Dumollard was born in 1810 near Montluel, east of Lyon, and worked as a labourer. He and his wife Marie approached young women in Lyon, offering a position as a servant at a country house, and he walked them out into the countryside towards it.
Between 1855 and 1861 he attacked at least ten women in this way. Three are established as killed; the number is often given higher, and this roster's "6 +" is one of several figures in circulation. He strangled or beat them, and took their clothes and their bundles home, where his wife washed, altered and sold them. Several women escaped and reported him, and their accounts are the reason the case could be built at all. French reporting called him the Murderer of Maids.
He was arrested on June 3, 1861 after a woman named Marie Pichon got away and led gendarmes back over the route. Clothing belonging to a number of women was found at the house.
He was tried at Bourg-en-Bresse in early 1862, convicted, and guillotined at Montluel on March 8, 1862 before a large crowd. Marie Dumollard was convicted as an accessory and sentenced to twenty years' hard labour.
The stories of cannibalism and blood-drinking attached to him in later popular writing have no basis in the trial record, as this roster's own note says. What the record shows is a couple who killed women for the value of what they were wearing.