Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926

Criminologists and detectives fail to explain the ingenuity and fiendishness of this peaceful citizen in his only crime

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.

Well, Voibo got along very well in the merry jostling crowd until two policemen who had been eying him suddenly stopped him and demanded to know what was in his very heavy packages.

Deep in the Seine

The little tailor must have had an iron nerve, for, although he was shaking with fright, he said:

“I am carrying home my purchases, messieurs, as I could not get a cab near the market and now I am halfway, so I might as well go on.”

“Well, what were your purchases?” they demanded.

“This parcel contains two large hams, gentlemen — you can feel them,” said Voibo, coolly offering the package containing the thighs of the old man. The policemen poked at them and were satisfied. Voibo had chosen his simile well!

“And what’s in that hamper — a big one?” demanded the other policeman.

“A hamper from home,” said Voibo, offering it for inspection, “it just arrived for me by express.”

In the street light the date on the tag was obscure and the policemen were quite satisfied with the explanation, borne out so well by the hamper, so they said that that was all right and let monsieur get along, for it was true that his packages were heavy.

They had stopped Voibo only because there had been several robberies of houses in the neighborhood and they were investigating all men who carried heavy packages.

The “purchases” were dropped in the Seine.

The tailor was afraid to try another expedition with any kind of bundle after this, and so he decided to drop the legs down the well of an apartment house near by, to which he could have access at night without being observed. This well was not used for drinking water. Afterward, he said that his conscience would not have allowed him to drop them in the well if he had not known that the water was used only for washing clothes!

The Day of the Wedding

In and between all this Voibo had been seeing his sweetheart and telling her father that his wealthy, but eccentric, friend Bodasse would give him his ten thousand, and the family were all pleased. They wanted Bodasse to be invited to come and visit them, and Voibo said that he would gladly convey the invitation, but that he doubted that it would be accepted.

It had been years, said he, since Bodasse had been out socially and now it seemed that he never would go again, which, of course, was true in a sense that was other than it seemed to the grateful family of the bride.

He now went at night to the rooms of Bodasse, to which he had long had a key and there did what he knew the old man was accustomed to do. Walked up and down the room for an hour or two, coughed and wheezed occasionally and forged the writing of the dead man in a note which he left for the concierge. He found and took all the gold that Bodasse had so long hoarded in his rooms and all the securities.

As he left, silently and in stockinged feet, in the dead of night, he lighted a big candle, which burned near the window until long after dawn and made the neighbors say that the old man must be on one of his secret sprees again, for when he was he often allowed candles to burn out after the day had come.

Voibo invented a very good disguise, too, in which he looked very much like the old man. As he always went and came at night, and as Bodasse had frequently passed the concierge without speaking or looking, his chin buried in his collar and his hat pulled down over his eyes, it was possible for Voibo to actually pass the concierge without a thought entering the head of the latter that it was not his lodger who shuffled by in the usual somewhat shabby, but clean, garments.

On several occasions Voibo sent a note to the restaurant that the food and drink which was the custom should be sent him and then went there at night and took it in and ate it.

The ten thousand francs were turned over to the girl’s parents.

“Père Bodasse may be persuaded to attend the wedding,” Voibo told his sweetheart, “and, anyway, I am sure that he will give us a nice present.”

However, he regretfully announced on the day of the wedding that Bodasse had an attack of his strange shyness and has run off to the mysterious retreat in the country, and so they were married and went away on a trip. The bride then and thereafter adored her husband, whom she considered a model man and who made her very happy so long as the storm did not break.

Mace Studies Lege

That the storm was brewing Voibo found out in 1870. He had had the decency not to take his young wife to the murder apartment and what with her money and all they were getting along very well.

But through his connection with the secret police the tailor found out that a pair of legs, well wrapped, had been found in a well of an apartment house on the Rue Princesse. A young detective named Mace, whom Voibo knew quite well, was on the case.

Voibo made it a point to meet Mace shortly afterward, and Mace, unsuspecting, told Voibo, whom he knew to have an official connection with the police, about the new case that he had.

Mace believed that the legs belonged to an old woman, since they had long stockings on them and that her name began with a “B,” since this letter was sewed into the top of one. But Dr. Tardieu, a well known physician, who examined them, believed that they were the legs of an old man.

After a few days Mace confided to Voibo that he believed the cloth in which the legs were wrapped and the string with which they were tied were such as tailors use in sending home suits of clothes, although he was not sure: and he subjected those objects to the professional scrutiny of Voibo!

The Stocking Maker

The tailor did not flinch, but handled the objects with which he must have had such associations, and finally gave it as his opinion that they were the same kind of paper and string that tailors sometimes use, but that butchers used them, too, for the wrapping of large parcels of meat.

Mace thought, he said, that he would try to look up the matter of the tailor first. Voibo agreed that he might as well, and then excused himself, for he had to go home to his wife, who was not very well. Although there had been some little inducement of money in the marriage, the husband had been impeccable in the care of his wife and her relations were loud in their praise.

It was their testimony afterward that he never showed the slightest uneasiness, or the slightest ill nature or moodiness during all this time while Mace was slowly digging down in the case.

Slowly, patiently, as is the immemorial custom of the Paris secret police, Mace worked his way along the Rue Princesse until he came to the house. There, by patient questioning, he found out that Voibo had had a room there and that while it was nominally the room of a seamstress named Dard, Voibo alone had occupied it finally. The name of Bodasse was mentioned, too, since the friendship between the dapper young man and the eccentric old one had occasioned some little, remark.

Mace looked up the residence of the old miser, but on inquiring for him was told that Bodasse was even then at home, but that he was in one of his usual incommunicado sessions. Repeated knockings at the door brought footsteps from within and a senile mumble.

The concierge, in no wise disconcerted, said that this was nothing — that M. Bodasse often spent weeks in seclusion, in fact, come to think of it — said the concierge — he himself had not actually seen the old man for a long time.

Mace left a note for the old man and went away, very thoughtful. There had been something vaguely familiar about the tones of that mumble. He could not place it, he could not put his finger on anything and it looked as if it were absurd to trace a man who was seemingly following his usually erratic course in life, but there remained that queer sensation — in short, Detective Mace had what we now call a hunch.

He played that hunch by finding out that Bodasse had an ancient aunt down in the country. She was sent for, came to Paris, under astonished protest, but at once expressed the gravest fears when she saw the stockings which had been on the legs.

She declared that she herself had made them from the feet of men’s socks and the tops of women’s stockings, because Bodasse was a chronic sufferer from cold and pains in his legs.

Beyond Human Understanding

Mace and some of his companions thereupon returned to the room of Bodasse and demanded admittance in the name of the law. That was the time when Voibo was not on hand to make the impersonation. The room was obviously empty, and after the due warning required by law, the door was broken open.

It was at once clear that something unusual was going on in that room. There were bits of clothing that did not belong to the old man, many cigarette stubs — which he was known not to use — old food lying about, the bed not slept in.

Still, this was not enough as yet. The police began to hunt through Paris for some of the securities which the old man was thought to have had. They found some Italian securities which Voibo had sold.

The case was complete and the arrest of Voibo was ordered.

That very day Voibo called casually on Mace at police headquarters and chatted about the case. Mace agreed that the matter was a mystery, that Bodasse was undoubtedly alive, although putting in a longer period than usual of seclusion, and Voibo sorrowfully said that for a long time now he had been unable to get his old friend to come out of his room. He feared for his reason, that he might slip out some night and make away with himself.

Mace, in watching the man, was astonished at the sincerity with which he spoke. However, the fates were just about to hand Voibo the one black mark — the fatal ace — for as he was about to go he put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief and in doing that pulled out a card which fell to the floor.

Mace politely stooped and picked it up, and saw that it was for a passage on a boat leaving France that very day. Voibo, foreseeing that he could not keep up the impersonation of Bodasse and knowing that the long hunt was drawing to its close, had made up his mind to abandon his wife, his home, and his country and fly for his life.

Mace instantly arrested the man, knowing that it would be most unwise to allow him to slip out of sight.

Voibo’s acting then was so convincing, Mace afterward said, that if he had not had positive proof, in the finding of the Italian securities, he would have never believed it possible that it was not an amazed, indignant, and innocent man who had been accused.

As it was, Mace compelled Voibo to take him home and there to disgorge other securities, which were found hidden in the basement of the house. Voibo’s wife fainted when they were found. Up to that very moment, she refused to believe a word of the accusation.

Then Mace took Voibo, still protesting that Bodasse had given him the securities, to the old room where the murder had been done and by slowly pouring water on the floor and observing that the tilt of the room made it run trader the bed, found where there was the possibility of blood having dripped. He tore up the boards and found the dust below thick with dried and clotted blood.

Voibo broke down when he saw that, and confessed.

The case was closed, all but the actual conducting of it before the courts, but Voibo never appeared.

Some one — and who, was ever a mystery — got a small, sharp knife to Voibo, the tailor, and one night, without a cry or a sound to betray him, he cut his throat. The guards found him stiff and cold.

As a one time murder this one stands almost alone. There is no way by which one can judge this case.

Voibo lost all his assurance and his astounding nerve the instant that he saw the blood of Bodasse under his old floor. After that he was a brooding, silent figure, refusing to eat, seldom sleeping, a man ridden with fears and horrors, and hardly able to talk coherently. Every one, including Detective Mace, thought that his devoted wife, as the last service that she could do him, got him the instrument of self-destruction.

But, think of the nerve that he had before that! Think of the lonely task of cutting up the body, of spending hours and hours with the bits of flesh! Think of the solitary hours spent in the room of the victim, imitating his walk, imitating his speech — an ordeal which, imposed as a sort of third degree for a short time by the Paris police — one of their clever last resorts to compel a breakdown — has been known to bring a hardened criminal out weeping and hysterical!

Think of the open life the man seemed to lead, and think of the incessant watchfulness it must have needed in order to time the impersonations of Bodasse in his room so that Voibo, the happily married man and busy tailor, would not be missed!

Voibo seems never to have felt a quiver during his frightful crime or during the time afterward while he knew himself unsuspected, yet there was nothing in his previous life and nothing in his ancestry to suggest that even the smallest crime would be possible to him. Such crimes as these are the ones which completely baffle criminologists and psychologists.