The Serial Killer Who Lost His Head
The Killer of Little Shepherds
by Douglass Starr
–Reviewed by Ellen O’Connell
In 1894, ten months after his first murder attempt, Joseph Vacher was let out of an asylum in eastern France, an event one newspaper later called “opening the door to the cage of a wild beast.” He had showed signs of rehabilitation and remorse, fooling doctors into thinking his crime was one of passion rather than cold-blooded brutality. In his latest page-turner, The Killer of Little Shepherds, Douglas Starr recounts in gruesome detail the three years Vacher …
