Joseph Vacher

 VICTIMS : 11+

A vagrant who wandered the countryside of south-east France at the end of the last century, begging, stealing and killing. So vicious were Vacher's killings, so gratuitous the mutilations, that he quickly earned the name the 'Ripper of the South-East'.

Joseph Vacher escaped the deprivation of being bom last of fifteen children of a poor peasant family by joining the army where, in a fit of pique brought on by slow promotion, he tried unsuccessfully to cut his own throat. In 1893 Vacher attempted to shoot a young woman who had rejected his unwelcome advances and again tried without success to comn-iit suicide; the bullet lodged in his ear causing paralysis of the muscles on the right side of his face, damage to one eye, and mental instability. After spending some months in the asylum at Saint-Robert, Vacher was discharged in April 1894 and became a vagrant.

During the next three and a half years, Joseph Vacher butchered seven women and four young men, subjecting their bodies to the most appalling sexual mutilation. On 4 August 1897, he assaulted a woman collecting pine cones in the woods near Touman, but was taken by the police after the woman and her husband, who had been working nearby, overpowered him. Even so, it was considered a comparatively slight offence, and the multiple killer was sentenced to three months for offending public decency.

Although there was never any more than a strong suspicion of the true extent of Vacher's crimes, like many criminals before him and since he proved his own worst enemy. For no apparent reason, Vacher wrote a letter to the examining judge confessing, 'Yes, I committed the crimes ... I committed them all in moments of frenzy.' He explained that as a child of eight he had been bitten by a rabid dog and it was his belief that his blood had been permanently poisoned. Whether this seemed to him an adequate excuse for killing at least eleven people, and probably another fifteen besides, we will never know.

After prolonged investigation by a team of doctors headed by the eminent Professior Alexandre Lacassagne, Joseph Vacher was found, in their opinion, to be legally sane and fit to stand trial. At the Ain Assizes in October 1898, Vacher found himself facing charges connected with the killing of a young shepherd three years earlier. Clearly still determined to establish his insanity Vacher, uninvited, addressed the court, 'Glory to Jesus! Long live Joan of Arc! Glory to the great martyr of our time! Glory to the great saviour!"

Sane or Mad, a reluctant Joseph Vacher was half-dragged, half-carried to the guillotine on 31 December 1898; he was 29 years of age.

This bio was taken from "The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers," by Brian Lane and Wilfred Gregg.
 

MY OPINION

I really get pissed off when people carry on about Jack the Ripper as if he was something incredible, but this should be proof that he was not, and that there were in fact much better killers around at the same time. And with some of these guys (like Vacher) we can at least read the interesting stuff because we know who they are. I'm sure I'll get loads of e-mail crapping on about how it's much better to get away with the crime, but all I want is info on the murderer. That's where most of the juicy stuff is. Anyway, I like this guy, even if he was as nutty as, well, something with lots of nuts in it. (I should take this opportunity to mention that I am in fact allergic to nuts and therefore feel sick when coming into contact with them, but that doesn't stop me making stupid references to them)