Martin Dumollard was a countryman of about fifty from the district of Montluel, a small town on the road from Lyon to Geneva, when he went on trial at Bourg in January 1862. For six years, from February 1855 to May 1861, a man with a scar or swelling on his upper lip had been approaching young women in domestic service in Lyon, offering them good places with families in the country, leading them out of the city and attacking them. Most of the women escaped. Three did not. When one young servant escaped on the night of May 26, 1861, and reached a farm at Balan, her account led magistrates to Dumollard's house at Dagneux, where they found a store of women's clothing and belongings.
The assize court of the Ain convicted him after a four-day trial, and he was guillotined at Montluel in March 1862. His wife, printed in the trial reports as Marianne Dumollard, was convicted with him and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment with hard labor. The case was followed far beyond France. Charles Dickens's weekly magazine All the Year Round published a long account of it in 1862, written by a contributor who had come across the case while traveling on the Continent in March of that year. It followed the investigation, the trial and the execution in close detail.
Montluel lies about twelve miles from Lyon, at the edge of the plain of the Valbonne. The 1862 account described the district as one with a long reputation for crime, with lonely houses along the roads that led out of the city. Dumollard came from a hamlet called Du Mollard, and his surname was the same as the hamlet's, a common enough pattern in that part of the country. He lived with his wife at Dagneux, close to Montluel.
Neighbors described a man of secretive habits who went out at night and came home in the small hours, and a wife whose manner was stern and unsociable. At the trial, the president of the court put it to him that he came home at unusual hours and used a password, "Hardi," at the door, and that a neighbor would say so. Dumollard answered that he might have done so, but not in the sense the court meant.
Questioned by the president at the opening of the trial, Dumollard said that his father was a Hungarian who had been well-to-do in his own country. His mother, he said, had told him that in 1814 the family went into Italy, to Padua, where his father was taken prisoner by the Austrians, and that they never saw him again. A note printed with the 1862 report added that the father had been tried at Padua over an alleged plot against the Emperor of Austria and put to death.
He had been in trouble with the law before. Asked about earlier convictions, he said there had been only one. The president replied that the court had the record of at least two. He was also asked whether he had ill-treated his wife. He first said never, then allowed that he might sometimes have forgotten himself when she had provoked him.
The pattern that the court later set out began in Lyon. A man presenting himself as someone from the country, or as the agent of an employer with a large house, approached young women who were in service or looking for a place. He offered higher wages than they were used to, with presents at Christmas, and asked them to start at once. He would carry a woman's trunk, and they would travel together out of the city toward Montluel.
In February 1855, a former servant, Marie Baday, left Lyon after such an offer. She had been told she would have a good position nearby and must start at once. Three days later, on February 28, 1855, she was found dead near Montluel. On the same day the same man made the same offer to another servant in Lyon, who asked for time to think.
When he came back on March 4, 1855, she turned him down but introduced him to a friend, another servant, who accepted and left Lyon with him that day. She escaped from him that evening near Montluel and found shelter at a farm. It was the first of a series of escapes.
The account against Dumollard at his trial included a long list of attempts on women who survived. In September 1855, a man matching the same description persuaded another young servant in Lyon to take a post in the country; she escaped from him that evening. On October 31, 1855, a third woman he had approached had a misgiving in time and was saved. In November 1855 a fourth woman survived, but he made off with her trunk, which held her clothes and savings.
These women gave descriptions, and the authorities knew that a man of about fifty with a mark on his upper lip was luring servants out of Lyon. They did not know his name. According to the 1862 account, the police inquiries stopped there for the time being, and nothing more was found that connected the attacks to a particular man for some years.
In November 1858, by the account of the investigation, Dumollard was seen arriving at Montluel with a young woman, whose luggage was never claimed. His wife later told the magistrates that he came home that night with a silver watch and clothing and told her he had killed a young woman. The young woman was not identified.
Some time before May 1861, Dumollard approached Marie Eulalie Bussod, who was looking for a place in Lyon. By his own later account, he offered her a place at 200 francs a year, which she bargained up to 210. About a week later she left Lyon with him for Montluel. She did not come back. Her clothing and a pair of gold earrings were later found to have reached his house.
Her family came to court in Bourg. Her sister, called as the fifty-third witness, identified Marie Eulalie's clothing among the exhibits. A sister of the dead woman also identified Dumollard in the courtroom, weeping and blaming herself, and was carried out fainting. The 1862 account described the effect of their evidence on the court as profound, while both prisoners sat unmoved.
Late in May 1861, a young woman in Lyon was offered a place as a servant at a château near Montluel, at 250 francs a year with presents at Christmas. She accepted and traveled with the man to Montluel that evening. Near Balan he attacked her, and she escaped. At about eleven at night on May 26, 1861, she reached a farm at Balan and asked for help. The farmer took her in, and she was brought to the gendarmerie brigade at Montluel, where she made a statement.
Her description of the man matched what the authorities had heard from the women who escaped in 1855. Magistrates questioned Dumollard about where he had been on the day and night of May 26. His answers were evasive, and some of the objects in his house looked suspicious. He was taken into custody and brought to Trévoux, where the young woman identified him as the man who had attacked her.
The search of the house at Dagneux turned up a large stock of things of the kind servant women owned: clothes, linen, lace, ribbons, gowns, handkerchiefs and shoes. About 1,250 objects were recovered in all. His wife was also arrested after the search, and she soon showed herself willing to talk.
Beginning on July 31, 1861, after information from the two prisoners, the remains of the unidentified woman of 1858 and of Marie Eulalie Bussod were recovered near Montluel. The magistrates then pressed Dumollard to make a full confession.
What he gave them was a confession that put the killings on two other men. In December 1853, he said, two men posing as farmers had plied him with wine in Lyon and recruited him for what they called the abduction of young women. They promised him forty francs for every woman he brought them and a sum of a hundred thousand francs after twenty years of service. His task was to find young women looking for places, offer them good wages and lead them out of town. The two men, he said, did the rest, and he received parcels of clothing afterward.
He fitted the known deaths into this story, including those of Marie Baday, the unidentified woman of 1858 and Marie Eulalie Bussod. He said he had given his wife a silver watch, clothing and earrings that the two men handed him. The young woman who escaped at Balan, he said, got away because the men failed to appear; he had only meant to frighten her. After the inquiry began, he said, he and his wife got rid of what was left of the belongings of Marie Eulalie Bussod and of the young woman from Balan.
The writer in All the Year Round dismissed the two employers as inventions. They had no real existence, he wrote, and Dumollard had made them up to shift the guilt onto others, comparing him with Rush, the defendant in an earlier case who had done the same. He added that Dumollard had not confessed to all of the women the court believed he had harmed.
The list of crimes set against Dumollard, as printed in 1862, ran to four counts of murder and a long string of attempts. It charged him with the deaths of three unidentified women; with the murder of Marie Baday; with the murder of the unidentified woman of 1858; and with the murder of Marie Eulalie Bussod, whose name was also printed as Bassod. It added attempts at robbery and murder against a series of named women, the young servant from Balan among them, and against three other women who were not identified. His wife was charged with him.
The writer in All the Year Round thought the true number of victims might be twelve, sixteen or eighteen. Among the clothing taken from the house, he noted, were things that seemed to point to other crimes that had not come to light. Those figures were his estimates, not findings of the court.
The trial opened on January 29, 1862, before the assize court of the Ain, sitting at Bourg. It lasted four days. The president was M. Marilbat, of the Imperial Court of Lyon. Dumollard was defended by M. Lardière, and his wife by M. Villeneuve.
Dumollard came into court between four gendarmes, with his wife behind him, and the 1862 account said he carried himself like a popular candidate at an election. A jury was empaneled, two supplementary jurors were drawn by lot, and the indictment was read. Dumollard complained of cold air blowing through the courtroom, and his counsel raised it with the court. Seventy witnesses were listed, and all but one answered to their names.
The president's questioning covered his father, his marriage, his earlier convictions and his night-time habits. On the attack near Balan, Dumollard's account largely matched the young woman's own, with one important difference: he said he had only wanted to frighten her and denied that he had tried to kill her. A man bent on murder, he argued, would not have taken her to a place where she could raise the alarm. Asked why he had led her there at all, he repeated the story of his employers, who he said had warned him that eyes he knew nothing about were watching him. Asked why he had kept so many of the women's belongings, he answered calmly that he had kept them for the sake of their families.
Marianne Dumollard told the court that her husband had twice brought her clothing that he said had belonged to murdered women. She said nothing. She admitted that she knew of his crimes and went on living with him, and the 1862 account described her as completely cowed by his threats. When a neighbor had asked her about her husband's late outings, she had told him they were her husband's own affairs.
At one point a dress from the exhibits was shown to Dumollard, who recognized it, and his wife admitted that she had worn it.
Two sealed, iron-bound chests were brought into court and their contents sorted into heaps in the order of the crimes. The 1862 report listed seventy handkerchiefs, fifty-seven pairs of stockings, twenty-eight scarves, thirty-eight caps, ten corsets and nine gowns, along with other objects.
The sixth witness, the Dumollards' next-door neighbor, told the court that he had seen Dumollard come home at two in the morning carrying a trunk and had heard him mutter "Hardi! hardi!" at the door. He broke down in tears in the witness box. The seventeenth witness, Dr. Montvenoux, gave the medical evidence on the death of Marie Eulalie Bussod; defense counsel objected to the conclusions he drew. The sisters of Marie Eulalie Bussod followed later.
During an adjournment, Dumollard called across the courtroom to the young woman from Balan, telling her that he had saved her and that she ought to thank him. She did not answer. Her sister answered for her, angrily, and a court officer stopped the exchange. When a photographer tried to take her picture in the waiting room, she begged not to be placed beside the prisoner.
The procureur-général summed up the prosecution case and asked for the extreme penalty against both prisoners, describing Dumollard as a habitual assassin. M. Lardière did not dispute the evidence. He spoke instead about the social conditions that he said produced such crimes and argued against the death penalty, asking whether society should take mortal vengeance for a deed in which it shared the responsibility. M. Villeneuve's long address for the wife made a decided impression on the court and the jury, according to the 1862 account.
The president summed up and put twenty-eight separate questions to the jury, which retired at four o'clock on the fourth day. While it deliberated, Dumollard ate and chatted and paid no attention to his wife, who was in tears. After about two and a half hours the jury came back. The foreman had begun to announce the verdict when the president stopped him, because the jurors had not answered the questions on aggravating circumstances. After they reconsidered, the answers came to 67 in the affirmative and 17 in the negative, with the affirmative answers covering all the material charges.
Both prisoners were convicted. A majority of the jury found extenuating circumstances in favor of Marianne Dumollard. After reading the articles of law that applied, the president sentenced Martin Dumollard to death, with the execution to take place at Montluel, and Marianne Dumollard to twenty years' imprisonment with hard labor. For the first time in the trial, the 1862 account said, Dumollard's composure gave way. He went pale, and his eyes moved wildly around the courtroom.
He had slept badly for four nights before the verdict, but on the night after it he slept calmly. The next morning, asked by his advocate how he was, he said he was as a man who expects to die. The advocate urged him to make a good end. The vicar who attended him, the Abbé Beroud, was reported to have judged him beyond reach.
Dumollard appealed to the Court of Cassation, which rejected the appeal on February 27, 1862. Under French practice, the report on any capital case had to go forward with a recommendation on mercy before the sentence was carried out. The report went to the minister and then to the Emperor, who declined to intervene. Orders went to Montluel to carry out the sentence within twenty-four hours, and the executioner from Grenoble was sent to assist his colleague from Lyon.
On Friday, March 7, 1862, the guillotine was moved to Montluel, where lancers were posted to keep order among the crowds. At four in the afternoon Dumollard was told that he would die the next day. He went pale and then returned to his usual indifference. His confessor suggested a reconciliation with his wife and offered to ask for his irons to be removed. Dumollard agreed, and they met. She was in great distress, and he was calm. The priest had lifted the fast-day rule for their last meal together, and Dumollard ate heavily.
He told his wife not to grieve for him, to take care of the small sum of money he would leave her, and not to go back to Dagneux after her release, because her family there would not welcome her. He embraced her for the last time and was taken away.
At half past ten at night he was driven from the prison toward Montluel with his confessor and two gendarmes. He complained of the cold, and one of the gendarmes gave him a blanket. On the road he talked steadily, in close detail, about the places that had come up at his trial. At about half past one in the morning the party passed through Chalamont, where the crowd was so thick that the carriage could barely get through. People shouted and cursed at him, and women pushed up to the carriage to hold lanterns to his face until the Abbé Beroud told them to stop. Thousands of spectators were said to have waited through the night.
The scaffold had been put up overnight in the Place Bourgeat, the largest open space in Montluel, and was ringed by soldiers. At the town hall Dumollard warmed himself by the fire and again refused to confess. He said he was innocent and was being sacrificed for the guilt of others. He remembered M. Carrel, the curé who had prepared him for his first communion. He drank coffee and Madeira, and when he was pressed once more to confess, he again denied responsibility.
He turned down a final chance to confess and was guillotined in the Place Bourgeat.
Dumollard's own version of events, that two men he called his employers did the killing and that he only found the women for them, was not believed. The writer in All the Year Round said flatly that the two men had no real existence, and the jury's answers went against him on all the material charges.
The total number of his victims is not known. The list of crimes set against him also charged him with the deaths of three unidentified women, and the report gives no detail of how those three deaths were established. The writer's estimate of twelve, sixteen or eighteen victims, and his remark that some of the clothing found at Dagneux suggested crimes that had not come to light, were his own judgments and not the court's.
The 1862 account also did not print the jury's answer to each of the twenty-eight questions. It is clear from the report that the jury answered most questions in the affirmative and that those answers covered all the material charges. Which particular attempts were found proved, and which questions drew the seventeen negative answers, the report does not say.
1814: By Dumollard's account at his trial, his family went to Padua, where his father was taken prisoner by the Austrians.
December 1853: The date Dumollard later gave for his recruitment in Lyon by two men he called his employers, men the 1862 report said did not exist.
February 1855: Marie Baday leaves Lyon after an offer of a place in the country.
February 28, 1855: Marie Baday is found dead near Montluel.
March 4, 1855: A young servant leaves Lyon with the same man and escapes near Montluel.
September 1855: Another young servant escapes.
October 31, 1855: A third woman draws back in time.
November 1855: A fourth woman survives; her trunk is stolen.
November or December 1858: A young woman is taken from Lyon to Montluel and killed; she was not identified.
Before May 1861: Marie Eulalie Bussod leaves Lyon with Dumollard and is killed.
May 26, 1861: A young servant escapes an attack and reaches a farm at Balan.
Late May or June 1861: Dumollard is questioned, taken into custody and identified at Trévoux; his house at Dagneux is searched and his wife arrested.
From July 31, 1861: The remains of the unidentified woman of 1858 and of Marie Eulalie Bussod are recovered near Montluel.
January 29, 1862: The trial of Martin and Marianne Dumollard opens before the assize court of the Ain at Bourg.
Fourth day of the trial: Both are convicted; he is sentenced to death, she to twenty years' imprisonment with hard labor.
February 27, 1862: The Court of Cassation rejects his appeal.
March 7, 1862: The guillotine is moved to Montluel, and Dumollard is told he will die the next day.
Early the next morning: Martin Dumollard is guillotined in the Place Bourgeat at Montluel.