Every once in awhile, in going over the criminal records of the world, the investigator comes across some famous story which shows the inexplicable depths of the human heart. A man or a woman, without criminal ancestry and seemingly without criminal instincts, suddenly seems to turn into a jungle beast.
A deed is done that might well make a hardened criminal pause. Search as we may, we cannot find, as we usually can in crime histories, the true mainspring of the fearful action.
This is especially true of the very occasional murder.
The case which prompted these reflections was that of Pierre Voibo, who, in 1869, in Paris, become one of these mysterious and baffling criminals and the perpetrator of one of the most revolting of murders.
Voibo was a tailor, but he was by no means a mere workman. He had good manners, he was known to a good many people not of the working classes, he was a lover of the simple pleasures of the milder night life of Paris.
He liked to be well dressed, and to stroll on the boulevard after the theater with “the swells,” and to have his bock in fashionable restaurants. It was true that he was a little of a spendthrift, but he was not a vicious man in any sense of the word and was quite moral and good natured.
The very nice girl to whom he had been paying court for some time, in the discreet manner of the French middle classes, was interested in him and, in fact, he was a pleasant figure, always well dressed, always good natured, friendly, and attentive. Her father, in the French manner, had investigated the young tailor and decided that the match was entirely suitable, but had demanded that Voibo add ten thousand francs to the girl’s dowry of fifteen thousand francs.
When Bodasse Disappeared
Well, as Voibo was in love with the girl, he was also well in love with the modest dowry which she would bring. Not so modest, either, when you remember that this was long before any such cost of living as we know now had been imagined as possible and while Europe was still on the living scale which it had known for hundreds of years.
The fifteen thousand francs would pay some very pressing debts that the tailor had and would clear up his business so that he could branch out a little.
In his difficulty — for he did not have even a thousand francs, Voibo went to his most intimate friend, an old man named Desire Bodasse, who was a worker in fine tapestries. The old man was an eccentric-had few friends, was a confirmed bachelor and a miser, and lived for a week on what would have just about paid Voibo’s dinner check.
Bodasse knew of the impending marriage and had warned his young friend that, in his opinion, the man who married might as well go and jump in the Seine and be done with it. But, notwithstanding this, he really was fond of the dapper young man, and Voibo had hopes that Bodasse would advance the ten thousand francs, as he could do, if he chose.
Bodasse, however, absolutely refused to do this. He told his young friend that the marriage was all the better for being put out of mind. From what came out afterward, it seems that Voibo, when he found that he could not get the money, agreed that perhaps he had better not marry. Then he tried to borrow the money to put into his business, believing that he could use it for the dowry without the knowledge of the old man, who often did not even read the newspaper for weeks together.
Old Bodasse was a very queer character. He was such an expert workman that he could get work whenever he chose and drop it when he chose, knowing that he could return to it as he choose. It was his habit, then, to occasionally lock himself up in his room and refuse to open it to any one.
Letters would be pushed under the door and a restaurant well used to the old man would send him in, once a day, a hot meal and a bottle of wine, which would be left at the door. Bodasse would take it in when he was sure no one was looking. The secret of these disappearances was never known.
The probability is that the old man was a mild drug taker and that occasionally he indulged himself in his taste with an isolated orgy. Sometimes he would leave the house, carrying a little old black bag and be gone for weeks. He was, therefore, a person of such erratic habits that no one would notice it if he were gone for quite awhile.
To Dispose of the Body
Voibo had invited the old man out to a café after their business conversation, and something of this ran through his mind, he afterward declared, as he sat and thought what he was to do. He did not mean to miss having the girl nor her money, and he had no wealthy friends.
He had been for a long time a member of the secret police of Paris, bringing information when he could and occasionally being assigned to some special work. He had, on several occasions, when very hard pushed, used this position of his for the obtaining of small sums of blackmail, but there was no “prospect” from whom he could hope to squeeze the amount of ten thousand francs, and — queer kink in his mind — he hated himself for ever having yielded to the temptation at all. What seemed to Voibo a better scheme was to murder the solitary old man and get the money.
The plan was fully matured by the time that the two men finished their meal. The waiter noticed that the shabby old man laid his hand fondly on the shoulder of the younger as they went out. Voibo invited his elderly friend to come and spend some hours at his rooms, and the old man did so. It was late when they arrived — about the dinner hour — and no one saw the two go in.
The young tailor waited until the old man had his back turned and then he struck him on the head with one of the heavy flat irons of his trade. While the man lay unconscious, Voibo cut his throat.
His next business was to dispose of the body.
What the Packages Held
As is so often the case, the first thing he did was to cut off the head, and then to dismember the body. There was a good deal of blood, but the resourceful murderer kept the stains from “setting” on the floor by pouring water over them.
The floor slanted a little and the water drained off to the part under the bed, which was over a shed, so that there was no danger of the drip falling on any ceiling below and thus disclosing the crime.
The head was, as always in this dreadful operation, the difficult matter, since, without it recognition is difficult. Voibo filled the eyes and mouth with lead and tied it up with a weight.
No one had seen the old man go into Voibo’s rooms and no one went to his rooms. The next night he set about the matter of disposing of the body.
It was Christmas time, and he rightly judged that a person with large bundles would be far less conspicuous at that time than otherwise. He thought of taking a cab, but shrewdly rejected that as too sure to leave a trail.
Parts of the body he packed in a hamper, in which a relative had sent him some Christmas goodies and gifts, and the thighs he made up to look like butcher’s packages. Burdened with this he went out on the snowy streets, his heart in his mouth.
It is worth while to stop and remember that his heart was in his mouth, as he afterward confessed, not with horror of what he hugged to him, but with the simple fear that he would be found out. Yet this was a man who was gentle to animals and had never so much as slaughtered a chicken in his life.
These nocturnal figures, lugging with them the horrible bits of flesh, these people with knives and cleavers and blood-stained hands, familiarly handling the body of their victim — how in the world do their nerves stand it? Where do they get the coolness? Where, indeed, do they get the stomach for it?
The deadly qualm that attacks the normal person at the sight and especially at the touch of such objects is innate. Even detectives and criminologists often feel it, yet here was a young man in the flush of youth, never having had so much as a bloody fight in his life, who coolly spends a night and a day in a charnel house, a shambles, then washes up and goes out to brave the world with parts of his victim. This is the real and amazing mystery of these one-time murders of horror.