Bosda Gets Ghoulish.
Sergeant Francoise Bertrand was arrested in 1849 for certain crimes he comitted on the grounds of Pere Lachaise and Montparnasse Cemeteries in Paris.
Can anybody provide a book title on the subject?
For those of you that are curious like me, here’s a site. I guess he had a propensity for digging up corpses and eating their flesh.
Yes, but I was looking for a book title.
Using a search on Google Books shows nothing. My historic newspaper database shows nothing.
Either a plot by the illuminati, or he was a third-rate ghoul.
The actual name of the guy was François Bertrand. No “e” at the end of the first name (and a “ç”, not a “c” )
Maybe you’ll be more lucky with the correct spelling. At least, I found a lot of links (in french) with it, while “francoise” turned nothing related.
Apparently, an author called Frédéric Blanchard wrote a biography about Bertrand. But I assume it’s in french. And possibly very old. It seems there’s also a book called “le loup-garou de Paris”, but it’s unclear to me whether it’s a novel or an account. And it’s still in french.
Apparently, the Doctor Richard Von Krafft-Ebing would have studied this case (amongst others), possibly in “Psychopathia sexualis”, published in 1886.
And a quick check on Amazon showed that an english translation of this book, though currently unavailable, was published relatively recently, so you should be able to find it.
I thought I’d make it easier for people and provide a link as to save people a bit of time.
Yes, how exactly did you expect anyone to know what you were talking about Bosda? Reading the OP I thought you were implying that he was a necrophiliac.
According to this excerpt on the Crime Library – 3rd paragraph excerpt:
"One of his cases was that of Sergeant Francois Bertrand, who liked to dissect animals as a child and had violent torture fantasies as he grew older. In 1849, he dug up fresh corpses with his bare hands from the grounds of Pere Lachaise and Montparnasse Cemeteries in Paris in order to have sex with them. Once he saw the corpse come free of the dirt, he went into a frenzy. He’d also disembowel them, hack them with a spade, and leave them strewn about the cemetery. Forensic evidence indicates that he chewed on a few. His youngest was only seven. Although he was caught and convicted on fifteen counts, he served only one year in prison. He claimed that he began to masturbate at the age of three and couldn’t help what he did; it was a compulsion."
Obviously, that’s listed without the ‘e’ like clairobscur said. At the end of the links is information concerning book titles Bosda. Perhaps that’ll help, but I’m not sure, having never used that particular resource before. Good luck finding what you’re looking for.
Reading about him in true crime volumes which I cannot remember, he WAS quite the necrophiliac. They said he once swam across a slushy near-frozen lake to dig up a body to fuck.
That’s the problem.
Was he–
[list=a]
[li]Werewolf[/li][li]Ghoul[/li][li]Full-fledged Cannibal (possibly with living victims, too)[/li][li]Or a Necrophile?[/li][/list]
Too many accounts seem contradictory. I was hoping somebody would know a more objective source.
Oh, most likely a werewolf, don’t you think? Occam’s razor.