Agnoletti,” Rome, 1873). The confessions which Verzeni made after his sentence, are interesting:—
“I had an unspeakable delight in strangling women, experiencing during the act erections and real sexual pleasure. It was even a pleasure only to smell female clothing. The feeling of pleasure while strangling them was much greater than that which I experienced while masturbating. I took great delight in drinking Motta’s blood. It also gave me the greatest pleasure to pull the hair-pins out of the hair of my victims.
“I took the clothing and intestines, because of the pleasure it gave me to smell and touch them. At last my mother came to suspect me, because she noticed spots of semen on my shirt after each murder or attempt at one. I am not crazy, but in the moment of strangling my victims I saw nothing else. After the commission of the deeds I was satisfied and felt well. It never occurred to me to touch or look at the genitals or such things. It satisfied me to seize the women by the neck and suck their blood. To this very day I am ignorant of how a woman is formed. During the strangling and after it, I pressed myself on the entire body without thinking of one part more than another.”
Verzeni arrived at his perverse acts entirely independently, after having noticed, when he was twelve years old, that he experienced a peculiar feeling of pleasure while wringing the necks of chickens. After this he had often killed great numbers of them, and then said that a weasel had been in the hen-coop (Lombroso, Goltdammer’s Archiv, Bd. xxx; p. 13).
Lombroso mentions an analogous case (Goldtdammer’s Archiv) which occurred in Vittoria (Spain):—
Case 22. A certain Gruyo, aged 41, with a blameless past life, having been three times married, strangled six women in the course of ten years. They were almost all public prostitutes and quite old. After the strangling he tore out their intestines and kidneys per vaginam. Some of his victims he violated before killing, others, on account of the occurrence of impotence, he did not. He set about his horrible deeds with such care that he remained undetected for ten years.
(b) Mutilation of Corpses.—Following the preceding horrible group of perversions of the sexual instinct, which arise from hyperæsthesia and paræsthesia sexualis with retained virility, come naturally the necrophiles; for in these cases, just as with lustful murderers and analogous cases, an idea which in itself awakens a feeling of horror, and before which a healthy person would shudder, is accompanied by lustful feel-
