Joseph Vacher

Early life

Family Vacher was born as the second youngest of 16 children to illiterate farmer Pierre Vacher (1810–1889), in Pierre's hometown of Beaufort, a commune 5 kilometers from Beaurepaire and 60 kilometers from Grenoble. Joseph's mother, Marie Rose "Rosalie" Ravit (1825–1882) from Lentiol, was Pierre's second wife after his first wife Virginie Didier, mother of four of Joseph's siblings, died in 1849, aged 30. Pierre and Rose became Joseph's parents at a relatively old age, being 59 and 44 years old respectively. Vacher had a twin brother, Eugène, who died in infancy on 15 July 1870, after choking to death on a loaf of bread that had been placed in the shared cradle by one of Vacher's older brothers.

Childhood and adolescence As a child, Vacher was already noted for his temper, having once shot at a group of other boys with his father's rifle for heckling him. Another incident occurred while working on the family farm, when he attempted to strangle his younger brother Louis because Vacher thought he was slacking off while helping him push a wheelbarrow.

In the summer of 1884, a ten-year-old boy named Joseph Amieux was raped and murdered inside a barn in a neighboring town. Although the crime is blamed on vagabonds, then-14-year-old Vacher would later be suspected as having been the true perpetrator. At age fifteen, Vacher was sent to his widowed half-sister in Saint-Genis-Laval, who, overwhelmed by the task of caring for the temperamental youth, sent him to a very strict Marist Brothers school, where he was taught to obey and to fear God. He was meant to be educated there until he was 18, but expelled after only two years, as monks at the school noted Vacher for torturing animals and masturbation. He found work as a restaurant worker and moved in with his sister and her husband in Marcollin. While living with them, Vacher contracted syphilis and had to have his left testicle surgically removed at Antiquaille Hospital six months following the diagnosis.

At age 18, he was reported for the attempted rape of a 12-year-old boy on a farm in Beaufort on 29 June 1888. The victim, Marcelin Bourdon, was pushed down while baling hay in a barn, but managed to punch Vacher and alert fellow workers to the scene. Vacher avoided a charge of pederasty as he fled town and his employers were unaware of his residence. He was evicted in 1889 by his brother-in-law due to his aggressive behaviour and went to Geneva to ask to live with his brother Auguste, to whom he admitted to the attempted rape in Beaufort and possibly referenced other violent crimes he committed. After he was rejected by his brother, he lived in Lyon. In 1891, Vacher was briefly confined to an asylum for voicing persecutory delusions.

Military service Seeking escape from the intense poverty of his peasant background, he joined the army in 1890, serving in the 60th infantry regiment. Early into his enlistment, Vacher was transferred from his initial living quarters because he kept stealing and hiding the clothes of fellow soldiers. Vacher was noted for his ill temper and aggressive behaviour towards his fellow soldiers. In his first year of service, Vacher made at least two murder attempts on superior officers. In the first instance, frustrated at slow promotion, infused with the grandiose belief that he was not receiving the attention he deserved, Vacher made threats against Barbier, a recently promoted corporal from his unit. When Barbier arrived in Vacher's barracks to calm him down, Vacher attacked him with a straight razor. After failing to injure Barbier, Vacher instead tried to kill himself by slicing his throat, in his first known suicide attempt. In another incident, Vacher tried to stab a sergeant fourrier with a pair of tailor's scissors. He was brought to the infirmary for overnights stays after both incidents, and following the second attack, he was heard screaming "Blood! I'll kill him! They don't know what I'm capable of!" In another incident, Vacher lunged at the adjutant sergeant Tissot with a razor when the latter confiscated a bottle of brandy from him. Despite these incidents, Vacher was promoted to corporal the same year.

Attempted murder-suicide In the spring of 1893, while Vacher was stationed in Besançon, he fell in love with a young maidservant, Louise Barant.

Authorities did not make a connection between any of the killings until the summer of 1897, when newly installed judge , who had investigated the murder of Augustine Mortureux in 1895, had judicial offices in départements across Southern France collect records of unsolved murders, having concluded that a single individual was behind some of the gruesome murders reported to him due to their shared mutilation and/or victim group.

Insanity plea After his arrest, Vacher claimed he was insane and attempted to prove it in a variety of ways. He claimed that a rabid dog's bite had poisoned his blood, causing madness, but later blamed the quack cure he received for the bite. He also claimed he was sent by God, comparing himself to Joan of Arc. Despite his protestations, he was pronounced sane after lengthy investigations by a team of doctors that included the eminent professor Alexandre Lacassagne. Court documents say that investigators were able to confirm that Vacher kept close contact with sheep dogs as a child, but believed that Vacher's insistence on their responsibility for his condition actually ties back to their owner, the commune's garde champêtre, who may have raped Vacher when he was six years old. Vacher was executed by guillotine at 7:03 a.m. on 31 December 1898, in front of a crowd of 3,500 people. He refused to walk to the scaffold under his own power and was dragged to the guillotine by the executioners.

Victims

Confirmed A list of Vacher's known victims.

19 May 1894 in Beaurepaire: Eugénie Delhomme (21), silk factory worker 20 November 1894 in La Vacquière, near Vidauban: Louise Marcel (13), shepherd 12 May 1895 in Étaules: Augustine Mortureux (17), shepherd Unknown date between 27 May and 5 June 1895 in Tassin-la-Demi-Lune: Claudius Beaupied (12), shepherd from Lyon 24 August 1895 in Saint-Ours: Péronne Moraud (née Baud; 68), farmer 31 August 1895 in Onglas, near Bénonces: Victor Portalier (16), shepherd 21 September 1895 in Saint-Étienne-de-Boulogne: Pierre Massot-Pellet (14), shepherd from Marseille 23 September 1895 in Truinas: Aline Alaise (16), shepherd 10 September 1896 in Busset: Marie Lorut (née Moussier; 19), shepherd 1 October 1896 in Varenne-Saint-Honorat: Rosine Rodier (14), shepherd 19 June 1897 in Courzieu-la-Giraudière: Pierre Laurent (14), 4 August 1897 in Champis: Marie-Eugénie Héraud (28)

American newspapers would somewhat exaggerate Vacher's killings, reporting the high end estimation of 38 possible victims as fact. The newspapers also named victims that are not mentioned in surviving French newspapers nor alleged by court or investigators. One of the most widely shared, yet unconfirmed cases of this kind is the supposed murder of a French nobleman, named only as the "Marquis de Villeplaine", who had fallen victim to a fatal robbery during a park walk near the French-Spanish border. After his execution, it was widely reported by the same sources that Vacher was a self-admitted anarchist, after proclaiming during a prison transport that he was "the anarchist of God" and his murders related to his "oppos[ition] to society, no matter what form of government may be".

Legacy Vacher's place in French social history is similar to Jack the Ripper's place in British social history.

In popular culture In 1976 French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier made a film called Le juge et l'assassin (The Judge and the Murderer) that was inspired by Vacher's story. The name of the murderer, played by Michel Galabru, is slightly changed into "Joseph Bouvier" (in French, the words bouvier and vacher describe the same profession, herdsman). In the 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, in a private dialogue with her husband Port, the character Kit Morseby says of the character Eric Lyle: "He looks like a young Vacher". In the episode "Probable Cause" of the TV series Castle, serial killer 3XK uses Vacher's name as an alias. In the film Psychopathia Sexualis Vacher is the first case study of a sexual mental illness presented. In the video game Genshin Impact, the character "Vacher" (Marcel) during the Fontaine Archon Quest is inspired by the real-life Vacher.