19360903 - Détective - François Bertrand 01

Sergeant François Bertrand (1823–1878), known as the Vampire of Montparnasse, was a sergeant in the French Army. He was arrested in 1841 for

necrophilia Necrophilia, also known as necrophilism, necrolagnia, necrocoitus, necrochlesis, and thanatophilia, is sexual attraction towards or a sexual act involving Cadaver, corpses. It is classified as a paraphilia by the World Health Organization (WHO) ...

and jailed for one year. In 1856, he moved to Le Havre. In his later life, he worked as clerk, mailman, and lighthouse keeper. He died on 25 February 1878.

Biography

According to his birth certificate, Bertrand was born on 29 October 1823 in

Voisey, Haute-Marne Voisey () is a commune in the Haute-Marne department in north-eastern France. See also *Communes of the Haute-Marne department The following is a list of the 426 communes in the French department of Haute-Marne. The communes cooperate in th ...

. Bertrand began dissecting dead cats and dogs early in life. He stated that his necrophilic impulses began in 1846, and were accompanied by headaches and heart palpitations. He progressed to exhuming the corpses of both women and men from graveyards, whereupon he would eviscerate and dismember them before masturbating. Bertrand would later describe his experience with the corpse of a 16-year-old girl:

I covered it with kisses and pressed it wildly to my heart. All that one could enjoy with a living woman is nothing in comparison with the pleasure I experienced. After I had enjoyed it for about a quarter of an hour, I cut the body up, as usual, and tore out the entrails. Then I buried the cadaver again.

Between summer 1848 and March 1849, a series of bodies were exhumed and found severely mutilated in cemeteries of Paris. On 15 March 1849 Bertrand admitted himself to the

Val-de-Grâce The (' or ') was a military hospital located at in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was closed as a hospital in 2016. History The church of the was built by order of Queen Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII. After the birth of h ...

with gunshot wounds. A gravedigger at

Montparnasse Cemetery Montparnasse Cemetery (french: link=no, Cimetière du Montparnasse) is a cemetery in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, in the city's 14th arrondissement. The cemetery is roughly 47 acres and is the second largest cemetery in Paris. The cemetery ...

overheard the news about Bertrand's injury, and realized that he must be the same person hit by his colleague's

booby trap A booby trap is a device or setup that is intended to kill, harm or surprise a human or another animal. It is triggered by the presence or actions of the victim and sometimes has some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it. The trap m ...

. (A different source states that Bertrand was wounded by a police bullet at the cemetery.) One of Bertrand's surgeons obtained a full confession. Bertrand was arrested and sentenced to one year in jail.

Legacy

Bertrand's case prompted

Joseph Guislain Joseph Guislain (Ghent, 2 February 1797 – Ghent, 1 April 1860) was a Belgian physician and a pioneer in psychiatry. Education Guislain started his medical studies at Ecole de Médicine and he was one of the first students to the University of Gh ...

to coin the term 'necrophilia'. He was also discussed extensively by other early theorists of necrophilia, including Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bertrand, Francois 1823 births 1878 deaths French Army soldiers Necrophiles