The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases by John Marlowe Page A

is known as ‘ Jack l’éventreur français’.
    Joseph Vacher explained his crimes by arguing that they were all the result of a crazed dog that had bitten him at the age of 8. His madness, he claimed, stemmed from rabies. Vacher added that medicine given to him by the village herbalist had had no effect other than to make him irritable and brutal, forever changing his character. Assuming Vacher’s account of the dog to be true, it adds to a very small body of knowledge concerning the serial killer’s childhood. We do know that he was born on 16 November 1869, in Isère, a department in the Rhône-Alpes region of France. He was the last of 15 children in a family of peasant farmers. His twin brother, the 14th in the family, choked to death when he was just one month old.
    It is has been put forth that at 15 years of age Vacher may have committed his first murder. The victim, a 10-year-old boy, was raped and killed. In 1878, Vacher began studies with the Marist Brothers, but was returned home when it was discovered that he was having sexual relations with some of his fellow students. The following year, Vacher was convicted of having attempted to rape a young male farmhand. Whatever the sentence, it could not have been great – by that autumn he’d found employment as a server at a brewery in Grenoble. One account says that it was during this time that Vacher caught venereal disease from a prostitute. According to the story, the resulting infection forced the removal of a testicle.
    It has also been claimed that he fell in with a group of anarchists. It is an unlikely association as in 1890, at the age of 21, Vacher enlisted in the French army. He was sent to the ancient city of Besançon, near the border with Switzerland. There he fell in love with a young servant girl, Louise Barrand, who considered him an object to be mocked.
    Vacher the soldier developed a reputation as a brutal drillmaster. Although made a non-commissioned officer, he came to believe that his military service was not being properly recognized and, in both protest and desperation, attempted to slit his throat. Despite the suicide attempt, he remained with the army and was again promoted.
    In June 1893, he proposed marriage to Louise. The offer was met with laughter and he attempted to kill the servant girl, but his gun misfired. Before he could be apprehended, he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head. Although Vacher survived, the bullet remained lodged in his skull. The damage caused paralysis on the right side of his face; his right eye was also affected. It is also thought that Vacher did himself permanent brain damage, leading to headaches and overall mental instability.
    Vacher was committed to an asylum in Dôle. There he was diagnosed as suffering from paranoia and hallucinations, and after six months, he was transferred to the Saint-Robert asylum in Isère. On April Fool’s Day, 1894, he was considered cured and was discharged. Homeless and lacking the faculties required for work, Vacher wandered seemingly without aim throughout the countryside of south-eastern France.
    Witnesses described him as a filthy, deformed figure; his injured eye seemed to be always discharging pus. Owing to the paralysis in his face, he had difficulty communicating.
    For three years he drifted, begging and stealing in order to survive. He was also raping, murdering and mutilating men and women along his path. Vacher committed nearly all his murders by first cutting the throats of his victims. Afterwards he would slice open their torsos. Many of Vacher’s victims were shepherds and shepherdesses; most were adolescents. His weapons were cleavers, scissors and knives – whatever happened to be at hand.
    His actions soon drew the attention of authorities, who dubbed their elusive killer ‘L’Éventreur du Sud-Est’ – ‘The Ripper of the South-East’.
    In 1895, he was almost caught when he was spotted by a gendarme walking near a recently murdered