineteenth century
Speaker 5: of the various prevailing theories and techniques used to identify
Speaker 5: and classify criminals. It's amazing actually, and especially killers speculating
Speaker 5: on the mindset and their methods of operation. So take
Speaker 5: us back to France at that time. Set the stage
Speaker 5: and tell us what was going on at that time
Speaker 5: with these theories and techniques and identifying and classifying criminals.
Speaker 6: Take us back. Yeah, this is a really interesting time.
Speaker 6: And one of the things that grabbed me when I
Speaker 6: tripped over this case was how much like our own
Speaker 6: time it was. So it was the turn of the
Speaker 6: century and it was the Gilded Age in America, the
Speaker 6: Victorian England, the Victorian era in England, and in France
Speaker 6: they call it the belly poc the beautiful era. And
Speaker 6: science was flowering, the arts were flourishing. People seemed to prosperous.
Speaker 6: But under it all there was this tension, this unease
Speaker 6: about the lower classes. There was great inequality. There was
Speaker 6: an international terrorist movement called anarchism afoot crime was grown.
Speaker 6: They had a tabloid press just like we have cable
Speaker 6: and other TV that was constantly amping people up. So
Speaker 6: it was a lot like our own. And one of
Speaker 6: the things people were very concerned about was this idea
Speaker 6: of crime and not just individuals but the criminal class.
Speaker 6: So you're right, one of the things that really concerned
Speaker 6: people was finding out why did people behave this way?
Speaker 5: Now, tell us a little bit about the You also
Speaker 5: go into the public executions and sort of the mood
Speaker 5: of the day. You said they had a tabloid press,
Speaker 5: but obviously a tabloid press comes with people have an
Speaker 5: appetite for the tabloid press, and obviously there is enough crime,
Speaker 5: or at least in people's minds, there's enough narrow do
Speaker 5: wells and enough Like you say that, people were alarmed
Speaker 5: at that time at a certain amount of crime. So
Speaker 5: tell us what the prevailing mood was at that time.
Speaker 5: You share about x acutions, like I mentioned.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, this is in because what we're doing
Speaker 6: is setting the scene and then we'll get to the
Speaker 6: details of the crime and the scientists. But the mood
Speaker 6: was very unsettled. Yes, there were public executions. They used
Speaker 6: the guillotine, you know, they felt it was the most
Speaker 6: humane thing to do In America, they used hanging, which
Speaker 6: could take ten minutes to kill someone. And we're beginning
Speaker 6: to experiment with this new invention called the electric chair.
Speaker 6: That doctor Lauson actually wrote essays about it. He was intrigued,
Speaker 6: but he still thought it was kind of primitive. People
Speaker 6: kind of believed in capital's punishment, but the anti capital
Speaker 6: punishment movement was growing. They were having doubts. There was
Speaker 6: the school of thought that what if the person who
Speaker 6: credited the crime was insane, aren't we actually killing somebody
Speaker 6: who doesn't know any better. So again, almost as in
Speaker 6: every other area of society, the feeling was unsettled. Right.
Speaker 5: You also talk about this an intellectual let that time,
Speaker 5: Caesar Lombroso, and he had his theories which were totally
Speaker 5: diametrically opposed to kind of ideas that Desange would have,
Speaker 5: and so tell us about their differences of it.
Speaker 6: Very interesting because you know, these were also the same
Speaker 6: people that developed forensic science, and in addition to using
Speaker 6: evidence to say what happened, they wanted to find out
Speaker 6: why it happened. Now, Darwin was still alive, Freud was alive,
Speaker 6: Pasteur was alive, So we had all this science in
Speaker 6: the air all these theories and Sesel Lombroso was a
Speaker 6: psychiatrist who worked in the Italian prisons and psychiatric institutes,
Speaker 6: and he came to believe over time that there is
Speaker 6: such a thing as a born criminal, that due to
Speaker 6: a glitch and evolution, some people still carried the seed
Speaker 6: of the primitive entity, and that they couldn't help themselves
Speaker 6: but commit crime. And he actually thought he identified the
Speaker 6: part in the brain that was different in these people,
Speaker 6: because it was common to dissect the brains of executed
Speaker 6: criminals back then, and then it could be found in
Speaker 6: the facial features and there if somebody had a unibrow
Speaker 6: or ears that stuck out, or a big lantern jaw,
Speaker 6: this was a criminal type. And he would actually testify
Speaker 6: at trials as to who might be guilty just based
Speaker 6: on their physiognomy.
Speaker 5: Incredible.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Now, Laka Sonya, as you know, had the opposite feeling.
Speaker 6: He thought it was based on the person's circumstances and
Speaker 6: the way they were brought up. And this was the
Speaker 6: beginning of the nature nurture debate that, as you know,
Speaker 6: persists to this day.
Speaker 5: Right now, you take us back to as well to
Speaker 5: a little bit of the history of lakasign and Lackasigna,
Speaker 5: and I hope he's not listening.
Speaker 6: So anyway, he does have this ender who I found.
Speaker 6: We'll talk about that later. Oh very speak English.
Speaker 5: Oh good, good. So anyway, what's he tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit more about his character, because there's other things
Speaker 5: that but came with it that he had a lot
Speaker 5: of theories and philosophies that were quite unique for the time.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit more about the character of
Speaker 5: this man.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was a renaissance man. I mean, think about
Speaker 6: what he looked like. He was a big guy, you know,
Speaker 6: a big barrel chested, you know, bergomeister type guy with
Speaker 6: a huge handlebar mustache. I almost couldn't find a picture
Speaker 6: of him not smiling, always surrounded by colleagues, surrounded by family.
Speaker 6: He represented everything that was good in that era to
Speaker 6: those people. He was a doctor. He was broadly educated.
Speaker 6: He understood poetry, literature, and art. He had dozens and
Speaker 6: dozens of graduate students, and he developed some very interesting theories.
Speaker 6: And basically he was the center of a whole international
Speaker 6: group of scientists who were inventing the science of forensics.
Speaker 6: And they realized that witnesses don't always tell the truth,
Speaker 6: but that the evidence doesn't lie. So he and this
Speaker 6: other group of people who were kind of an international
Speaker 6: brain trust bit by started looking at different pieces of
Speaker 6: evidence and using science to sort of reel back what
Speaker 6: happened during the crime scene. Now, what specifically you've alluded
Speaker 6: to it, but what specific things that we could recognize
Speaker 6: today that people watching CSI for the first time five
Speaker 6: or ten years probably ten years ago now would would think, well, jeez,
Speaker 6: with blood spatter analysis, you know, tell us a little
Speaker 6: of some of the stuff that they were doing over
Speaker 6: one hundred years ago. It's quite amazing because everything except
Speaker 6: for fingerprinting and DNA, they basically had it nailed. So
Speaker 6: you're right, they had a whole panoply of things. So
Speaker 6: body position on death rigor mortis, how long the person
Speaker 6: had been dead. They learned to identify insect populations on
Speaker 6: the body because they knew that once somebody died, their
Speaker 6: body became the host of successive ways of insect ecosystems.
Speaker 6: Blood spatter analysis. La Casanya personally invented the science of
Speaker 6: ballistics in which he matched a bullet to a guy,
Speaker 6: you know, wound matching almost everything that we could think
Speaker 6: of as something they figured out like one hundred and
Speaker 6: twenty years ago. They were astonishing. And to think, by
Speaker 6: the way, this was an era before refrigeration, so they
Speaker 6: had to work fast. They worked without gloves, without masks.
Speaker 6: And the other big thing he did was standardized autopsies.
Speaker 6: So even the rural doctors you mentioned, who were operating
Speaker 6: on a kitchen table knew to do the right thing.
Speaker 5: It's amazing also too. What what I found was fascinating
Speaker 5: as well, is that, along with the prosecutor for Quette,
Speaker 5: they you know, Lacasagna basically was a pioneer in geographical
Speaker 5: profiling as well, because otherwise they never would have had
Speaker 5: a link. They had the rata base, so they were
Speaker 5: the innovators of that as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's interesting, you know in these debates, you know,
Speaker 6: every four years they had a massive international meeting of criminologists.
Speaker 6: Of course, Elvis has been lost to history. It was
Speaker 6: great to revive it. And every four years there would
Speaker 6: be the same argument between Lombroso and Lakasanya, and Lombrosa
Speaker 6: would bring skulls and skeletons and brains to these exhibits.
Speaker 6: They didn't let women in It was so horrifying. Lakasanya
Speaker 6: would bring charts and he did charts of if crop failures,
Speaker 6: economic av analysis, family structured because he was sure that
Speaker 6: it had to do with how the person was brought up.
Speaker 6: And this went on for years and years and years.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's an incredible debate.
Speaker 6: Isn't it. Yeah, I mean we're still talking about that.
Speaker 5: Well, I think it comes up. I think that every
Speaker 5: few years you hear something about that they found some
Speaker 5: location in the brain that seems to be a predisposition.
Speaker 5: But I've never found anything. I've never heard anything really
Speaker 5: conclusive about that, So you you don't see the sort
Speaker 5: of the proliferation of that idea, Thank god no. As
Speaker 5: you know, lately, neuroscientists have begun doing MRI scans of
Speaker 5: the brains of psychotic criminals and they are finding some
Speaker 5: very interesting patterns that the part of the brain that
Speaker 5: sort of acts like a grownup is not regulating the
Speaker 5: impulsive part of the brain as well as it should,
Speaker 5: and it's possible that a component of this behavior may
Speaker 5: be inborn. And you'll notice I emphasize the word component
Speaker 5: because I think it still has a lot.
Speaker 6: To do with upbringing. The thing that I want to
Speaker 6: emphasize though, is you read the book, you know the issues.
Speaker 6: Look how lively the debate was back then. Look how
Speaker 6: they really tried to get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 6: And it doesn't seem to me like society now is
Speaker 6: trying to get to the bottom of it. No.
Speaker 5: Actually, I can see an actual aversion to looking at
Speaker 5: some of this. I don't see an increased fascination. I
Speaker 5: see an increased fascination in the fictionalization of a lot
Speaker 5: of these things, even criminal profiling, which has its obvious appeal.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, I don't see an increase
Speaker 5: in people having a thirst for this. But then again,
Speaker 5: your book, I mean, you know, this book really does
Speaker 5: draw people in that probably would be interested because they've
Speaker 5: been watching CSI for ten years, and almost right from
Speaker 5: the beginning. When you read of all the things that
Speaker 5: were doing one hundred and twenty years ago, you're going, wow,
Speaker 5: I really did think that was just recent. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: you know, so it really must have been a golden age,
Speaker 5: because it certainly didn't catch on everywhere.
Speaker 6: No, I mean, the United States was several decades behind
Speaker 6: these guys. But you know, you can't be first and
Speaker 6: everything Britain was behind. It was really at the time,
Speaker 6: scientists in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, to some degree Russia.
Speaker 6: They were at the center of this brand new science.
Speaker 5: You know what I found interesting too, is that you
Speaker 5: talk about how everyone I guess I'm not sure if
Speaker 5: I can remember that Lombroso referenced it as well, but
Speaker 5: at least that Lakasagne did in terms of they all
Speaker 5: loved and actually took very seriously Sherlock Holmes, the fictional story.
Speaker 6: Yeah, wasn't that. I mean in the same way that
Speaker 6: we like CSI. But so the Sherlock Holmes stories came
Speaker 6: out in the height of Lakasanya's career, and he sees it.
Speaker 6: He loved them so much so that he had a
Speaker 6: graduate student write a thesis comparing the science to Sherlock
Speaker 6: Holmes to the science of the day. And I was
Speaker 6: lucky enough to find a thesis in one of my
Speaker 6: trips to France and then find laka Asania's handwritten comments
Speaker 6: all over it. So I had the impression of Lakasanya,
Speaker 6: the real life forensic expert having a debate with Sherlock Holmes,
Speaker 6: the fictional forensic expert. But the cool thing was, although
Speaker 6: Lakasanya enjoyed the stories, he felt the science fell short.
Speaker 6: You know, he felt Holmes was very quick.
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Speaker 6: Jump to conclusions. This business of drawing gigantic conclusions from
Speaker 6: a tiny piece of evidence was the opposite of the
Speaker 6: way they were And the biggest problem he had with
Speaker 6: Holmes was that Homes never conducted an autopsy, and of
Speaker 6: course the autopsy is central to any criminal investigation. So
Speaker 6: even though we enjoyed the stories, he didn't really take
Speaker 6: them seriously.
Speaker 5: Right, But at the same time that those stories were
Speaker 5: written previous to those people being around at that time,
Speaker 5: So really you can give them a little bit of
Speaker 5: a break for having, you know, the time on their side.
Speaker 5: We'll say, let me are in terms of I'm dan
Speaker 5: with you on that one, because actually the stories came out.
Speaker 5: The first one was in eighteen eighty seven, right when
Speaker 5: these guys were and Sherlock Holmes actually talks about Lakasania's
Speaker 5: colleague whose name was Bertil in Paris. So look, I'm
Speaker 5: a Holmes fan too, but true is true.
Speaker 6: We gotta sorry, Sherlock.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, the thing is is that, like you say,
Speaker 5: Lacasagne was doing groundbreaking work. I mean, you've got the
Speaker 5: other current scholar at the time thinking he's on the
Speaker 5: right trail here, and at the same time Lakazanne is
Speaker 5: doing groundbreaking work that we can compare to you know,
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty years later, is still.
Speaker 6: Very valid point. I think, you know, to me what
Speaker 6: really struck me and looking at this and of course
Speaker 6: you know, we enjoy the CSI thing. You know that
Speaker 6: the CSI show is fiction. Nobody has that kind of
Speaker 6: a laboratory. But it's exciting. It makes people terribly interested
Speaker 6: in this, and it's a kind of morality tale. And
Speaker 6: the lesson of CSI and the lesson of Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 6: is cool. People with science on our side will prevail
Speaker 6: over the forces of destruction and chaos. So that's the
Speaker 6: lesson we take from these things. I'm happy and and
Speaker 6: when I know if it is fiction, and it's greatly enjoyable.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 5: Now, at the same time that all of this is
Speaker 5: going on, we have a person named Vachet. And but
Speaker 5: let's go back to as much history on and that
Speaker 5: you put in the book as well that you found
Speaker 5: through your research, so we can build the character of
Speaker 5: this extraordinary killer.
Speaker 6: Okay, I missed a piece of what you said because
Speaker 6: your line cut out, So can you can you repeat
Speaker 6: a part of that question? Yes?
Speaker 5: Sorry? What I what I asked was is that we
Speaker 5: would like to go back as far as you do
Speaker 5: in the book and from your research as well, go
Speaker 5: back and give us the character of Joseph Vasha, go
Speaker 5: back and give us his background story, and then tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit more about what he evolved into.
Speaker 6: Yea. Interestingly enough, the way I learned about him was
Speaker 6: I was able to find the original court records in
Speaker 6: a countryside archive in rural France, cases and cases of
Speaker 6: handwritten testimony and affidavits from people who knew him when
Speaker 6: he was a kid, and then I later found the
Speaker 6: psychiatric records in one of the asylums where he had been.
Speaker 6: But if a modern psychologist were to look at him,
Speaker 6: they would say he is the classic psychopath. As a kid,
Speaker 6: he grew up in a relatively normal peasant family and
Speaker 6: sixteen siblings. It was a big family. He seemed kind
Speaker 6: of normal until he was about ten, and then his
Speaker 6: family claimed he was licked by a rabid dog and
Speaker 6: they gave him some folk medicine, after which his personality
Speaker 6: kind of turned. I think it was just a coincidence,
Speaker 6: because rabies kills you, and anyway, and after that he
Speaker 6: became really malicious. If the kids played a trick on him,
Speaker 6: instead of laughing, he would try to kill them. He
Speaker 6: broke the legs of animals on the farm. He also
Speaker 6: had clerical tendencies, so as a teenager he actually went
Speaker 6: to a monastery for a couple of years before he
Speaker 6: was expelled for sexual misconduct, and he would walk miles
Speaker 6: and miles to work off this rage that built up
Speaker 6: within him. So we really see from his early years
Speaker 6: sort of the early patterns of very dangerous young man.
Speaker 5: Was there anything that's indicated that the influence of his
Speaker 5: parents at that time on his behavior.
Speaker 6: I don't think so. And the reason I say is
Speaker 6: that some of the siblings came to the trial, and
Speaker 6: also when the news of his capture broke and there
Speaker 6: were articles all over the place, some of the siblings
Speaker 6: wrote to the newspapers about how absolutely humiliated they were
Speaker 6: and how they could never live this down and they
Speaker 6: were just shattered. And in the witnesses testimony, the villagers
Speaker 6: said that his parents were good, honorable, hardworking people. So
Speaker 6: this guy just came out. I mean, you could believe
Speaker 6: in a born criminal if you knew a guy like this.
Speaker 6: He just showed up.
Speaker 5: Right now. He gravitated or he joined the army, and
Speaker 5: he was fairly successful in the military. Tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he achieved the rank of sergeant. He seemed to
Speaker 6: do well in a highly regulated, disciplined situation, as some
Speaker 6: people do, but he was also known for his brutality.
Speaker 6: He would really attack people who crossed him, and you know,
Speaker 6: a couple of times he had been referred to the
Speaker 6: doctor for some of this crazy behavior. Sometimes we have
Speaker 6: these terrible outbursts of rage. It was in the military,
Speaker 6: while walking through a park in eastern France. One day
Speaker 6: he came upon a young woman named Louise Barant, struck
Speaker 6: up conversation. He could be very charming if need be,
Speaker 6: and started dating her, and soon in their relationship he
Speaker 6: proposed marriage and she backed off. And as time went
Speaker 6: on and she learned more about his character, it became
Speaker 6: clear to her that he was not somebody to be around,
Speaker 6: and she tried to reject him, tried to you know, again,
Speaker 6: he proposed marriage, and finally one time, when she rejected him,
Speaker 6: he pulled out a pistol and he shot her in
Speaker 6: the head. And then he turned it on himself and
Speaker 6: shot himself in the head.
Speaker 5: And what happened. He was not killed, but tell us
Speaker 5: about the disfigurement.
Speaker 6: Yet neither of them was killed. She was obviously traumatized.
Speaker 6: He was taken to a hospital and then put in
Speaker 6: a mental asylum, and he caused a disfigurement and caused
Speaker 6: a paralysis. He shot himself twice actually, and it's amazing
Speaker 6: he didn't die. One of the bullets caused a paralysis
Speaker 6: in his right cheek, and the scar and his right
Speaker 6: eyelid would droop, and also there was always some kind
Speaker 6: of puss coming out of his ear. Started to be
Speaker 6: so disgusting about it. But you know, he was not
Speaker 6: a handsome guy, and this made him actually really really
Speaker 6: difficult to look at. So he was in the asylum,
Speaker 6: and you know, we think of mental asylums as those
Speaker 6: days as tough places, but actually this was also the
Speaker 6: birth of modern psychology. So they learned to treat mentally
Speaker 6: ill people with gentleness and understanding. And the asylum itself is,
Speaker 6: you know, in the foothills of the Alps, beautiful setting
Speaker 6: with crops and forests, and they talked them trades. So
Speaker 6: after just a few months he calmed down and he
Speaker 6: really seemed cured, and they let him out on April
Speaker 6: Fool's Day, eighteen ninety four.
Speaker 5: You know, let's go back just a little bit. What
Speaker 5: I thought was fascinating the other parallels with today and
Speaker 5: yesterday when you talked about the techniques for you know,
Speaker 5: profiling and for crime scene analysis, what I thought was interesting.
Speaker 5: It's the same thing ninety days and the guy's cured
Speaker 5: from this, and you know, I mean that's that's a
Speaker 5: very liberal way of looking at any kind of sentencing.
Speaker 5: And like you mentioned too, it almost sets the stage
Speaker 5: for his inevitable defense later because, as you said, they
Speaker 5: were still debating whether you could escape conviction because of
Speaker 5: your sanity. So he really was successful at trial and
Speaker 5: saying that he was insane and and that's why he
Speaker 5: was not as guilty of attempted murder.
Speaker 6: That was his Yeah, early on, that was his thing.
Speaker 6: You know. I asked modern day forensic psychologists about this.
Speaker 6: I said, is it possible? I mean, could this guy
Speaker 6: have faked it? And we'll get into the details of
Speaker 6: this case later, but one of the things that interesting
Speaker 6: is they said it's possible that he was psychotic and schizophrenic,
Speaker 6: and schizophrenics you know split you know, people hear, hear
Speaker 6: voices and see illusions and behavior radically. They're not dangerous,
Speaker 6: they're not going to hurt anybody. And it could be
Speaker 6: that under the gentle treatment at this asylum, the schizophrenia
Speaker 6: symptoms calm down, but he was still a psychotic killer
Speaker 6: at heart, and that's something that you can't fix. The
Speaker 6: other thing is it could have been that he was
Speaker 6: so cunning that he was able to fake his cure
Speaker 6: and get out. But in any case, yeah, after just
Speaker 6: a few months he was on the loose and it
Speaker 6: was five weeks later that he committed his first murder.
Speaker 5: Now tell us what an our audience could handle it that.
Speaker 6: Trust me, I.
Speaker 5: Forgot the name of your show exactly so, and no
Speaker 5: one's complained. So I think if you could describe the
Speaker 5: extent of the savagery of Asher, because I think that's
Speaker 5: for most people not knowing this name un till your
Speaker 5: book comes out, and despite the international headlines of the
Speaker 5: trial and the case at that time, you know, if
Speaker 5: you could tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 6: You know, it's interesting because ten years before this, Jack
Speaker 6: the Ripper killed five prostitutes in one neighborhood of London,
Speaker 6: and Joseph Feschet killed anywhere from eleven to twenty five
Speaker 6: young people all over France at the time. He really
Speaker 6: was notorious. He was very cunning, and they called him
Speaker 6: the killer of little shepherds because he would stalk shepherds.
Speaker 6: You know, he was raised in the high country and
Speaker 6: that's where he liked to hang out and he would
Speaker 6: drift around getting farm jobs, staying with people who had
Speaker 6: no suspicion of him. And then when the mood came
Speaker 6: over him, he'd head out into the fields where nobody
Speaker 6: was around, and he would see a shepherd. It was
Speaker 6: often a shepherd, there were some factory workers who may
Speaker 6: have been out on a picnic. Always the person was
Speaker 6: completely alone, with nobody within sight or earshot. He would
Speaker 6: run up to the person very quickly, grab him around
Speaker 6: the throat so tightly that the person almost dropped instantly,
Speaker 6: you know, slit the person's throat, and then in the
Speaker 6: most horrible ways, disfigure and sexually molest the body. When
Speaker 6: he was done, he would hide the body, change his clothes,
Speaker 6: wash up, and walk twenty miles into the nest district
Speaker 6: where no one ever heard of him. He was about
Speaker 6: to do this for three years, and he was so
Speaker 6: good at it because he planned so carefully, and communication
Speaker 6: between districts was so bad. By the time he was gone,
Speaker 6: the village would be in a total uproar, totally traumatized,
Speaker 6: and people in those days were so suspicious that they
Speaker 6: would often pick another villager who they hated anyway and
Speaker 6: accuse him of doing the crime. So there was a
Speaker 6: tremendous amount of collateral damage from these crimes as well. Now,
Speaker 6: was there after one, two, or a couple murders in
Speaker 6: during this spree, this three year spree, was there a
Speaker 6: description created of Vachet. It took a while. For three years,
Speaker 6: nobody connected the dots. They didn't even know these killings
Speaker 6: were related. There was one guy in the city of Dijon,
Speaker 6: an inspector who started reading about him and thought maybe
Speaker 6: it was kind of like copycat killings. But finally it
Speaker 6: came to an inspector named Emil four K, who you
Speaker 6: mentioned at the beginning of the show, in the small
Speaker 6: city of Billet, who had a killing in his district
Speaker 6: and noticed from the newspapers a similar killing in another district.
Speaker 6: Now four K, although a small time magistrate, followed the
Speaker 6: modern methods and he started thinking. So he sent telegraphs
Speaker 6: all over France to all the magistrates and said, if
Speaker 6: you had any unexplained murders in your district, send me
Speaker 6: a description of what happened. And he sent another telegram
Speaker 6: to the same people said if you've had any strange
Speaker 6: looking vagabonds passing through, send me a description of them.
Speaker 6: So eighty five dossiers came in and he started spending
Speaker 6: nights and weekends going through the details, and he made
Speaker 6: huge charts of all the physical characteristics of an unknown person,
Speaker 6: all the characteristics of crime scene, and in a blue
Speaker 6: pencil he started circling all the common elements. Took them
Speaker 6: weeks and weeks and weeks. He came up with a profile,
Speaker 6: a description of the suspect, and a description of the
Speaker 6: methods that was unbelievably precisely. It was probably the first
Speaker 6: modern profile. And he sent a telegram saying, this is
Speaker 6: a guy who may be what they're calling the killer
Speaker 6: of little shepherds or Jack the Ripper of France. If
Speaker 6: anybody like this shows up, telegraph it to me at once.
Speaker 5: And when did they? Finally, as they close in on him,
Speaker 5: tell us a little bit more about Vachet's behavior and
Speaker 5: what he continues to do. You say, he walks twenty
Speaker 5: miles into another community. The community is up in an uproar,
Speaker 5: but he's not there, so he gets to continue. Tell
Speaker 5: us some of the cities and I mean he's in
Speaker 5: the countryside, but tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 5: his travels.
Speaker 6: He's you know, it was a time of great rural
Speaker 6: unemployment because industrialization put a lot of agricultural workers out
Speaker 6: of work. There was a blight on the wine, so
Speaker 6: there were literally hundreds of people wandering around the countryside
Speaker 6: looking for jobs, like migrant labors. So he could blend
Speaker 6: in and he'd get a job on a farm and
Speaker 6: stay with a family and then do a killing, and
Speaker 6: he'd disappear, and he would migrate north and south. You know,
Speaker 6: he was outside of Paris, he was outside of Leon.
Speaker 6: He made a pilgrimage down to the Cathedral of Lords.
Speaker 6: He was in the Dordonia, literally all over the countryside, migrating.
Speaker 6: The interesting thing is the different aspects of his personality
Speaker 6: came out. So there was the testimony of one farm
Speaker 6: family who he stayed with, and they said what a
Speaker 6: kind and gentle man he was, and how he took
Speaker 6: their daughter on his knee and gave her penmanship and
Speaker 6: mathematics lessons, and they saved the paper. I was able
Speaker 6: to look at the paper and his penmanship was beautiful,
Speaker 6: And they had no knowledge that a few days later
Speaker 6: he would go out and you know, disembowel somebody. After
Speaker 6: a while, he picked up an accordion, and he'd sit
Speaker 6: playing the accordion and joking around with children, and then
Speaker 6: he'd do something so svage, like kill a dog. So
Speaker 6: you just had this this ticking time bomb wandering all
Speaker 6: over France until finally, in August of ninety seven, in
Speaker 6: an area called the Ardash, he attacks a woman who's
Speaker 6: trying to fight him off, and meanwhile, her husband's in
Speaker 6: the forest nearby, and the husband and the villagers get
Speaker 6: there and finally they grab this guy.
Speaker 5: And then what happens after that.
Speaker 6: Well, it's amazing. So he gets taken to the local jail,
Speaker 6: and he's spent tons of times in local jails and
Speaker 6: been let out after a few days because the justice system,
Speaker 6: you know, outside the big cities, was really primitive and
Speaker 6: nobody read their telegrams. And four K meanwhile said this
Speaker 6: telegram over, and this sheriff in this little town read
Speaker 6: the memo and he read the description. He looked at
Speaker 6: this prisoner and he goes, whoa this is? So he
Speaker 6: writes back to four K, he says, I have a
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Speaker 6: It's your description. So four K sends him a telegraph.
Speaker 6: He says, send me a photograph, and the jailer writes back,
Speaker 6: there's only one photographer in town, and he took one
Speaker 6: look at this guy, and he was so terrified that
Speaker 6: he couldn't bring himself to point his camera at the
Speaker 6: guy's face. So four cases send me.
Speaker 5: The prisoner send that's good enough for me.
Speaker 6: Well, they chain him up and put him on a
Speaker 6: train and he arrives at the jail in four K
Speaker 6: and belly and four K begins one of the most
Speaker 6: amazing interrogations in the history of crime detection.
Speaker 5: Yeah it's you know, it's interesting, well to share if
Speaker 5: it just comes down to good old fashioned police work.
Speaker 5: I know, that's overused expression, but that when we're talking
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty years ago, it's amazing. How if
Speaker 5: you just took if you just took those facts away,
Speaker 5: it would be you could picture all kinds of scenarios.
Speaker 6: Yeah, outside, you know what's interesting, Dan, In the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 6: it wasn't old fashion it is now. Yeah, eighteen nineties
Speaker 6: to put together a profile and send an all pro
Speaker 6: ands bulleting around. This was a new idea and in
Speaker 6: something that this guy for Kate, who followed the modern methods,
Speaker 6: gave it a try. It's amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, these were real dedicated guys too. They really believed
Speaker 5: in what they were doing, and they were really very
Speaker 5: you know, very very energetic.
Speaker 6: You're right, You're right.
Speaker 5: I wanted to say too that that at the time
Speaker 5: they did realize they weren't foolish too. And I think
Speaker 5: just like now, they need to they need to know
Speaker 5: that they have enough evidence to proceed what to are
Speaker 5: faced with the same thing that these people were faced with.
Speaker 5: They need to get a confession because there wasn't enough
Speaker 5: evidence at that time, tell us about the lack of evidence,
Speaker 5: what really what they only had, and then go into
Speaker 5: the strategy of how they thought they would question this person,
Speaker 5: what they needed from him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is really interesting. You really raise an interesting point.
Speaker 6: Vache was so good that there was pretty much no
Speaker 6: physical evidence and pretty much no witnesses. All that they
Speaker 6: had was the crime scene analysis afterwards and the sketches
Speaker 6: and some of that. But you know, they didn't have
Speaker 6: fingerprints yet. So four K starts questioning about Shay. Now,
Speaker 6: he was a follower of the great Vnese criminologist Hans Gross,
Speaker 6: and Gross wrote a lot of guides to police work,
Speaker 6: which I was able to find, and in one of them,
Speaker 6: he has a long manuscript on how to interrogate a suspect,
Speaker 6: And this immediately caught my eye because he said, when
Speaker 6: you interrogate a suspect, the stupidest thing you could possibly
Speaker 6: do is torture them or even cause them stress. I
Speaker 6: mean you could. Even this guy wrote this in the
Speaker 6: eighteen eighties. He said, if you torture them, they'll tell
Speaker 6: you what you want to hear. So Gross wrote, you
Speaker 6: have to be clever, you have to win their confidence.
Speaker 6: You have to have them repeat the story in many
Speaker 6: different ways to see if they trip up, he said,
Speaker 6: and eventually they'll unburden themselves to you if you win
Speaker 6: their confidence. So four K starts questioning Vauchet, and you know,
Speaker 6: they were allowed to hold the prisoners for as long
Speaker 6: as they want. And he's going on for days and
Speaker 6: days and days in Fashi is tough and he's not
Speaker 6: getting anywhere, and he realizes so he changes tax and
Speaker 6: four K says, look, they made a mistake in sending
Speaker 6: it to me. I now realize you're the wrong guy.
Speaker 6: So I am going to let you go, and I
Speaker 6: just need about three days to clear up some administrative paperwork.
Speaker 6: He said. Meanwhile, I'm writing a book about this phenomenon
Speaker 6: of the vagabonds who wander around France, which happens to
Speaker 6: be true. By the way, he said, maybe you could
Speaker 6: be a colleague and help me with my books. So
Speaker 6: would you mind if, in order to pass the time,
Speaker 6: I interviewed you about your wanderings and your adventures. Was
Speaker 6: so flattered by the attention that he spent days and
Speaker 6: days telling him about where he went and when he
Speaker 6: was there and if it was snowing or if it
Speaker 6: was autumn and vac Que would four K would make
Speaker 6: maps and I was able to get copies of these
Speaker 6: maps drawing the Vachet's too brilliant. And then at night
Speaker 6: he'd go back to his office and he'd plopped the
Speaker 6: murders and it was a match. Can imagine how he felt.
Speaker 6: And he said, when he saw this, it was, oh
Speaker 6: my god. So he gets this and finally he goes
Speaker 6: to Vachet and one day he confronts him and he said, okay,
Speaker 6: I've got you dead to rights, and he started he
Speaker 6: recites ten murders in the row, almost in a single breath,
Speaker 6: with all of the coincidence, all the evidence. He said.
Speaker 6: Vachet staggered like a drunk and went white. And later
Speaker 6: that night, a guard knocks on four K's door as
Speaker 6: he's eating dinner and he hands him a piece of paper.
Speaker 6: It's a confession by Vachet. One of the most amazing
Speaker 6: interrogations you can imagine. He never lifted a finger, he
Speaker 6: was never armed, he never even shouted, and he got it. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, that's the kind of brilliant ploys that you might
Speaker 5: see in some of the best true crime thrillers and
Speaker 5: that and that's very very rare you see anybody using
Speaker 5: that kind of extent of psychological you know, identifying this
Speaker 5: guy as a real narcissist and a real egomaniac, good
Speaker 5: perfect things, and then fooling him again. These guys are classic.
Speaker 5: And I don't know how inherently they knew that, but
Speaker 5: they inherently figured out these guys awfully quick how they worked,
Speaker 5: and then used that to their advantage.
Speaker 6: You're right, I mean to use psychology basically at the
Speaker 6: dawn of psychology. It was amazing. Now, as you know
Speaker 6: from reading the book, the confession was pretty incoherent, and
Speaker 6: immediately after the confession of actually clams up and starts
Speaker 6: decorating his cell like a crazy man. And it's clear
Speaker 6: this is the route he's going. And here's where four
Speaker 6: K realizes, you know, this is above his pay grade.
Speaker 6: He's then all he could do. So that's when he
Speaker 6: calls in the fame is doctor Lakasanya and says, I
Speaker 6: got a case to beat all cases, and I am
Speaker 6: out of my league here and I need you to
Speaker 6: take this guy over and figure out whether he is
Speaker 6: insane or whether he's just the most cunning killer you
Speaker 6: know in our history.
Speaker 5: That the hookup is kind of interesting as well, that
Speaker 5: when he came to that conclusion that he had done
Speaker 5: everything he could. He was just very aware of Lakazia
Speaker 5: Lakasanya's work at that time. Was it that prevalent that
Speaker 5: he knew? Tell us a little bit about how he
Speaker 5: came to that decision to do that, because it's an
Speaker 5: incredible decision and basically, why in his mind did he
Speaker 5: think that this was the person that he should contact.
Speaker 6: Good question. Even though nobody today has heard of Lakasanya,
Speaker 6: in the eighteen nineties, everybody heard of Lakasanya. He was
Speaker 6: a household word. He had solved some cases that were
Speaker 6: considered miracles of crime scene deduction. You know, I mentioned
Speaker 6: in the book the case of the Bloody Trunk, in
Speaker 6: which he identified a body that had been buried for
Speaker 6: half a year, using the most minute examinations to identify
Speaker 6: the body and solve what had been considered the perfect crime.
Speaker 6: And he did one after the other after the other.
Speaker 6: So pretty much anybody in France and sometimes in other
Speaker 6: countries as well, who had a case that was just overpowering,
Speaker 6: the first person they thought of was geez I hope
Speaker 6: I could get Lakasanya in on this one, because he
Speaker 6: was He was the man. So it wasn't a very
Speaker 6: hard decision for four k and luckily, Leon, where Laka
Speaker 6: Sonya worked, wasn't terribly far from his town and they
Speaker 6: were able to ship Vachet down to Leon where Lakasanya
Speaker 6: took over the case.
Speaker 5: And Lakasagna was interested in this case for all the
Speaker 5: aspects of it.
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: Now you start talking about that he clammed up before
Speaker 5: the trial, he was if you believe that he was
Speaker 5: faking or you know, he was, you know, giving a
Speaker 5: show for the authorities. What was he doing in prison
Speaker 5: before even the trial? What was his behavior like?
Speaker 6: Well, they had him in the Saint Paul prison in
Speaker 6: the all for five months while they examined him, and
Speaker 6: he would he would do crazy stuff. I mean, he
Speaker 6: went on hunger strike. But then lak A Sonya found
Speaker 6: out that he actually bribed another inmate to slip him food.
Speaker 6: He would have these tremendous outbursts. His religiosity came back
Speaker 6: and he insisted on going to the chapel all the time.
Speaker 6: And once on the way to the prison chapel, he
Speaker 6: made a break for it and he starts, you know,
Speaker 6: dashing up the hall and they tackle him in a
Speaker 6: melee ensues and they put him in his in his cell,
Speaker 6: and he kicked through the heavy metal door, the heavy
Speaker 6: wooden door, so they had to put him in a
Speaker 6: straight jacket and he would just have these towering outbursts. So,
Speaker 6: you know, here was a guy who was not on
Speaker 6: the street and narrow. It's interesting. One of the things
Speaker 6: lak A Sonya did, even though he was such a
Speaker 6: great law enforcement guy and such as scientists, is he
Speaker 6: never forgot that criminals were human beings. So in addition
Speaker 6: to everything else he did, every Sunday morning he'd walk
Speaker 6: across town to the prison and he would chat with
Speaker 6: the prisoners and give them journals so they could write
Speaker 6: in the journals because he wanted to understand them. Because
Speaker 6: of this, even the prisoners he put away admired him.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: Everybody loved the guy. And one of the interesting things
Speaker 6: was vache was the only prisoner he could not win over,
Speaker 6: and he talked to him for five months and couldn't
Speaker 6: crack him. And Vachet would manipulate him and he thought
Speaker 6: he'd get him going, and then Vachhet was, hey, I'm
Speaker 6: fed up with this. You were a charlatan. Other times
Speaker 6: he would seem interested, and that was when Lakasania eventually
Speaker 6: made the huge step of realizing the path to understanding
Speaker 6: this guy's mentality wasn't to converse with him because he
Speaker 6: was just too good, but to go back and reanalyze
Speaker 6: all the evidence from the crime scenes and the autopsies
Speaker 6: to see if there was a method in.
Speaker 5: What he was doing, and what did he find out
Speaker 5: about the mo the method of operandi, the method of
Speaker 5: operation For.
Speaker 6: Joseph Ache, he was the one who figured out the pattern.
Speaker 6: I told you about this way of seizing the person
Speaker 6: in a certain way. If you grab the person by
Speaker 6: the throat, you could grab their vagus nerve it's not
Speaker 6: just strangulation or their carrotter art, and they will drop
Speaker 6: like a rock. And he figured out from all the
Speaker 6: autopsies and all the files and bodies he'd examined himself,
Speaker 6: the exact sequence, and that the sequence was almost identical
Speaker 6: in every crime because this guy figured out how to
Speaker 6: do that. He figured out how Vachet stalked his victims
Speaker 6: and was able to kill them with no witnesses around,
Speaker 6: and how he made his escape in some he figured
Speaker 6: out that this guy had a very carefully thought out
Speaker 6: method and according to the standards of his day and ours.
Speaker 6: You couldn't be insane and be that clever. So he
Speaker 6: was convinced that Thatchet was sane.
Speaker 5: Now, just like the times are so similar, Vaucher had somebody,
Speaker 5: an advocate, to try to win him a lesser sentence
Speaker 5: via this insanity. Please tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: And this is the trial itself is incredible. You already
Speaker 5: talked about how even some of Vachet's family members he
Speaker 5: had the fifteen other kids came out or fourteen other
Speaker 5: kids came some of them came to the trials. Tell
Speaker 5: us about the mood of the trial itself. And the
Speaker 5: defense for.
Speaker 6: The trial was a circus. I mean, you know, we
Speaker 6: talked about the O. J. Simpson trial and the Charles Managers.
Speaker 6: So this thing was and vacually wanted it to be
Speaker 6: a circus because he could make it crazy. He might
Speaker 6: get a crazy defense. Now, his defender was a lawyer
Speaker 6: named Charbonnet, who was vastly respected. He was an old,
Speaker 6: very dignified, very learned man, and he did not believe
Speaker 6: in the death penalty. And he also so truly believed
Speaker 6: that Esha was insane, and he made impassion to please
Speaker 6: on his behalf. And we'll get to that in a minute,
Speaker 6: because his appeal was brilliant. The trial itself. Imagine it's
Speaker 6: in a small courthouse in this town of Binons. It's
Speaker 6: market day. It starts on a Wednesday. The court is jammed.
Speaker 6: There's a crowd outside. It would look like a crowd
Speaker 6: from the Frankenstein movie with everything except the pitchforks. They're
Speaker 6: screaming death to the assassin, Death to the assassment. They've
Speaker 6: got a crack regiment of troops outside trying to keep
Speaker 6: the crowd at bay. Inside the courtroom, you know, it's
Speaker 6: like a circus. The media are jostling, they're people crowding,
Speaker 6: everybody's pushing, and here's this judge trying to keep control
Speaker 6: of it. And it was It was wild.
Speaker 5: And what was Vachet doing too? How is he performing?
Speaker 6: He was performing. He comes in wearing a white rabbit
Speaker 6: fur hat, which he said was the symbol of purity,
Speaker 6: and holding a sheaf of papers and broke claiming that
Speaker 6: he's an emissary from Jesus and Joan of arc And
Speaker 6: he is having outbursts and making grimaces and applauding inappropriately,
Speaker 6: and he's acting completely insane. And this is going on
Speaker 6: for two days while a parade of fifty witnesses each
Speaker 6: testifies about the little bit of time they may have
Speaker 6: seen him. Again, no eyewitnesses to the Christ, but character witnesses,
Speaker 6: villagers on what they saw. People saw him coming and going.
Speaker 6: And it wasn't until the third day that doctor Lakasanya
Speaker 6: gave his testimony.
Speaker 5: And what did that include? Tell us about his.
Speaker 6: Does and' oh man, it was something. Now you got
Speaker 6: to realize Lakasania had actually written manuscripts on how a
Speaker 6: medical examiner should behave in court. He had this so
Speaker 6: figured one hundred and twenty years ago. He said, you
Speaker 6: dress in a business suit, you answer simply and directly.
Speaker 6: You talk to the jury in simple terms. By respecting
Speaker 6: their intelligence. He said, if the defense lawyer cross examines,
Speaker 6: you don't get mad. And he said, nor are you
Speaker 6: an advocate or the police lawyer. You represent science, the
Speaker 6: cold hard truth of science. And the newspapers reported that
Speaker 6: when lectic Sanya walked in there was a hush. His
Speaker 6: dignity was enough to shut everybody up, and all of
Speaker 6: the stirring fell silent. And he gave his testimony, and
Speaker 6: he introduced a new word into the courtroom. That had
Speaker 6: never been used in a courtroom before. That word was sadist. Now,
Speaker 6: the Viennase psychologist Craft van Ebbing had written a book
Speaker 6: about sadism, you know, people who inflict pain for their
Speaker 6: own pleasure. And all of Europe was a stir. You know,
Speaker 6: these were the Victorian times, but they had their naughty
Speaker 6: little secrets. And Lakasanya had a series of drawings showing
Speaker 6: the crime scenes that he passed to the jurors. He
Speaker 6: described the method in great detail. He described the autopsies,
Speaker 6: He described the state of the bodies, and he said,
Speaker 6: this guy's son insane. He's a sadist, and he's a
Speaker 6: bloody sadist, and as such he must be put away.
Speaker 6: And all the newspapers wrote that was it. That. After that,
Speaker 6: there was nothing the defense could do. And at the
Speaker 6: end of the third day, at nine o'clock at night,
Speaker 6: I believe it was, the jury went out and they
Speaker 6: came back in twenty minutes with a verdict and the
Speaker 6: verdict was guilty.
Speaker 5: And how did he react and how did the people react?
Speaker 6: He did nae react. He asked the judge does that
Speaker 6: mean I get the death penalty? And the judge said,
Speaker 6: I yes, it would seem so. And then Vashet turns.
Speaker 6: He says, curses to those who would condemned me, and
Speaker 6: then the whole place erupts, and the crowd outside is cheering,
Speaker 6: you know, to death, to death, to death, and he
Speaker 6: walks out and then turns around says bye. And later
Speaker 6: a reporter followed him to a cell where he was
Speaker 6: grumbling and he said, oh, my attorney was incompetent. He
Speaker 6: should have compared me to Joan of arc and when
Speaker 6: those people took my hat, it was ridiculous. And then
Speaker 6: five minutes later he was peacefully sleeping. Now the appeal
Speaker 6: was so interesting because this guy, Charbonnhay, was a great
Speaker 6: attorney and people really respected him. He made a point
Speaker 6: and in his peal he wrote, you are prosecuting this
Speaker 6: man for a particular crime, and it was just one
Speaker 6: crime they were getting him for because they had that evidence,
Speaker 6: had jurisdiction. And this crime occurred about a year and
Speaker 6: a half after he was released for the asylum. And
Speaker 6: you say he was sane, he said, yet he killed
Speaker 6: his first victim five weeks after release from the asylum.
Speaker 6: If we were trying him for that first murder. Would
Speaker 6: you then say he was insane a mere five weeks
Speaker 6: after his release, At what point do you think he
Speaker 6: was cured? And it was a compelling appeal, but the
Speaker 6: president of the country politically, there's no way he could
Speaker 6: let this guy out because the asylums were not very secure,
Speaker 6: and he didn't act on it, and the appeal was lost.
Speaker 5: How much I wanted to go back just a bit
Speaker 5: death to let people know how much eel, if anything
Speaker 5: was used at the trial, and how effective was it,
Speaker 5: And did Lacazangne did he mention that or did he
Speaker 5: talk about that confession at all as part of his testimony.
Speaker 6: They did, because parts of the confession were coajent. You know,
Speaker 6: in the confession he said, yes, it was I who
Speaker 6: killed all those people, but then there was all sorts
Speaker 6: of ranting, so they were able to use that part
Speaker 6: of it, and there will be to use a lot
Speaker 6: of testimony from people knew him when he was a
Speaker 6: kid and growing up, and they sort of built a
Speaker 6: circumstantial case around it. But what really did it and
Speaker 6: what really fascinated me about this trial and the whole case,
Speaker 6: was the way Lakisani you'd forensic evidence to reveal this
Speaker 6: guy's state of mind, and I don't know if that
Speaker 6: had been done before. You know, as I said, they
Speaker 6: could use the evidence to determine what happened, but I'm
Speaker 6: not sure if they ever used evidence to determine why
Speaker 6: it happened or what the guy was thinking. So in
Speaker 6: a lot of ways, in many ways, this case was
Speaker 6: a serious breakthrough.
Speaker 5: Now, what was the fate of Vachet after his committal
Speaker 5: to prison? Yeah, well, I mean when did how long
Speaker 5: was it before he did was it?
Speaker 6: Let me think the trial ended in late November and
Speaker 6: on December thirty first, eighteen ninety eight, he was sent
Speaker 6: to the guillotine, and I from newspaper and eyewitness testimony,
Speaker 6: I was able to recreate this scene and it was
Speaker 6: quite a scene, and he was going to say a
Speaker 6: few words, but in the end, he you know, he
Speaker 6: kind of fell apart. They had to drag him to
Speaker 6: the guillotine and there were thousands of people in the
Speaker 6: town square. It was an absolute medieval scene and when
Speaker 6: the blade dropped, they just went crazy. Now, afterwards, they
Speaker 6: took his body to the local morgue where they conducted
Speaker 6: an autopsy, and then one of the doctors there doctor
Speaker 6: Meduf put the head in a cooking pot and took
Speaker 6: it on the overnight train to Paris because so many
Speaker 6: scientists wanted to get a look at this brain, to
Speaker 6: figure out what was going on in the mind of
Speaker 6: the worst serial killer in history up to that time.
Speaker 6: You know, maybe there's a lesion. Because they'd found lesions
Speaker 6: on the brains of other insane people, maybe we could
Speaker 6: find something. So this opened up a whole new chapter
Speaker 6: in the study of this guy and this kind of person.
Speaker 5: Well, now, Lakasanye, what did was he at the execution itself?
Speaker 5: And if not, or if he was, what was his
Speaker 5: reaction and what happened with his career after that? What
Speaker 5: did this do for his career?
Speaker 6: Yeah, he wasn't at the execution, although he was outside
Speaker 6: of the autopsy. The family banned him from the autopsy.
Speaker 6: They just had strange feelings, and another doctor who felt
Speaker 6: Vachet was insane had turned the family against La Caasanya.
Speaker 6: But that didn't bother him. He was very sure of
Speaker 6: his results. After the execution, he wrote a book on
Speaker 6: the subject, a memoir which I was able to get,
Speaker 6: and his career continued to be internationally known. He solved
Speaker 6: one case after the other. Really was his name was
Speaker 6: common all over the world, in criminological circles and in
Speaker 6: news circles. There was only one case he messed up.
Speaker 6: There was a woman who was a babysitter and she
Speaker 6: killed several children who were in her care by suffocation.
Speaker 6: And he thought that she was not necessarily guilty and
Speaker 6: not necessarily sane, and in the end they caught her,
Speaker 6: and he wrote, you know, a very humble newspaper column saying,
Speaker 6: you know, even the best scientists can be fooled sometimes.
Speaker 6: But that did nothing to diminish his stardom. He was
Speaker 6: respected and revered until at the age of eighty four,
Speaker 6: he was out for one of his morning walks and
Speaker 6: he was in a car accident, and he eventually died,
Speaker 6: and there was, you know, a great deal of press
Speaker 6: devoted to that as well.
Speaker 5: What about email four.
Speaker 6: Four K interesting? You know, he's one of these people
Speaker 6: that walks onto the stage and then a minute later
Speaker 6: walks off. Here he was really, he was the catalyst
Speaker 6: for solving the worst crime of his era, and perhaps
Speaker 6: because of jealousies or political configurations, his career never advanced.
Speaker 6: He was shuffled from one outpost to another. I mean
Speaker 6: he should have been promoted to national office in Paris
Speaker 6: after this deduction, but you know, there were a lot
Speaker 6: of jealousies at the time. And finally, some years later
Speaker 6: he gave up and he wrote his own memoir of
Speaker 6: the case and somewhat bitterly wrote, you know, you would
Speaker 6: imagine that the guy who saw this case would be
Speaker 6: given a great post or a legion of honor, and
Speaker 6: sadly none of those things happened, and he just kind
Speaker 6: of disappeared from public view.
Speaker 5: Interesting, and how did this debate of sanity versus insanity?
Speaker 5: What was its result and as an effect on at
Speaker 5: least legal system from that time on.
Speaker 6: This case solved nothing in that regard. You know, they
Speaker 6: found no lesions, but then they also wrote, you know,
Speaker 6: other people wrote, well it may be not something that
Speaker 6: you could see. You know, at the time, the legal
Speaker 6: definition of sanity versus insanity was if you know the
Speaker 6: difference between right and wrong, If you know what you're
Speaker 6: doing is wrong and do it anyway, you're legally responsible.
Speaker 6: It's still the definition today, despite the fact that certain
Speaker 6: brain scans are showing that some people, very small number,
Speaker 6: but some people may knowed the difference between right and wrong,
Speaker 6: but lack the ability to stop themselves. And you know,
Speaker 6: this is a sociopath, this is a psychotic. They know
Speaker 6: what they're doing is wrong, but it's possible that in
Speaker 6: some small proportion of these people they really lack the
Speaker 6: capacity to stop themselves. And there's a whole field of
Speaker 6: law now emerging in the twenty first century called neuro law,
Speaker 6: and that is a new version of the law based
Speaker 6: on a better understanding of neuralgy and brain science, and
Speaker 6: kind of some legal scholars are talking about that, but
Speaker 6: you can imagine that the legal system doesn't want to
Speaker 6: go there because it would open up a whole canon
Speaker 6: worms in terms of who does and who doesn't get
Speaker 6: put away.
Speaker 5: Well exactly, and then even more increased rule of psychiatry
Speaker 5: in courtrooms.
Speaker 6: We don't know what to do with it. You know,
Speaker 6: it's really interesting. You and I look like a guy
Speaker 6: look at a guy like this, or you and I.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm sure with your background, you know all
Speaker 6: the serial killers, and think about Jeffrey Dahmers or Ted Bundy.
Speaker 6: Now just between us, these guys are nuts, but legally
Speaker 6: they're not right. And I think there's a gap there,
Speaker 6: and it's a very uncomfortable gap, and it's like we're
Speaker 6: living in that gap thinking we know they're crazy, but
Speaker 6: legally they're not. And it's a problem that we as
Speaker 6: a society haven't solved yet.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 5: I think that, you know, part of it is that
Speaker 5: people believe that people are getting off if put in
Speaker 5: mental institutions and being living In Canada, I mean, people
Speaker 5: have really good examples of that. We had a horrific
Speaker 5: bus beheading and cannibalism. You probably heard about. This thing
Speaker 5: was on a Greyhound bus. This person was clearly insane. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but this psychiatric field here in this city, in this
Speaker 5: country has spoken to the parents and said, you know,
Speaker 5: on medication, within five years he should be out.
Speaker 6: So where's where's the guy Now?
Speaker 5: He's in an institution, he's in a mental institution. But
Speaker 5: within two years they're they're letting him out on walks.
Speaker 5: And so there was a because of the savagery of
Speaker 5: the of the crimes and the uniqueness and it just
Speaker 5: you know, and it made international press. But still, you know,
Speaker 5: there are people that believe that once you put somebody
Speaker 5: in institution, that there are those people who could let
Speaker 5: them out in a short period of time, and there
Speaker 5: are a lot of people of the of the mind
Speaker 5: that where I clearly understand what you're saying. But you know,
Speaker 5: when you're a sociopath or a psychopath and you're normal,
Speaker 5: except you just don't think normal, you don't behave normal.
Speaker 5: The value of human life is not and their propensity
Speaker 5: to want to be famous at all costs. Even though
Speaker 5: this was one hundred and twenty years ago, this guy
Speaker 5: has those psychopathic tendencies easily.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, it's a dilemma, you know. I think
Speaker 6: in the States, people overestimate how often the insenti defense
Speaker 6: is used. It's not used that you're often, and the
Speaker 6: people tend notot to get out. There's some states that
Speaker 6: have come up with a statute of guilty but insane,
Speaker 6: in which they get the full term, but it's in
Speaker 6: an institution where they're where their symptoms could be treated.
Speaker 6: I don't have the answer, you know, looking at this
Speaker 6: case and then bringing things up to date, up to
Speaker 6: date in the twenty first century has just told me
Speaker 6: these are the questions. And I don't mean to take
Speaker 6: an easy way out, but none of us has the
Speaker 6: answer to this. What it mean was how so long
Speaker 6: ago these people were smart enough to ask the questions
Speaker 6: that we're now asking. Don't forget, Before these guys came
Speaker 6: on the scene, it was considered good and evil. You know,
Speaker 6: it was in the pocket of the clergy, and now
Speaker 6: it's in the realm of science and law. So in
Speaker 6: that way, I guess we've advanced.
Speaker 5: Yes, And I think to the really good examination of
Speaker 5: the death penalty is a again, a very reasonable thing
Speaker 5: to do. And I think the US, even though it's
Speaker 5: you know, it doesn't have a great reputation for open
Speaker 5: mindedness in that area. Then you still see that the
Speaker 5: appetite or the mood of the general population is that
Speaker 5: they're not so in agreement with the death penalty.
Speaker 6: No, most states don't have it, you know. I was
Speaker 6: talking with the prosecutor in Texas, where they do have it,
Speaker 6: and I said, you guys are playing without a net.
Speaker 6: And as you know, we have the Innocence Project here
Speaker 6: which has turned over many, many cases, in some cases
Speaker 6: people wrongfully executed. So yeah, I don't think it's a
Speaker 6: good idea. It's too all or none, and people make mistakes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's exactly the way I look at it too.
Speaker 5: I don't want to have that I know that the
Speaker 5: system pains itself and tries to portray themselves as well.
Speaker 5: We have these checks and balances. But despite all that,
Speaker 5: despite oversight, and despite appeal, innocent people of being convicted everywhere,
Speaker 5: and innocent people could die, let alone spending portions of
Speaker 5: their lives in prison. So I absolutely cannot, with any
Speaker 5: good conscious agree with the death penalty. But I do
Speaker 5: really agree with life without any possibility of parole. And
Speaker 5: one of the things that I find interesting here in
Speaker 5: this country is that we've abandoned that idea. So really, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: because we don't even have we don't even have consecutive sentencing.
Speaker 5: So Robert Picton, Robert Pickton has a parole hearing.
Speaker 6: Of course, you know, all other ways your country is
Speaker 6: so much more civilized in ours.
Speaker 5: I think, Well, we do deal with we do actually
Speaker 5: believe in rehabilitation still, and we still what we do
Speaker 5: have is a tendency not to believe in mandatory minimums,
Speaker 5: and we really do we really do handle a less
Speaker 5: serious crime more reasonably, I think.
Speaker 6: And you know, these guys in the eighteen nineties, the
Speaker 6: pioneers of forensic science would have agreed with you. I
Speaker 6: found a paper by one of them. It was so
Speaker 6: interesting because you know, they saw themselves as doctors, and
Speaker 6: they saw a crime as a kind of disease, and
Speaker 6: they thought, all right, how do we cure it? And
Speaker 6: one doctor wrote, if you had a patient with a
Speaker 6: heart attack or a broken arm, or an influenza, would
Speaker 6: you give all of them the same medicine? He said,
Speaker 6: And yet we use the same medication for all crime
Speaker 6: imprisonment said, isn't there something better? And they really did
Speaker 6: believe in rehabilitation. And La Kasani, who was a strict
Speaker 6: law and order guy, he really believed in rehabilitation too.
Speaker 6: And it concerns me then in the US that seems
Speaker 6: like a popular and you know, there's still people and
Speaker 6: the greatest criminologist of all time never gave up believing
Speaker 6: that criminals were still human beings.
Speaker 5: Well, I think what happens too is you do have
Speaker 5: these horrendous, horrific crimes that are high profile, and then
Speaker 5: you do have the media which feeds on that fear
Speaker 5: that is created by that, and then you have the
Speaker 5: politics that again feeds on that fear. So you do
Speaker 5: have a quandary where if anyone were to say, let's
Speaker 5: repeal that mandatory minimum, or let's consider rehabilitation of killers.
Speaker 5: It's political suicides.
Speaker 6: It is, you know, that's why they couldn't go for
Speaker 6: the appeal with VSA, which is a very compelling case.
Speaker 6: The president would have lost his office immediately. So it
Speaker 6: sure is a highly fraud area.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, yeah, and you could see it everywhere that
Speaker 5: it will always be an issue that's contended or pardon me, debated.
Speaker 6: So yeah, you're right.
Speaker 5: Well, I want to thank you very much. I wanted
Speaker 5: to also mention that you have you have an earlier
Speaker 5: book which is you're renowned for. It's called Blood and
Speaker 5: Epic History of Medicine and Commerce. And I also want
Speaker 5: to tell people that have been listening you've been listening
Speaker 5: to Douglas Starr and this is his book The Killing
Speaker 5: of Little Shepherds, The True crime Story and the Birth
Speaker 5: of Forensic Science. And I want to thank you very
Speaker 5: much Doug for coming on the program and talking about
Speaker 5: your incredible book. It's been a very enjoyable interview. Thank
Speaker 5: you very much.
Speaker 6: Thanks. I enjoy it very much.
Speaker 5: Well, you have a good evening.
Speaker 6: Thanks, So you have a we're off right.
Speaker 5: No, we're still on, but go on.
Speaker 6: Oh no, I was just gonna if you have a website.
Speaker 6: It would be terrific if you could connect to my
Speaker 6: website because it has pictures and documents and things people
Speaker 6: might like to see.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I'll put a link on my website for people
Speaker 5: to take a look and to broad talk.
Speaker 6: Oh, kick people over your show so is www. Douglas
Speaker 6: Star all one word dot com. But thanks, you were
Speaker 6: obviously an expert in the area. Well, you know, I
Speaker 6: just read a lot and so I think a lot
Speaker 6: of people that read this, a lot of true crime
Speaker 6: fans get enough of an education. But totally, your book
Speaker 6: is unique in terms of giving us the history of
Speaker 6: forensic basically the history of forensic evidence and how they're
Speaker 6: utilize how they utilize it in this incredible case. And
Speaker 6: so it's a great way of bringing people in to Again,
Speaker 6: a lot of people say I don't read true crime, Well,
Speaker 6: you know what, you don't have to read true crime
Speaker 6: to appreciate a well written and well researched book and
Speaker 6: a great story. You know, pers You've got everything going
Speaker 6: on here, So I appreciate it. All right. Well, thanks Dan,
Speaker 6: it was great conversation.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much, and have a good evening. You
Speaker 5: even listen to the thank you you even listened to
Speaker 5: the program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true
Speaker 5: crime history, and the authors that have written about them.
Speaker 6: Good Night,