The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr

So they chatted and walked and shared dinner in a café. “Ugly weather, isn’t it?” he said, and automatically she responded, “For sure.” Normally Barant, tall and wholesome-looking, with curly blond hair, would not have spoken to a stranger, especially one as brutish-looking as he but Vacher projected a kind of disarming innocence, and the sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeve reassured her. His name was Joseph Vacher (pronounced Vashay). On a drizzly spring evening in 1893, in the French provincial city of Besançon, nineteen-year-old Louise Barant was walking along the riverside promenade when she crossed paths with a man wearing the dress uniform of the French army. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. An important contribution to the history of medicine and criminal justice, impressively researched and thrillingly told. Lacassagne's forensic investigation ranks among the greatest of all time, and its denouement is gripping. And we see the twists and turns of the celebrated trial: to disprove Vacher's defense by reason of insanity, Fourquet recruits Lacassagne, who had revolutionized criminal science: refining the use of blood spatter evidence, systematizing the autopsy and doing ground-breaking research in psychology.

We see one of the earliest uses of criminal profiling, as Fourquet painstakingly collects eyewitness accounts, leading to Vacher's arrest. With high drama and stunning detail, Douglas Starr recounts the infamous crime and punishment of Vacher, interweaving the story of how Lacassagne and his colleagues developed forensics as we know it.

The two men typified the Belle Epoque, a period of immense scientific achievement and fascination with its promise to reveal the secrets of the human condition. Alexandre Lacassagne, the era's most renowned criminologist. He eluded authorities for years-until he ran up against prosecutor Emile Fourquet and Dr.

At the end of the nineteenth century, serial murderer Joseph Vacher, dubbed 'The Killer of Little Shepherds,' terrorized the French countryside.

The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr