It cannot be doubted, from what has gone before, that a great number of so-called lust-murders depend upon a combination of hyperæsthesia and paræsthesia sexualis. As a result of this perverse coloring of the feelings, further acts of bestiality with the body may result,—e.g., cutting it up and wallowing in the intestines. The case of Bichel points to this possibility.
A modern example is that of Menesclou (Annales d’hygiène publique), who was examined by Lasègue, Brouardel, and Motet, declared to be mentally sound, and executed.
Case 17. A four-year-old girl was missing from her parents’ home, April 15, 1880. On April 16th, Menesclou, one of the occupants of the house, was arrested. The forearm of the child was found in his pocket, and the head and entrails, in a half-burned condition, were taken from the stove. Parts of the body were found in the water-closet. The genitals could not be found. M., when asked their whereabouts, became embarrassed. The circumstances, as well as an obscene poem found on his person, left no doubt that he had violated the child and then murdered her. M. expressed no remorse, asserting that his deed was an accident. His intelligence is limited. He presents no anatomical signs of degeneration; is somewhat deaf, and scrofulous.
M., aged 20; convulsions at the age of nine months. Later, he suffered from poor sleep (enuresis nocturna); was nervous, and developed tardily and imperfectly. From the time of puberty he was irritable, showed evil inclinations; was lazy; could not be taught, and in all trades proved, to be of no use. He grew no better even in the House of Correction. He was made a marine, but there, too, he proved useless. When he returned home he stole from his parents, and spent his time in bad company. He did not run after women, but gave himself up passionately to masturbation, and occasionally indulged in sodomy with bitches. His mother suffered with mania menstrualis periodica. An uncle was insane, and another an inebriate. The examination of M.’s brain showed morbid changes of the frontal lobes, of the first and second temporal convolutions, and of a part of the occipital convolutions.
Case 18. Alton, a clerk in England, goes out of town for a walk. He lures a child into a thicket, and returns after a time to his office, where he makes this entry in his note-book: “Killed to-day a young girl; it was fine and hot.” The child was missed, searched for, and found cut into pieces. Many parts, and among them the genitals, could not be found. A. did not show the slightest trace of emotion, and gave no explanation of the motive or circumstances of his horrible deed. He was a psychopathic individual, and occasionally subject to states of depression with tædium vitæ. His father had had one attack of acute mania. A near relative suffered from mania with homicidal impulses. A. was executed.
In such cases it may even happen that appetite for the flesh of the murdered victim arises, and, in consequence of this perverse coloring of the idea, parts of the body may be eaten.
Case 19. Leger, vine-dresser, aged 24. From youth moody, silent, shy of people. He starts out in search of a situation. He wanders about eight days in the forest, there catches a girl twelve years old, violates her, mutilates her genitals, tears out her heart, eats of it, drinks the blood, and buries the remains. Arrested, at first he lied, but finally confessed his crime with cynical cold-bloodedness. He listened to his sentence of death with indifference, and was executed. At the post-mortem examination, Esquirol found morbid adhesions between the cerebral membranes and the brain (Gorget, “Darstellung der Prozesse Leger, Feldtmann,” etc., Darmstadt, 1827).
Case 20. Tirsch, hospital beneficiary of Prag, aged 55, always silent, peculiar, coarse, very irritable, grumbling, revengeful, was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, on account of violating a girl ten years old. He had attracted attention on account of outbursts of anger from insignificant causes, and also on account of tædium vitæ. In 1864, on account of the refusal of an offer of marriage which he made to a widow, he developed a hatred toward women, and on July 8th he went about with the intention of killing one of this hated sex. Vetulam occurentem in silvam allexit, coitum poposcit, renitentem prostravit, jugulum feminæ compressit “furore captus.” Cadaver virga betulæ desecta verberare voluit neque tamen id perfecit, quia conscientia sua hæc fieri vetuit, cultello mammae et genitalia desecta domi cocta proximis diebus cum globis comedit. On September 12th, when he was arrested, the remains of this meal were found. He gave as the motive of this act “inner impulse.” He himself wished to be executed because he had always been persecuted. In confinement there were great emotional irritability and occasional outbursts of fury, preceded by refusal of food, which made isolation, lasting several days, necessary. It was authoritatively established that the most of his earlier excesses were coincident with outbreaks of excitement and fury (Maschka, Prager Vierteljahrsschrift, 1866, i, p. 79).
The Whitechapel murderer, who still eludes the vigilance of the police, probably belongs in this category of psycho-sexual monsters.[[51]] The constant absence of uterus, ovaries, and labia, in the victims (ten) of this modern Bluebeard, allows the presumption that he seeks and finds still further satisfaction in anthropophagy.
In other cases of lust-murder, for physical and mental reasons (vide supra), violation is omitted, and the sadistic crime alone becomes the equivalent of coitus. The prototype of such cases is the following one of Verzeni. The life of his victim hung on the rapid or retarded occurrence of ejaculation. Since this remarkable case presents all the peculiarities which modern science knows concerning the relation of lust to lust-murder with anthropophagy, and especially since it was carefully studied, it receives detailed description here:—