Free The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr Page B

ran full-page lithographs portraying Vacher in the act of slaying young women, their eyes wide in terror, their mouths in mid-scream. In one paper, multiple panels showed Vacher committing a progression of murders, under the headline THE CRIMES OF A MONOMANIAC. 10 Fourquet, in contrast, was the “man of the hour,” a coolheaded, sharp-witted hero, a magistrate with a common touch who could psychologically disarm even the slyest of criminals.
    Both men tried to manipulate the coverage. Fourquet granted interviews, leaked the results of some interrogations, and occasionally let reporters sit in on others. Vacher, when Fourquet allowed him to talk to reporters, tried to make his case for insanity, telling the story of the rabid dog and explaining how he was an “anarchist of God.”
    “My victims never really suffered,” said Vacher, trying to minimize the cruelty of his acts. 11 “With one hand I would seize their throats and with the other I would kill them [with a razor].” He claimed that the collective agony of all his victims could not have exceeded a total of ten minutes.
    At one point, Vacher posed for a sketch artist from the Lyon newspaper
Le Progrès.
12 “Not bad,” he said, looking at the picture. “But don’t make the eyebrows so close together. It makes me look menacing.”
    Another time, Fourquet allowed photographers access to Vacher. The prisoner refused to cooperate unless they agreed to certain conditions: He had to be photographed wearing his white rabbit-fur hat—a symbol of purity—and holding a ring full of keys, which he said symbolized the keys to heaven. He had borrowed them from a prison guard.
    Newspapers sent reporters into the hinterland to trace Vacher’s wanderings. Some of the most vivid reporting was done by Albert Sarraut in
La Dépěche de Toulouse.
The reporter followed Vacher’s “bloody odyssey,” trekking to villages, interviewing family members of the victims, and portraying the widening circles of grief and chaos. 13 Sarraut told stories of the falsely accused, such as Bannier and Grenier, the agony of their families, and the wooden-headed refusal of victims’ relatives to accept the true version of events. He told of numerous small encounters with Vacher—the accordion playing, the handwriting lesson. He looked for early signs of Vacher’s proclivities, interviewing Dr. Dufour of the Saint-Robert asylum, former members of Vacher’s regiment, and Abbot Chevrolat, who was responsible for the Marist monastery. The abbot, not wanting to discuss any details, blandly explained that Vacher had been dismissed from the monastery because he was not “suitable” for the vocation. Overall, he added, young Vacher’s conduct had been good: He was calm, and always accomplished his tasks.
    “And now what do you think of him?” Sarraut asked. The abbot gave a dismissive wave of his hand.
    “It doesn’t much matter if he is found to be a degenerate or not. 14 It is necessary to rid society of whatever threatens it. There is no choice but to cut off his head.”
    In the midst of this coverage, Sarraut received a poignant letter from two members of Vacher’s family. They thanked him for not branding the entire family with Joseph’s crimes as many others had done.
    “You are the only one who really understands our misfortune and misery,” wrote Marius and Léonie Vacher. 15 “Whenever I see the news vendors on the way to school tears begin to well up in my eyes and I have to turn around and take another path. We are innocent of all that, but we have already begun to pay. Our lives will be sad for a very long time.”
    The investigation was unprecedented in the history of police work. Never had so many people over such a broad area given testimony about so many related crimes. It was propelled not only by the number of murders and the geographic area over which they had taken place but also by two modernizing developments—the telegraph system and the mass-market newspapers.