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Why Did They Do It?

Why did they do it?

Well, that’s really the question, isn’t it: Why? Why do people commit heinous crimes against their fellow human beings, all the while knowing that the possibilities are quite good that they will be captured, convicted, and in some cases, even executed? Furthermore, what possible motive could exist for those who murder not one victim out of malice, or greed, or inflamed, perverted passion, but for those who murder a continual string of victims, anonymous personages, many of whom they have never before even met?

The term serial killing is a relatively new one: before the term came into existence, the widely-applied designation of such random acts of perverted violence was a “stranger killing”. Such individual who perpetrated these crimes were believed to be transients, bums who wandered into a sleepy town, and caught the unsuspecting victim by surprise. Usually, these victims were dispatched in a quick act of brutal savagery, and then their earthly remains were deposited , unceremoniously, in an abandoned lot, the woods, a country field, or, as in the case of Jack the Ripper, in an alleyway on a major metropolitan area. The psychiatric aspect and rationale behind “stranger killers” eluded police experts; to a great degree, it still does.

It was once believed that such nefarious individuals were the product of genetics, a sort of “throw-back” to an earlier form of man that was alternately cursed or blessed with a more primitive, brutal set of adaptive skills ; in other words, his savagery was something that was bred into him by the fierceness of his conditions, by the need to hunt, survive, to “kill or be killed”. Phrenologists, those discredited quacks of long ago who maintained that the character and intelligence of an individual were, somehow, related to the shape and size of their skull, gave ample (if questionable) evidence concerning what they believed to be the genetic character of homicidal madness, depravity, and perversion. Yet, their notions are seen today as discarded, and outmoded nonsense.

Today, we take the psychiatric angle: abuse, poor parental relations, sexual dysfunction, and other psychological abnormalities are brought into play as the chief culprit behind the deranged actions of fiendish killers. In our more enlightened age, we have replaced demonic possession with schizophrenia, genetics with being born just plain “bad”.

But are we , really, any closer to actually discovering the truth? Perhaps not. For, for every case of a mad killer that’s been spawned by an abusive, horrid childhood, there are myriads of other examples of mad killers that , supposedly, had “model childhoods” ( Ted Bundy, for example).

No, the answer must, we believe , lie in the strange, spiritual composition of every human heart. As writer Jim Goad once observed, in the pages of his horrid, graphic, controversial “murder zine” Answer Me! , “Great souls rarely spring from happy environments”. If this be true, than our measure of greatness must be proportionate to the amount of objective “good” an individual can perform for society; other souls may be “great” as well, but not in the same sense as a Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King.

Some would contend that Osama Bin Laden was a “great soul”, that Adolph Hitler shined like a star in the firmament of a dark, blood-streaked Wagnerian sky, that Jack the Ripper earned every single decade of his long infamy, and would , indeed, qualify as a “great soul”, if not a particularly conspicuous character.

Indeed, there seems to be something rotten at the core of some of us, something that actively seeks our own destruction, to a greater or lesser degree, as well as the destruction of our environment and our fellow beings. The healthy individual subsumes these gross, barbaric, bestial feelings beneath layers of socialization, respecting the aura of “taboo” that makes indulging in murder and vice a step downward, toward the animalistic. The vast majority of men and women, while they may violate the social contract in some small way at some point in their lives, know instinctively that certain barriers can never be crossed without a concomitant loss of that essential something that comprises the make-up of our humanity. Some doors can never be closed; some nightmares last forever.

Not so for the “great souls” of the biographies that make-up the body of this volume. Each, in their turn, were missing that same essential element that keeps the vast majority of their fellow men from engaging in Locke’s “war of all against all”. Some were driven by madness, some by money, and some by sheer mischief; driven over the edge by the “Imp of the Perverse”, they sought destruction as an antidote to a life and a sense of self that seemed forever to be missing the essential ingredient that makes great and useful souls of us all.

The 20th century stands as the most blood-soaked epoch in human existence. From the horrors of the trenches of W.W. 1 , to the nightmares of Nazism, the Holocaust, genocide, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the “Cold War“, Vietnam, assassinations, terrorism, racial riots, lynching, famine, AIDS, crime, and serial killings, we spent the 1900’s awash in a mighty ocean of blood, malevolence, paranoia, and suffering.

At the dawn of the 21st century we find the situation to be much the same; in fact, in some ways, it has simply escalated forward another few steps. War rages in Iraq, Islamic militancy threatens lives worldwide, social upheavals have become as common as the twirling masses of tired propaganda printed on one, many yellowed pages, or filling up bytes of information on the Internet. Everywhere we turn , Jesus’ prophetic words ring: “And there will be wars, and rumors of wars.”

And, as recent media events have shown, we aren’t shut of the serial killer as a social phenomenon just yet. Just recently, the notorious killer known for years only as “BTK” was apprehended by police, who realized in shock that the fellow they had so long been in pursuit of, was little more than a common, humdrum little fellow who went to church, watered his lawn, and looked like everybody’s next door neighbor. Once again, the world had expected a gorgon of monstrosity, a “great soul” of killing, and instead, had found that the individual from their worst nightmares wore the face of suburban placidity.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

This volume attempts to trace the history of murder and mayhem through its celebrity practitioners. The vast majority of individuals included in these pages could clearly be defined as “serial killers”; that is, they have each killed at least three people with a short “cooling-down” period in between murders. Some however, such as Ed Gein, are included not because they can be clearly defined as serial killers (although if he had not been apprehended, certainly Ed Gein would have continued to kill) , but because the sheer gruesomeness and barbarity of their acts sets them apart from the run-of-the-mill murderer whose passion is often directed toward murder-for-profit or out of a single, jealous burst of romantic passion. Although there are several killers profiled within that might qualify as being, at least partially, motivated by profit, by and large all of the histories I have written cover individuals whose names have become synonymous with pointless bloodletting.

The did it for many reasons, some true and some only partly true, but for the most part, the individuals who were deemed worthy of being included did it because they liked it. It’s just that simple.

Even Lizzie Borden, who spent her homicidal passion in one morning of mad mutilation, could not be accused of acting out of any motive besides a deep-seated emotional need to rid herself of the pain inflicted upon her by those she had ceased to love. Having indulged this need, having enjoyed the aftermath, she disappeared into obscurity.

As well as the classic “serial killers”, we also have dealt, in a more general way with two distinct , and especially violent eras of crime: the “Old West” of Jesse James, and the outlaws of the early twenties and thirties, such as Dillinger, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, and “Baby face” Nelson; for, although these robbers and gunslingers were, superficially, motivated by the presumed riches offered them by a life of bank robbing and holdups, each, in their own way, grew to enjoy killing, and of course, were it not for their own impetus toward criminal deviance , would have passed the whole of their lives in peaceful, dull obscurity.

We have left out the notorious bootleggers, Mob hit-men, and other Mafioso of Roaring Twenties fame, simply because there is nothing about them, especially, that suggests that they enjoyed murder. In fact, they seemed to use it, for the most part, as simply a means to an end, and not as the end in and of itself.

In fact, it is often said that the code of the Italian Mafia was that they only killed their own, or, whoever had personally wronged their organization. They, nearly always, left the families of their respective victims alone. Let’s hope this honorable code still survives today.

Our roster includes only deviants, and while many of those deviants may, in fact, have offered one excuse or another for their behavior, or some practical motive, they all shared one common trait: they excelled at being bad people.

This book is the product of much research, and, as such, a number of different sources were used. A bibliographic essay follows the main body of the text, but, beyond that it is unencumbered by footnotes.

Thus we begin our tour of the blood-soaked catacombs beneath the mainstream of conventional history, taking our walk through the gas-lighted streets and dripping alleys into the recesses of minds poorly constructed, of souls suffering sin and seeking salvation in the solace of sex and sadism, derangement and defilement; love and death.

Rome led the way, with their packed coliseums of cheering, jeering countrymen, all glutted to the overflow of their sensory organs on the sights, smells, and sounds of struggle , and death.

Let the games begin!

The Bloody Benders

It was in Kansas, at the close of the Civil War, that history first became acquainted with the quaint doings of the Family Bender, upright German immigrants who ran a clapboard lodge for tired pioneers.

It was a one room house divided by a large canvas sheet. On one side, the family kept their sleeping quarters. On the other side was the guest room, kitchen, and dining table. It was small, but for tired folks traveling the length and breadth of the Kansas prairie, it must have seemed mighty homey.

Old Man Bender (or John Bender) was a cantankerous old devil, married to a woman ten years or more younger than him, and living with the mentally-impaired son of his wife’s former husband, as well as a pulchritudinous daughter who, it was rumored, was having an incestuous relationship with her half-brother.

This being only a small part of her charms, legend has that she was both beautiful and immensely talented, possessing a vast store of knowledge and wit; she was also, reportedly, an accomplished medium, who could call forth spirits, speak in tongues, perform faith healings, and was frequently known to give lectures in the back of small shops concerning the doing and goings of the spirit world.

The typical scenario by which the Bender crime family operated, was to have a weary guest or traveler invited in, fed, made to feel comfortable and at home, while the great oafish son waited behind the canvas curtain , ready with a sledgehammer. The victim would, invariably, be convinced to sit in the “hot-seat”, almost certainly by the so-charming daughter Katie, and then her brother would proceed to bash in the brains of the man as soon as an opportunity to had presented itself.

Then, the body would be dragged back behind the sheet, atop a waiting trap, and then would be dropped into a pit, where the throat would then be slit by Old Man Bender, to assure that death had actually taken place.

A short walk out back after dark, and the bodied could be buried in a stand of trees; unnoticed, and so it would remain, for the next year and a half.

The Benders, by all accounts, were doing very well for themselves; already they had amassed quite a considerable amount of money in stolen possessions, and many of the victims had been carrying considerable amounts of cash, it seemed, right before they had had the misfortune to happen on the Bender’s deadly dwelling.

Eventually, though (as always is the case) their fortune turned for the worst; the Bender’s had the personal misfortune of inviting a certain Dr. William H. York to stay at their humble abode; as might already be guessed, he did not live to see the morning.

He had been traveling en route to his home from Fort Surrat, Kansas, and his brother, a military man, in short order became concerned at the long-delay of his sibling, organized a search party, which eventually found their way to the doorstep of Old Man Bender, and his queer family. Though they tried, with every measure of their being, to stave off his concerns with professions of ignorance, and undeniable charm, he proceeded on his way not entirely convinced of their ignorance as to his missing brother’s whereabouts.

And, at that point at least, so were many of the neighbors of the Benders. Sergeant York, his suspicions aroused by accounts from local people that the benders had, suddenly and mysteriously, left their property, including animals, and disappeared. Returning in haste to the Bender property, Sergeant York began to explore the premises, and did not like what he found.

Upon discovering the killing pit, which had become foul with dried blood, Sergeant York and his posse went out into the orchards behind the former Bender residence, and began to poke in the exposed earth; recent torrential rains had revealed the presence of several freshly-dug spots approximating graves.

After thrusting a metal rod into the moist earth, the mean were not surprised to pull the instruments back and discover them clotted with blood and bits of human gore. It was a short time later that eight bodies were retrieved from the shallow graves; seven full-grown adults, and a baby girl.

Apparently, this child had been killed as an afterthought; it had been tossed into the grave of it’s parent, and buried alive.

The end of the Bender saga is not a happy one; or, perhaps it is, depending on your particular point of view, although this author would like to assume that everyone reading his words, presently, is a perfectly sane, rational, and altogether moral individual. But we digress.

Various lynch mobs went into the surrounding areas, in search of the escaped, murderous family. It was all to no avail; although rumor had it that they had been sighted and lynched in locations as far-removed as Texas and Michigan, these tales all proved to be little-more than fruitless gossip.

The Benders disappeared, literally, without a trace; one wonders, or really assumes, that they found a more suitable environment in which to ply their peculiar family trade.

Peter Stubbe: Werewolf

Peter Stubbe belongs in any thorough examination of the accounts of mediaeval monstrosity; his sordid career was an example of unparalleled perversity, capped by a hideous abomination to his own son that leave little doubt as to the fact that, somewhere within his icy heart, the Devil did, indeed, in some form lurk.

Peter Stubbe had been afflicted, since his earliest days, with the reputation of being a monstrous lad, given to thievery, bestiality, and a sullen, sordid countenance that did not win him many friends. By the time adulthood beckoned him, Stubbe was already a novice practitioner of the “black arts”.

Stubbe was apparently successful in his attempt to conjure up the living Devil, and was able to secure with him a pact in which, for the price of his mortal soul, Stubbe was to be endowed with the power to transform himself into a blood-crazed, ravening wolf. The means for this transformation was provided by a leather belt which would accomplish the metamorphosis as soon as it was donned by the wearer.

Whatever one believes about the objective reality of Stubbes’ magical device, “lycanthropy” (or so the particular mental disorder wherein men believe they possess the capacity to change into wolves is called) is an actual cataloged form of psychosis; albeit, a mercifully rare one. Stubbe was, at the very least, suffering from this particular mental malady, and under its repressive influence enacted horrors sufficient to make a Marquis De Sade wince a little.

His reign of terror stretched a mind-boggling quarter of a century, wherein he indulged in a sickening career of rape, mutilation, defilement, and murder of both his enemies, and complete strangers; men, women, and children, alike.

Certainly one of his most barbaric recorded acts was the murder of his own son, accomplished by brutally ripping the lad apart with his teeth, after which he spilt the skull open, and ate the still-pulsing brain.

His preferred method of dispatching with victims was to lurk in the skin of his totem animal, the wolf, and then pounce upon an unwary traveler that happened by. He was then free to chew through the throat, rip sections from the body to devour, as he slowly worked himself to the pinnacle of his satanic ecstasy.

This was a ritual he was well-accustomed to, having performed scores of similar murders, and having the good fortune to have escaped discovery, and even suspicion for more years than even he probably believed, would have been possible.
A telling anecdote concerning the way in which he operated comes down to us in the story of three victims, two men and a woman, who, while coming home through the forest near Stubbes’ cottage, heard a rustling in the bushes. When one of the men went into the bushes to investigate, Stubbe made short work of him.

After a few moments the second man went in to the dark concealment alongside the road, and likewise, did not return. The woman, at this point growing more and more hysterical, began to run as fast her legs permitted. Alas, it was to no avail.

Stubbe easily overtook her in his “wolf” form , and devoured her body. He battened on this particular victim to such an extent that no remains were ever recovered.

Stubbe likewise had a daughter, Beell Stubbe (all young women readers should feel themselves lucky not to have been burdened with such a grotesque moniker) , who at a young age became her father’s chief source of sexual gratification. Assuming there ever were any offspring, one can well-imagine that they were dispatched in much the same manner as Stubbes’ other victims; in that respect, perhaps, they were luckier than his other prey: for surely death would be preferable to life as the son of Peter Stubbe.

The area around Cologne had frequently worked to apprehend the long-time fiend by means of manhunts and packs of trained dogs, but had hitherto not had any real luck. Finally however , fate did smile upon them; it merely frowned at Stubbe himself, who was busily dispatching yet another in his seemingly-endless succession of victims when the pack of hunting dogs and their eager masters finally discovered the object of their investigation.

It was short work capturing Stubbe and bringing him back to the town of Bedburg to stand before the magistrates, who found themselves befuddled at the motivation behind such a long-running series of atrocities. A short turn for Stubbe on the rack cleared up much of their confusion, as he quickly confessed to his pact with Satan, his use of the magical belt, and his decades-long bloodbath which, finally, was brought to a swift, if agonizing end.

Apart from his daughter Beell, Stubbe possessed another paramour, a luckless harlot by the name of Katherine Trompin, who as much as his daughter, had acted for years as Stubbes’ accomplice. The women were quickly rounded up, pronounced guilty, tortured, and burned alive.

Fro Stubbe, it was decided that more ghastly, and altogether fitting punishment was in order. He was tied to a wheel, over a slow-roasting fire, while long, blazing pincers were employed to strip off pieces of his flesh. These were then tossed to mongrel dogs, and quickly devoured. Lastly, an axe handle was used to fracture his joints. Excruciating.

He was then beheaded, and his head placed upon a pike with a picture of a wolf and, below, the wheel upon which his mortal form had been broken. His remains (sans head) were then burned at the stake, and the ashes tossed in a garbage heap.

As for the magical belt, despite the best efforts of curious searchers, it was never recovered from the woods in which it was dropped by Stubbe moments before he was apprehended. Locals felt that the only explanation was that Satan had come back to reclaim his property.

The Devil, it was believed, was always loath to part with something useful.

Elizabeth Bathory: Blood Countess

It is often said that women represent ‘the fairer sex”. If this be so, then what on earth are we to make of women like Elizabeth Bathory?

A Hungarian countess, possessed of what was considered, at the time, to be “ ravishing beauty”, Elizabeth Bathory held sway over a clutch of terrorized servants who had borne the full-brunt of their mistress’ wrath since her earliest years.

A stern, cruel young woman, Elizabeth meted out justice to the serving class at Castle Csejethe with an iron fist; oftentimes, brutal floggings and severe punishments were not seen as entirely out of the question, including having her servant girls stripped naked with their genitals put to the flame. On one occasion, it is rumored she had a too-noisy serving wench punished by having her mouth sewn shut.

Need it be said that there was never a great abundance of love to share at Castle Csejethe?

At any rate, Elizabeth completed the dark portrait of the mad, gothic noble by also, reputedly, being adept at the practice of the ‘black arts”. She was known to curse her enemies, invoke the Devil and his vicious henchman, and all the while still maintaining her composure and mask of relative piety as a practicing Christian. Psychological compartmentalization was, apparently , her forte’.

So it was with the Crazed Countess until her fortieth birthday, when as she was one day soundly lashing an impudent servant girl, she chanced to splatter a dollop of hot blood on her own hands. When she ran to wash it off, she marveled at the whiteness of the flesh beneath; how it seemed to have resumed a sort of youthful vitality.

Utterly convinced that fortune had smiled upon her, and that she had, indeed, discovered a bloody “Fountain of Youth”, she immediately had the servant girl butchered by a male underling, and then instructed him to drain-off the unfortunate wenches’ steaming blood into a bath, where she commenced to partake in a sanguinary shower, all the while, invoking Arch-Demons, and praying for a return to youthful beauty.

So commenced a ruthless, illicit reign of terror that ended with a presumed total of anywhere from an estimated forty to a mind-boggling six hundred young female bodies; many were tortured, some indeed, made to consume raw strips of their own flesh before being drained of their life blood for the malevolent Mistress and her cruel beauty baths.

The situation, as so often happens, did not last for long, and concern over the fast-disappearing female population brought a contingent of troops to the Castle Csejethe. Upon entering the morbid dwelling, it soon became apparent, at least to the Countess, that she had been caught red-handed (pun not intended), as she was just about to dip her aging figure in the bloody whirlpool of her demented delights. The jig, as they say, was up.

Her brutish, male underlings were beheaded and burned quite quickly, but a perhaps more horrifying, though non-lethal punishment was deemed appropriate for a lady of her station.

Elizabeth Bathory was walled-in alive, in her own boudoir, for the rest of her natural life, having only a small slit in the doorway from which to obtain a tray of food. She was found dead, on the floor, three-and-a-half years later.

It is said that her ghost continued, for many years, to haunt the halls of Castle Csejethe with horrifying screams and mad imprecations.

But, surely, you don’t believe that, do you ?

The Baron of Blood: Gilles De Rais

The history of witchcraft and Satanism know no name greater or more fearful than that of Gilles de Rais, Marshal of France, confidant of Joan of Arc, hero of the Hundred Years’ War, black magician, and killer of infants.

Gilles was considered a valiant hero for much of his life; indeed, it was his honor to be bestowed with the title “Marshal of France” under the lordship of King Charles VII. Gilles was known to be a valiant impeccable soldier, a ruthless strategist, a loyal confidant, and a sadist on the battlefield.

He was a sadist off of it, as well.

Gilles was a great lover and appreciated the arts, as well as many of the finer things in life. He was also a notorious gambler, and incurred debts too vast to be paid in full from the increasingly strained wealth of his estate.

He was known, for instance, for the lavish spectacles of his privately-produced “Mystery Plays” (popular plays which trained in religious instruction) , which featured elaborate and highly-expensive sets, ornate costumes, and monstrous spectacle. These productions alone were conspiring to bankrupt him, and by the time the King put an official hold on his ability to squander any more of his wealth, he was already heavily in debt.

Although Baron De Rais was a devout, self-professed Christian, he was also a man given to dark extremes of desire, and forbidden lust. For years this murderous passion, which had perhaps been fostered on the battlefield, was sated by sweeping cruelty toward prisoners of war. However, soon the hidden, darkest aspect of his psychological dementia became manifest in deeds and doings too horrible for the mind to conceive.

For years, children had been disappearing from Nantes without a trace; some would vanish upon doing their daily chores or errands, still others would go missing from their homes whilst their parents were out in the fields. It had happened with increasing frequency, and always left the same unanswered, lingering question upon the lips of the peasant folk.

Reportedly, Rais was wont to recruit young boys into the ranks of his “musical college”, purportedly for their singing and dramatic talents. Mindful people began to realize that certain boys, once they had accepted the offer of the bestial Baron, were often seen missing after the talented troupe made its next public recital. But of course, tongues wagged, and no one did anything at all.

Rais, of course, cruelly murdered his young charges, and with the help of his underlings secured scores, perhaps hundreds of young boys for the brutal purposes of torture and dismemberment. One of his favorite practices, reportedly, was to hang a young lad by his arms, blindfolded, from the ceiling, and watch him squirm in terror. Then, after a short time, the boy would be loosed, whereupon Rais would act in his role as comforter, and console the terrified child.

The practice was repeated until the victim finally succumbed from exhaustion. Then Rais would masturbate furiously over the dismembered corpse.

Once, or so he confessed, he lined the severed heads of his young subjects in a row, and implored his trusted confederates to vote on which was the loveliest. Then, he would flagrantly kiss the bloodied mouth, reaching a peak of exultation which, apparently, had never been quite afforded him by the butchery of the battlefield.

But it must have added an initial, diabolic fillip of perverse pleasure to his debauched atrocities when he hit upon an active interest in the occult; his first thought in this bizarre, new arena, was that with the help of an astute, and legitimate alchemist, he might indeed turn base metals into gold.

Thus, he could combine both his lust for money and his passion for the satanic in one fell swoop.

He secured the help of an Italian, called Prelati, who was reputed to be most-skilled in his ability to summon the Crown Princes of Hell to do his bidding. Soon, bizarre rituals and strange incantations were being performed in the ghastly Châteaux De Rais.

The sacrificial offerings, at the outset, included mainly an endless succession of butchered birds; mostly chickens and doves. When these bloody hecatombs proved fruitless in summoning the forces of demonic power, Prelati suggested that the reason was, most likely, the minimal appeal the bodies of butchered fowl held for the unsavory spirits. Ever eager to oblige Prelati in this new turn of events, De Rais began his child-killing again in earnest, having only taken a short respite from the activity for the sake of his personal safety.

Even though he began to , once again, heap the bodies of murdered infants across the dripping floor of his ritual chamber, still his hope for demonic power and showers of gold bullions proved an ever-elusive reality. It is reported, however, that the Baron did manage to summon ONE demon, a being calling itself (ironically) “Barron”, but that the fleeting phantasm was frightened off when, in a burst of panic, crossed himself in the manner of any good Catholic. Prelati informed him that , henceforth this was not a mistake to be repeated in the presence of a fire-breathing angel from Hell.

Ironically, it was the “Hand of God”, or perhaps, the subterfuge of His servants, that saved De Rais (and countless more children, no doubt) from sliding any further down the pathway toward Hell’s hot flames.

De Rais, who considered himself the embodiment of Christian piety when he wasn’t torturing and murdering children to call up demons, committed a noxious affront when he reneged on the sale of a particular estate, deciding instead that, as he was so very close to finally securing his pact with Mephistopheles, selling off any more of his properties was , perhaps, bad form. He sent a contingent of soldiers to forcibly retake his lands, and they managed, in short order to accomplish this while brutalizing a priest.

This particular act so offended the duke of Brittany (who, truth be told, was secretly enamored of marshal De Rais’ vast holdings) , that he sought for any pretence that might be used to blackmail or ruin the Baron of Nantes.

He secured permission to search the Baron’s châteaux. It was only a short time before the ritual chamber, and the bodies of fifty murdered youths were discovered.

Baron De Rais confessed to his monstrous crime readily, seeking absolution from the Church, who, through dint of his station, did allow him a final communion. Ironically, Prelati the Wizard managed to escape punishment, and died sixteen years later, after being hung for other crimes.

Condemned to death, De Rais, walked toward the scaffold boldly, imploring that onlookers (including the families of his victims) pray for him.

He was hanged just out of reach of the blazing bonfire that was to consume his body. Because of the special privileges of his royal blood, he was granted the mercy of hanging, rather than being burned alive. His cohorts received no such consideration, and were roasted upon the pyre completely conscious and fully-aware.

Noble ladies retrieved the relatively uncharred body of the fallen hero, and prepared a proper burial for him. Ironically, the place of his execution later became a shrine where pregnant women went to pray for the health of their unborn offspring.

It was remarked that De Rais bore a singularly strange, though handsome visage, in that he sported a deep black beard that shined nearly blue in a certain light, yet the hair on his head was of a Nordic blond. Hence, he was subsequently referred to as “Bluebeard” in local legend.

After many decades, the names of his victims (estimated between one hundred and three hundred), as well as their gender and class, and the other particulars of his deeds, became obscured, and the legend morphed until it told a tale of “Bluebeard” Baron De Rais, who married and murdered six wives, keeping all of the bodies in a locked room. Thus, as the story goes, it remained a secret, until the curiosity of the seventh wife gets the better of her.

During the Revolution of 1789, De Rais’ tomb was ransacked by riotous Jacobins. One wonders if karma was not, somehow, at play in this turn of events.