Activitate

Psychological Linkage Analysis: Joseph Vacher, “The French Ripper”
An important aspect of profiling is that the profiler can often use the behavioral-psychological clues an offender leaves behind at a crime scene to link crimes together that are committed by the same offender. Sometimes it’s fairly obvious, and sometimes the clues are much more discreet.
A series of sexual homicides began in France in 1894. They were not immediately connected to one offender because of the distance between the incidents. Some people have offered that the offender was Jack the Ripper, having fled England to continue his crimes in France.
Most of these assaults occurred in rural areas. The victims were young men or women who were walking alone or tending to their sheep.
After the murder of a 17-year old girl in his district, a French magistrate, Louis-Albert Fonfrede began gathering information about reports of similar murders throughout France. He postulated that it was not a single offender responsible for the crimes (because of distance between the murders), but rather, it was a new crime epidemic.
Another French magistrate, Emile Fourquet, was passionately interested in police work. Fourquet heard about one of the murders, and then learned that Fonfrede had gathered information on multiple murders. Fourquet saw a connection between the crimes: the victims had been young shepherds, and all had been mutilated with a razor or knife and sodomized antemortem. A series of “hacking” type neck wounds was present on the victims, indicating that the killer had blitz-attacked the victim from behind. Witnesses from two scenes reported a vagrant with a twisted lip and droopy eye, but this man eluded police.
Fourquet organized the files, dividing them into two charts; one keeping track of information about victimology and Modus Operandi. He analyzed autopsy reports and police reports. Using this method, he determined that there were 8 connected murders, with the bodies being disposed of in the same way, the same type of weapon being used, the same wound patterns on the victims, and the presence of mutilation and a sexual attack. To him, the distance between crime scenes did not matter, the similarities were too many for there to be more than one killer.
Fourquet’s second chart contained his ‘profile’ of the killer. He based this information on eyewitness reports after interviewing as many witnesses as he could find. He extracted the common elements from the accounts to make a list of behavioral patterns, which he called the killer’s signature.
The attacks continued until one potential victim, a young woman, fought off the attacker and her husband was able to detain him until police arrived. The man’s name was Joseph Vacher. He was 29 years old and he apparently fit Fourquet’s profile, who arrived to interview Vacher – and who was able to obtain a confession.
Vacher was apparently a former soldier who was discharged from the military due to “psychic disturbances.’ He admitted to all the crimes that Fourquet attributed to him – as well as a few more. Vacher reported that he had experienced these homicidal urges since he was a young teenager. He offered an excuse – that his blood was poisoned by a rapid dog bite he received as a child.
Vacher became known as the French Ripper, and was executed.
The Vacher crimes also prompted criminologist Alexandre Lacassagne to advance the field of forensic science by using evidence gathered at the crime scenes (such as molds of foot prints, using bone growth and teeth to determine the age of victims, and blood spatter analysis) to help convict Vacher.