19th May, 1894, when in a lonely place he killed a working girl of twenty-one. He strangled her and then violated the body. On 20th November of the same year he throttled a farmer’s daughter aged sixteen at Vidauban (Var), violated the body and mutilated it with his knife. In the same way on 1st September, 1895 at Bénonces (Ain), he killed a lad of sixteen, Victor Portalier, and slashed open the stomach. Three weeks later he strangled a shepherd boy of fourteen, Pierre Massot-Pellet, and mutilated the body. In all some eleven murders with violation were traced to Vacher, the last being that of a shepherd lad aged thirteen, Pierre Laurent, at Courzieu (Rhône), 18th June, 1897. The body was indescribably hacked and bitten. Probably this maniac was guilty of many more assaults which did not come to light.
In England the sensation caused by the mysterious mutilations by Jack the Ripper will not easily be forgotten. The first body was found at Whitechapel, 1st December, 1887; the second, which had thirty-nine wounds, 7th August, 1888. On 31st of the same month a woman’s corpse was found horribly mutilated; 8th September a fourth body bearing the same marks, a fifth on 30th September; a sixth on 9th November. On the 1st June, 1889, human remains were dredged from the Thames; 17th July a body still warm was discovered in a Whitechapel slum; on 10th September of the same year the last body.
The classic instance of “vampirism,” Serjeant Bertrand, will be fully dealt with in a later chapter.
Andréas Bickel killed women after having both raped and mutilated them in an indescribable manner. Dr. Épaulard quoting from Feuerbach, Ahtenmœsigen Darstellung merkwürdzer Verbrechen says that Bichel declared: “Je puis dire qu’en ouvrant la poitrine, j’étais tellement excité que je tressaillais et que j’aurais voulu trancher un morceau de chair pour le manger.” In the year 1825 a vine-dresser named Léger, a stalwart fellow of four and twenty, left his home to find work. He wandered about the woods for a week or more, and was then seized with a terrible craving to eat human flesh. “Il rencontre une petite fille de douze ans, la viole, lui déchire les organes génitaux, lui arrache le coeur, le mange et boit son sang, puis enterre le cadavre. Arrêté peu après, il fait tranquillement l’aveu de son crime, est condamné et executé.”[119]
