November 16, 1869 - Joseph Vacher
Operating across rural southeastern France in the 1890s, Vacher preyed largely on isolated young farm workers and shepherds over a three-year span, making his crimes difficult to connect and his movements hard to track. The uncertainty in the victim count — anywhere from eleven to fifty — reflects both the geographic spread of the killings and the investigative limitations of the era. His eventual capture and trial became a landmark moment in the developing field of forensic psychiatry, as courts grappled seriously with questions of criminal responsibility and feigned insanity.
From Wikipedia
Joseph Vacher (16 November 1869 – 31 December 1898) was a French serial killer, rapist, and necrophile who killed between 11 and 50 people, many of them adolescent farm workers, between 1894 and 1897. He was contemporarily called "le tueur de bergers" ("the killer of shepherds"), but upon his capture became more commonly known as "The French Ripper" or "L'éventreur du Sud-Est" ("The South-East Ripper"), owing to comparisons to the more famous Jack the Ripper murderer of London, England, in 1888. Vacher's scarred face and plain, white, handmade rabbit-fur hat composed his trademark appearance.
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