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One of the most notorious serial killers associated with vampires and werewolves is Joseph Vacher. The problem is; even after so many years, no one knows what to make of him. Was he a vampire? Was he a werewolf? Or was he just a deranged psychopath? What do you think? Anyone who finds more info is invited to post it please.

Joseph Vacher

Known as the "French Ripper," Joseph was a sight for sore eyes. He suffered from partial paralysis on the right side from a self-inflicted head injury from when he was 25. Apparently, after being scorned by a woman, he shot her three times and unsuccessfully tried to blow his own head off. Later, the misfit killer would claim that his horrible condition played part in murderous rampage.

In 1893 he was arrested for shooting another woman and was placed in an asylum where, after repeated escape attempts, he was declared cured of his violent "persecution mania" and released. A month after his release on April 1, 1894, Vacher started roaming the French countryside looking for women and children to slaughter.

In a demonic frenzy Joseph would strangle, stab, and disembowel his victims to the tune of more than 11 savage killings over three and a half years. He also enjoyed mutilating their sexual organs, drinking their blood, and raping them alive and post mortem. Near each crime scene witnesses reported an ugly, foul mouthed tramp passing by.

In August, 1897 he was arrested for offending public decency outside Touron. While in jail police realized he looked very much like the descriptions of the French Ripper and established several links between him and some of thee crimes. Eventually Joseph confessed in a rambling written accounts describing every detail of the killings. Although he confessed to only 11 kills, authorities suspect him of 14. During his trial he blamed his bad disposition because he had contracted rabies from a dog bite at the age of eight. Nevertheless, the court found him guilty of murder and guillotined him December 31, 1898.

For more info on serial killers goto:
http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/serial2.html

I have to beleive he was a wolf, wild acts of murder I dont beleive fit with the vampyre mind set.

No, I didn't know about this man...But I will know more now.
Intriguing story...

I do think that the end result of rabies is organic brain syndrome, or insanity

I don't think that he was a wolf or a vampire! It's clearly visible that his self afflicted head wound affected both his sanity and his ability to move!
I assume that all of his acts was a result of brain damage and psycholgical problems!

Every one here has psych. problems. the question is what caused his?

once again... people read too much into things

i dont think that he was a wolf or a vampyre. just a crazy lunatic who wanted to give his murders his own particular "signature"

A bullet in the head is a very good reason for someone to go ape!

i don't think that he was a vampire or a werewolf...he had mental health issues

I would like to beileve he was either one of those but sounds like a Physco to me

he couldof been a hybrate

Admin spelling correction: hybrid

Very interesting information. I personally think he was nothing more than a psychotic individual, his psychosis was more than likely caused by the self inflicted wound.

Interesting comment, Vamporion, because I just found another version of Joseph Vacher's story:


"By century's end, in 1897, a tramp named Joseph Vacher, 29, was tried in France for eleven murders. He had been arrested after a seventeen-year-old shepherd was found strangled, stabbed, and with his belly ripped open. Vacher wrote a confession for the judge, claiming that he suffered from an irresistible impulse and had committed murder during frenzies. He thought that, having been bitten by a rabid dog when he was a child, his blood had been poisoned. As his victims died, he said, he drank blood from their necks.

A team of doctors examined the defendant. In the end, because his memory was clear about the crimes and because he had run off, they decided that Vacher had demonstrated sufficient awareness to be judged sane and therefore responsible for what he had done. Yet he had a history of "confused talk," spells of delirium, persecution mania, and extreme irritability. Indeed, three years earlier he had been treated in an asylum when he'd killed a woman and had sex with her corpse. He also had once removed the genitalia from a boy and from a girl. If anyone had a claim to insanity, he did, but in 1898, at the Ain Assizes, he was convicted, and within two months executed.

Ironically, during Vacher's spree, Dracula was published in 1897 in England, introducing the shocking image of the predatory life-sucker who commanded wolves and could shift into the shape of one".
found at:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/werewolf_killers/14.html#continue

This seems like psychosis to me...

"Psychosis is a generic psychiatric term for mental states in which the components of rational thought and perception are severely impaired. Persons experiencing a psychosis may experience hallucinations, hold delusional beliefs (e.g.paranoid delusions), demonstrate personality changes and exhibit disorganized thinking (see thought disorder). This is often accompanied by lack of insight into the unusual or bizarre nature of such behavior, difficulties with social interaction and impairments in carrying out the activities of daily living. A psychotic episode is often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"."
-Wikipwedia
Sorry if I extended myself...This really interested me

I think that Vacher was a monster, and the worst kind: a human monster.

I think he was just sick

He most likely had a rare form of Lycanthorpy ....the head injury could have triggered it.

Question: Why is there such controversy between Werewolves and Vamps??? and as my sweet grandmom would say..."Why can't we all jus' get along??

Judging by the account that was posted about him, I would, at first glance, suspect that he had a mental disorder as a result of his brain injury at the age of 25. However, judging by the fact that it was self-inflicted, Vacher may have had the mental disorder prior to the brain damage, but the damage probably reinforced or emphasized what was already present. But, because I wasn't alive at the time of this incident--thus I am unable to see Vacher personally--this is only conjecture based only on what I had read in this thread.

Probably didn't help much, did I.

As a matter of fact, you did.
Prior to all this, he claims to have been biten by a rabid dog...could rabies(sp?) have triggered it even before the incident with the gun?
...And I must say, not to enter the realm of fiction, that a man that shots himself in the head and survives it, must have something intriguing, to say the least, about it's physical complection.
Being paralised on one side of his body, he was still able to kill 11 people, and try to escape from the mental institution several times.
Intriguing indeed...Where did he get the strenght? From the mental condition?

If he was insane, then everyone here who beleives themselves to be Lycan or Vampyre is equaly insane, this man only had courage and was commited to what he was.

Is there an answer? I don't think so. Vacher could have been anything, but in my humblest opinion, I believe him to be a psycopath. He had mental promblems for sure, but was he a vampire or a werewolf with mental promblems, I do not know.

awesome info...i think that he was just a psychopatch....creepy stuff he did...

intriguing, and that entire website is informative to say the least.

I agree with Kiros- clearly the man was unbalanced before he went on his spree if he killed a g/f and then tried to shoot himself-that indicates a prior existence of mental disease, and therfore he cannot blame the murderous spree on the injury after the fact

My personal thoughts on this matter are this he wasnt a vampire or a werewolf he was just one sick individual that had a mental disorder

He was bitten by a rabid animal , before hand, in most cases people then died , but those that lived went insane, so I think it could have been Lycanthropy.

There is no actual proof that he was really biitten by anything; he only SAID he was. Personally, I don`t think I believe him, I think his lawyer just conjured that up to give him a lighter sentence or something.

i dont have any idea what he was , but i do know and im sure every body on this will agree with me when i say everybody or most have been biten by a dog at one time or another in their life and have yet to go mad from it. but i know my ex brother inlaw was shot in the head when he was young , and he is nut's yet he has not went out killed anyone.