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THE STORY OF A HYPNOTIC CRIME
The sensation caused by the trial of Michel Eyraud and Gabrielle Bompard can the more easily be ascribed to the personality of the chief actor in the tragedy rather than to the crime itself. Eyraud was a man of some education, with a brutal face and an inordinate vanity inspired by his successes with women whose social status was but slightly superior to his own. But all Paris loves a lover, and so when the arm of justice had reached out and placed this lowest of criminals safely in the dock the women of Paris flocked to hear the evidence which eventually condemned him to the guillotine. It was the same form of morbid adoration which has inspired women in this country to send their photographs and bunches of flowers to the kind of criminals who revel in their misdeeds and walk to the gallows with a smile on their lips. Eyraud had been a wholesale wine dealer in Bordeaux. He afterward changed his field of operations to Paris, and when he advertised for a young woman to assist him his office work, Gabrielle Bompard was accepted as the most likely candidate for the position. Perhaps he had the powers of a Svengali, or perhaps he was only a man with that peculiar virtue or lack of it that attracts certain women; but the result was the same — in an absurdly short space of time this young, pretty girl was ready and willing to do all he bade her. According to the evidence of the trial, she decoyed an inoffensive huissier, a M. Gouffé, into her apartments. She sat by his side on a sofa thoughtfully placed in front of some harmless-looking curtains suspended from a securely fastened wooden rod. A few minutes later, according to the statement of Michel Eyraud himself, he pulled on the belt of Mlle. Bompard's wrapper, which had been tied about M. Gouffé's neck and passed over the wooden rod, while the lady tugged at her visitor's legs in order to expedite the choking process. The body of their victim was packed in a trunk and the two criminals started for Lyons with their grewsome burden. From Lyons they went to Marseilles and then back to Paris. As a sidelight on Eyraud's power over the girl an interesting detail was disclosed at the trial to the effect that the murderer had induced the girl to return to the apartment where the murder had been committed for the sole purpose of obtaining an old hat which he had inadvertently left behind. Their crime became the cause célèbre of the day, and after the discovery of the trunk with Gouffé's body in it, they were suspected of being the murderers and fled to America, pursued by the two French detectives Gaillarde and Soudais; but no trace of them could be found, and the French police officers returned to Paris. In the meantime Eyraud abused Gabrielle and she left him in San Francisco for a man named Garanger. Then she came home and denounced Eyraud, expecting to be acquitted, but was sentenced to twenty years. The murderer in the meantime had been recognized quite by chance in Havana by a former employee of the Bordeaux days named Gauthier, and was promptly arrested by the Spanish police. Soudais and Gaillarde again went after him and this time brought him back to Paris. Here early in the winter of 1891, at the Place de la Roquette, "The Strangler of Paris," as he was affectionately called by his admirers, was guillotined, and his last words were a curse on the pretty head of " his former companion, Mlle. Bompard. And now comes the extraordinary sequel to this unsavory crime. Henri Letellier, proprietor of "Le Journal," interested himself on behalf of Gabrielle Bompard and eventually had her pardoned before the expiration of her sentence. He believed the girl's statement, that at the time of the crime she was completely under Eyraud's control and, having been hypnotized by him, had no recollection whatever of the day of the crime or the subsequent events of their trip together when they fled to and traveled throughout America, eluding the pursuit of the two detectives, who followed them all over the country. Letellier succeeded in interesting others in her story of having been hypnotized, and printed a series of articles in his paper entitled "The Memoirs of Gabrielle Bompard," which were written by Jacques Dhur, an editorial writer of "Le Journal."* These memoirs were followed by a series of articles on the possibilities of the relations of hypnotism to crime and to what extent an innocent person might be made to participate in a crime of even the most horrible character.
As Gabrielle declared she had no recollection of the crime, being hypnotized and completely under Eyraud's control, it was argued that if she were put under the same mesmeric influence again and questioned adroitly she could reproduce the tragic events of the afternoon of July 26, 1889, and recall all the horrible details for the edification of the gentlemen interested. In a recent musical comedy produced in this country there was introduced a burlesque on a French duel. The principals were accompanied to the scene of action not only by their seconds and a surgeon, but in addition there was a great procession of friends, newspaper reporters, camera fiends, and a brass band. The same programme, with the exception of the band, was carried out as Mlle. Bompard's hypnotic seance, which took place at a photographic studio in Professor Liegeois of the faculty of Nancy consented to do the mesmerizing of the young woman, who, incidentally, is now thirty-four years of age, very frail of figure and still pretty of face. After a bioscope apparatus had been placed in position and a stenographer prepared to take down the proceedings verbatim, Professor Liegeois seized Gabrielle by the arm and threw her into a hypnotic trance; then he informed her that she was again in the room in the Rue Troncon-Ducoudray and that it was once more July 26, 1889.
Instantly the girl's face assumed an expression of horror, and she put out her hands as if to protect herself from some threatened violence, at the same time crying out, "Coward! Coward! You hurt me!" Then, suddenly weakening, she dragged herself on her knees toward Professor Liegeois. "There, there, I give up," she said. "I will do anything you say."
The actual crime was not reproduced for obvious reasons when the circumstances are recalled; besides, nobody seemed to care for the role of Gouffé. Gabrielle's appearance during this scene and those that followed was frightful and filled the onlookers with a real sensation of horror. Her voice, pitched in a high key, gave apparently genuine evidence of abject terror, and her face was convulsed as she dragged herself about the floor.
"Where is Gouffé?" suddenly asked the Professor. The woman pointed vaguely before her with outstretched arm, which trembled violently, and she whispered: "There! There!" "How is he?" came the question, while Gabrielle seemed to be on the point of bursting into tears. Finally she replied: "He is dead. Eyraud killed him." "What is Eyraud doing now?" The woman turned her head, uttered a scream, and placed her hands before her face, crying out: "No, not that, not that, Eyraud; I can not support that. It is too much." "What is he doing now?" asked Liegeois. "Horrors!" cried the girl. "See the scissors! Eyraud is cutting the clothes off Gouffé's body!" "How was Gouffé killed?" asked the Professor. Here the scene became tragic in the extreme as Gabrielle, always kneeling, dragged herself toward Liegeois and, with her head raised and an expression of disgust and horror on her face, made with her little hands the motions of killing some one by strangulation.
"Now it is getting dark — where is Eyraud now?" "He's gone, leaving me to pass the night with the corpse. He says he will return to-morrow." "Very well, it is to-morrow. What are you doing now?" "We are leaving for Lyons with the body." She then described the trip to Millery to get rid of the trunk with the body, thence to Marseilles, and then back to Paris. "Now we are in America," said the expert sharply. "You are at San Francisco and about to leave Eyraud for another. Who is he?" "Garanger. He is taking me to Vancouver," was the reply, spoken as demurely as if she had said he taking her for a walk. "Don't you hear that awful noise of rushing water? Do you know what it is?" "Yes, that's Niagara Falls." Gabrielle explained that Garanger was rich and was good to her, but that, always haunted by the fear of Eyraud, and knowing that he was still in America, she determined to come back to Paris to denounce him. Professor Liegeois then told his subject that she would have nothing more to fear and that all those who wished to harm her were dead. He then brought her out of her mesmeric condition, and she seemed none the worse for the experience, although in a sadly disheveled condition. The whole scene was eminently Parisian. The audience came back to itself with delicious shudders and thrills, and murmured "encore." The bioscope pictures were successful, and showed for the first time a real hypnotic murderess in dress rehearsal. It has been claimed by other experimenters that hypnosis can not compel the commission of a crime demanding a complex sequence of mental and physical acts. In other words, a subject could not be ordered to go to a distant place and kill a sleeping man, because the hypnotist would not be able to foretell and control the chain of incidents. The case of Gabrielle Bompard, however, was of a deed done directly under the eye and will of the master-mind, and is as spectacular a sensation for present-day Paris as if she had disposed of Gouffé without assistance. An officer of the Department of Justice, who was present at the seance, was asked: "Does not this exhibition mean that the punishment of the guilty who are at the same time clever will be made vastly more difficult, if hypnosis is to be accepted as removing all responsibility for murder?" "Many accused persons feign insanity," he replied. "The law must employ expert assistance to determine the question of responsibility. I am convinced by the case of Gabrielle Bompard that there is genuine hypnotic irresponsibility in crime. The law must in future call to its aid a new school of expert examiners. Their decision must be accepted, as it is in insanity cases." According to the theories of the faculty at Nancy, hypnotic suggestion made to-day will suffice to cause theatres subject to do any given thing on the morrow or even at any later time indicated. When the story of the crime had been terminated, Professor Liegeois put Mlle. Bompard through some of the familiar tests known to the world of mesmerism, such as passing a hat-pin through the fleshy part of her arm without drawing blood. And now Mlle. Bompard is going to lecture with a bioscope accompaniment illustrating the scene of the crime in all its shocking details. And all this is to be done in the name of science and with the sanction and approbation of Ernest Valle, France's Minister of Justice, and other men well known in journalistic and scientific circles, who were present at the first series of experiments made in the photographic studio. Incidentally, Mlle. Bompard speaks of the crime with the greatest freedom and expresses a great loathing for the memory of Eyraud; she shuddered violently at a photograph of him, the first she had seen in more than fourteen years. She insists, however, that when she gave Gouffé the fatal appointment she had no idea that Eyraud intended to strangle him. She declares that Eyraud killed his victim with his bare hands, which seems to still further establish his right to the title of "The Strangler of Paris." THE END. |
