The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr

He also discusses others in the field of criminology including Alphonse Bertillon and Cesare Lombroso, and explains developments in science and psychology that aided in the advancements of legal medicine and crime detection. Starr then interweaves his account of Vacher with the story of Alexandre Lacassagne, who was a pioneer in the study of forensic methodologies, including criminal profiling. Because he would wander from department to department, by the time the crimes were discovered, he would have been long gone, thus avoiding detection. As he wandered the countryside, he committed the most heinous crimes, with young shepherd boys and young women favorite targets.

With really nowhere to go, Vacher became a vagabond. Both survived, and Vacher was put into two different asylums for a total of ten months, then released. On a four-month leave from the army, Vacher came after her, she refused him, and he shot both Louise and himself. She tried to avoid him and put up every reasonable excuse for not seeing him, but it didn't help. After only one dinner, Vacher proposed marriage, and then later told her that if she ever betrayed him, he would kill her. Starr begins his story with army Sergeant Joseph Vacher's full-on obsession with a young woman named Louise Barant, a housemaid.

The second story is that of Alexandre Lacassagne, head of the department of legal medicine at the University of Lyon, who pioneered many forensic techniques in the areas of crime-scene and post-mortem analysis, and was what we would now call a criminal profiler. First, there's the account of Joseph Vacher, who roamed the countryside of France and left only gruesome death in his wake.

Set in 1890s France, The Killer of Little Shepherds contains two simultaneously-told stories. My thanks to Amazon Vine for sending this book prior to publication.

The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr