Free The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr

very helpful, he said, but now it was time to address some specifics. He asked Vacher to walk him through the murders, one at a time, this time with all the relevant details.
    “It is useless for me to give you any more explanations about the crimes, because you know as much as I do,” said Vacher, who now seemed broken and disheartened. 5
    Fourquet explained that he knew the basics but that now he really needed the details. “It’s a rule of our profession,” he said, trying to sound collegial. “Investigating magistrates are obligated to have the accused tell all the details of the crimes they confess to.”
    “It’s useless, I tell you,” said Vacher. “And it’s too ugly. Don’t ask me to return to those ugly times. I’m not saying anything more.”
    Once again, the situation was becoming delicate. Fourquet worried that when the story of Vacher’s confession became public, the killer would see its impact and recant his statement. Conversely, Vacher might stick to the confession, which, under public scrutiny, would seem nothing more than the ravings of a madman. Fourquet’s colleague, the procurer general,whose job it would be to prosecute the case, warned him to proceed carefully, as the whole case could easily collapse. Or, he wondered, were they in the hands of a faker?
    Vacher, meanwhile, wrote to his family, expressing confidence that soon he would be back at Saint-Robert, that “humane and loyal asylum.”
    For several days, the two men were locked in a stalemate. And then, surprisingly, Vacher offered an opening. He was an avid newspaper reader—while a patient at the Saint-Robert asylum, he had read several each day. Now that word about his case was beginning to leak, he decided that he wanted to influence the coverage. If the public could see his side of the story, he felt, they would understand he was not a monster, but a damaged—even sympathetic—human being. Vacher offered to discuss the killings in detail if Fourquet could guarantee that the newspapers would publish his confession.
    Fourquet could glimpse the criminal’s reasoning. If convicted of a single homicide, Vacher would undoubtedly face the guillotine. But if he confessed to multiple crimes, people would say that a madman must have done it. “There’s not one person in a thousand who would contend that a man who committed eight murders—of which seven were children, and horribly mutilated their bodies—was not ten times insane,” he told Vacher. “And so [your] conclusion is simple: Since insane people are not responsible for their acts and the law does not punish them, they cannot condemn me. Admit that I figured out your reasoning, haven’t I?”
    Vacher agreed.
    But there was a problem, said Fourquet, speaking now almost as a coconspirator. Although the evidence in the Portalier case was overwhelming, that regarding the other murders was weak. Vacher would have to supply many more details if he hoped to attempt an insanity defense.
    On October 16,
Le Petit Journal
, with its huge circulation, published Vacher’s confession in its entirety. Immediately after that, Vacher began talking—now giving all the details. He did not merely admit to the killings; he
insisted
on the veracity of his confessions, as if daring Fourquet to try to disprove them.
    He began with a murder near Dijon, “a girl of fifteen or sixteen years more or less. Didn’t she have a dog?” he said to the investigator. “And didn’t a lot of people pass along the route that morning? And didn’t I take her shoes and her earrings? … What does that tell you?”
    Fourquet recognized the murder as that of Augustine Mortureux. “For that crime, I can say that everything you told me is exact. And for the others?”
    “The old woman in Saint-Ours was eating soup when I killed her.”
    “That’s true; pass to another one.”
    “In the Var, she was the prettiest victim of all, what a shame! I took the girl on the path, and I killed her in a little