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Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

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Speaker 2: It was his last act. He was a showman to

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Speaker 2: a very large degree. His words for performances, his acts

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Speaker 2: were in some ways performative, and his execution was performed.

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Speaker 2: The trial was a big performance, and there was an

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Speaker 2: egoism to it that Dostoievsky saw and that Dostoevsky was

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Speaker 2: captivated by because he could see that egoism in Russian society.

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Speaker 2: You can still see it today.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor

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Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical

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Speaker 1: true crime podcast tenfold More Wicked, as well as the

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Speaker 1: co host of the new show Buried Bones, both on

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Speaker 1: Exactly Right. I've traveled around the world interviewing people for

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Speaker 1: the show. I've interviewed some people in person and some

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Speaker 1: from my home studio over zoom, and they are all

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Speaker 1: excellent writer. They've had so many great true crime stories,

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Speaker 1: and now we want to tell you those stories with

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Speaker 1: details that have never been published. Tenfold More Wicked presents

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Speaker 1: Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make, good

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Speaker 1: and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories behind

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Speaker 1: the stories. Kevin Birmingham is an author who specializes in

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Speaker 1: penning books about difficult writers, but he's really good at

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Speaker 1: making those writers feel accessible to the reader, and Birmingham's

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Speaker 1: latest book is a great example. He unravels the story

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Speaker 1: of a killer, a writer, and one of the most

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Speaker 1: well known books in literature. So let's start with how

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Speaker 1: you want to be introduced to the spelling of first

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Speaker 1: and last name and what your official title would be.

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Speaker 2: Here Kevin Birmingham spelled like the city br m I

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Speaker 2: n g ajam. You can just call me the author

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Speaker 2: of the Center in the Saint Dostievsky and the Gentleman

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Speaker 2: Murderer who inspired Masterpiece.

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Speaker 1: So you have Dosoevski and James Joyce, which just seems

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Speaker 1: like two of the most complicated novelists on the planet.

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Speaker 1: You obviously like challenging subjects.

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Speaker 2: Writers are supposed to do two things. They're supposed to

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Speaker 2: make complicated things simple, and they're supposed to make simple

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Speaker 2: things complicated. And from the literary side, my job is

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Speaker 2: making complicated things simple and the surprising little details of

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Speaker 2: the story about showing us how these things that we

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Speaker 2: easily overlook end up becoming complicated, so I sort of

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Speaker 2: take a delight in doing that. It's great to see

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Speaker 2: how people might have read Dostoevsky or Joyce years or

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Speaker 2: decades ago and they forgot about him, and then they're

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Speaker 2: rediscovering him, partly because of how I talk about their

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Speaker 2: novels and we create them and pull out a portion

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Speaker 2: of their lives. And for me, it's storytelling, and it's

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Speaker 2: literary history done through storytelling, and there is a way

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Speaker 2: to look at history as told through a handful of

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Speaker 2: great books.

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Speaker 1: I think that was very eloquent. Your point is taking

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Speaker 1: complicated things and distilling them down to something that the

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Speaker 1: average reader is going to want to read. And this

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Speaker 1: comes to out up telling a compelling story. Where does

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Speaker 1: it make sense for you to start with this story?

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Speaker 2: I think chronologically it begins with the crime, since it

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Speaker 2: happens in eighteen thirty four in Paris. Dostoevsky discovers the

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Speaker 2: story in the eighteen sixties because he reads about it,

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Speaker 2: because the story was famous. It was all over the

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Speaker 2: French press, and he was looking for material for a

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Speaker 2: magazine that he was starting with his brother, and when

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Speaker 2: he came across the story, he wanted to translate it

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Speaker 2: for that magazine. The story kept bouncing around Dostoevsky's head

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Speaker 2: for a few years until he started to write Crime

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Speaker 2: and Punishment. Dostoevsky's own interest in true crime, which came

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Speaker 2: from the fact that he was imprisoned in Siberia for

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Speaker 2: about a decade and so he was arrested, he thought

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Speaker 2: that he was going to be executed. So in a

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Speaker 2: way he was on one side of the murder equation.

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Speaker 2: And when he went to Siberia, he was surrounded by

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Speaker 2: murderers and was captivated by their stories and kept trying

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Speaker 2: to draw out their stories and was listening to them

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Speaker 2: talk about their crimes, many of whom spoke to him

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Speaker 2: quite candidly out what they did and why they did it.

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Speaker 1: Tell me about the criminal in this famous case, who

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Speaker 1: was Pierre Francois Lasonnaire.

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Speaker 2: So Lasonnaire came from a bourgeois background, He was well educated.

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Speaker 2: He came from a wealthy family, but unfortunately the family

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Speaker 2: became bankrupt before he was able to inherit anything. So

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Speaker 2: he immediately felt as if the world was an unjust world,

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Speaker 2: that he was deserving of something, deserving of riches, but

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Speaker 2: was never able to take control of these riches. He

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Speaker 2: intended to go to law school, but didn't go to

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Speaker 2: law school, partly because his father couldn't afford it. And

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Speaker 2: this incredible resentment of someone who felt as if society

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Speaker 2: owed him something but didn't give it to him was

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Speaker 2: festering in him for a long time. He was a

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Speaker 2: petty criminal for years. What kind of crimes we're talking about,

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Speaker 2: small counterfeits, petty theft, things like that. But as time

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Speaker 2: went on, his plans got more and more ambitious, and

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Speaker 2: he ultimately devised a plan that robbing banks, but it

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Speaker 2: was a roundabout way of robbing the banks. Instead of

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Speaker 2: storming into a bank and trying to take money from

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Speaker 2: the vaults, the plan was to lure a collection clerk.

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Speaker 1: What did a collection clerk do? In Paris?

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Speaker 2: These were young men usually who just had satules, and

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Speaker 2: inside the sachels they had banknotes and often franks cash,

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Speaker 2: and were usually collecting on banknotes that people owe. These

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Speaker 2: are effectively private checks that were only cacheable at specific banks,

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Speaker 2: and if you had an important client, instead of the

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Speaker 2: client going to the bank, the bank would effectively come

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Speaker 2: to you. He wanted to lure a collecting clerk up

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Speaker 2: to an apartment and then kill the collecting clerk and

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Speaker 2: then take whatever was in his sachel. The challenge of

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Speaker 2: this was that it required a certain amount of money

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Speaker 2: in order to create a decoy apartment, because he didn't

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Speaker 2: really have one in Paris, and then you had to

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Speaker 2: furnish it, and it had to look like the furnishings

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Speaker 2: of a somewhat wealthy individual, someone who had tens or

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Speaker 2: maybe hundreds of thousands of francs in dealings with the bank.

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Speaker 2: So the first step for this large scheme was for

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Speaker 2: him to rob someone he knew, someone who was a

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Speaker 2: former prisonmate of his. Lasionnaire was in prison a couple

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Speaker 2: of times for petty crimes before eighteen thirty four, and

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Speaker 2: he'd heard a rumor that a former prisonmate of his

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Speaker 2: had ten thousand francs in cash in his apartment. He

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Speaker 2: recruited a friend, another former prisonmate. His last name is Avriel,

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Speaker 2: and they went into this shabby apartment. It was in

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Speaker 2: a small alleyway in Paris. The stairwell was muddy and

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Speaker 2: there was a greasy rope for a handrail, and you

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Speaker 2: got to the top of the stairs and inside the

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Speaker 2: apartment was the former prison mate. His name was Chardon,

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Speaker 2: and Chardon's mother, who was ill, a widowed mother. She

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Speaker 2: was sixty six years old. Avriel started strangling Chardon. Wanted

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Speaker 2: to kill him by strangling him, and Lasionnaire pulled out

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Speaker 2: a three sided file. It's a file that you would

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Speaker 2: use to shop and saws or something like that, something

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Speaker 2: that can get in between the teeth. Avriel showed him

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Speaker 2: how to sharpen a file because he was a machinist

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Speaker 2: in prison himself. He was working on machinery in France

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Speaker 2: at the time. One of the ways that you were

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Speaker 2: rehabilitated as a prisoner was to work was to have

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Speaker 2: some sort of employment, and Avriel's employment was to polish machinery,

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Speaker 2: so he was working with these three sided files all

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Speaker 2: the time. What you do is you sharpen down a

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Speaker 2: three sided file at the tip and then at the

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Speaker 2: other end you fix a large piece of cork on

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Speaker 2: it to make a handle and you can use that

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Speaker 2: as a knife. So Lasonnaire was armed with this three

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Speaker 2: sided file, began stabbing Hudon and then started to go

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Speaker 2: into the widow's room where the money supposedly was. Chardon

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Speaker 2: was a big man and he was not easy to strangle,

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Speaker 2: and Avrielle was still struggling with Hudaun for a while

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Speaker 2: even on the ground. They noticed that there was an

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Speaker 2: axe hanging in the doorway, and avriel took the axe

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Speaker 2: and axed Chardon's head, split his head apart, and killed

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Speaker 2: him immediately. Lasonnaire was still armed with his three sided file,

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Speaker 2: saw the old woman in bed because she was ill

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Speaker 2: at the time, and started stabbing her face and inexplicably

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Speaker 2: covered her face with pillows and blankets. And I partly

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Speaker 2: say inexplicably because it turned out that she wasn't quite dead.

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Speaker 1: Stabbing her in the face didn't kill her.

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Speaker 2: Yes, When the police discovered the bodies a day later,

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Speaker 2: they noticed that the torso was still slightly warm, so

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Speaker 2: she was surviving through the night. And there was a

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Speaker 2: neighbor had heard groans in the middle of the night

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Speaker 2: and assumed that the groans were coming from a baker

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Speaker 2: who was up before dawn eating bread or something like that,

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Speaker 2: so her face was covered. She ends up dying. They both,

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Speaker 2: of course ended up dying very soon. And they're rifling

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Speaker 2: through the apartment looking for money, and there just is

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Speaker 2: not nearly as much money as as they thought there was.

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Speaker 1: So now they've killed two people for no good reason.

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Speaker 2: Right, so they come away with a small amount of

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Speaker 2: money and just leave. He eventually had another accomplice with

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Speaker 2: whom he was setting up the bank robbery scheme. He

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Speaker 2: had tried multiple times to do it, and each time

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Speaker 2: something went wrong, either the collection clerk wouldn't show up,

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Speaker 2: or the collection clerk would show up, but then the

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Speaker 2: doorman of the building would also come because something seemed

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Speaker 2: suspicious about two young men who didn't seem to have

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Speaker 2: much money dealing with a bank in this way.

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Speaker 1: They've rented an apartment, they've invited somebody to come up

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Speaker 1: a collections agent, hoping that he'll bring the money. Now,

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Speaker 1: let me ask you, let's go back real quick. Did

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Speaker 1: they not treat this like a Brinks person would these days?

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Speaker 1: I mean, it just seems like they wouldn't walk around

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Speaker 1: Paris in the early eighteen hundreds with pockets full of

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Speaker 1: private checks. Is that typical? Was that normal?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: It was not very easy to transfer large amounts of

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Speaker 2: money because the financial mechanisms for doing that were somewhat

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Speaker 2: primitive compared to today. So yeah, it's true that these

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Speaker 2: collection clerks were not generally armed, though it's also true

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Speaker 2: that most of the bills that they would have in

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Speaker 2: their satchels would be made out to specific people, so

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Speaker 2: they wouldn't be cacheable to a normal person who doesn't

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Speaker 2: have fake identification. However, the clerk that ended up going

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Speaker 2: to the apartment that Lasonnire rented happened to have ninety

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Speaker 2: one thousand francs in his satchel, which was quite a

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Speaker 2: lot of money. And part of the reason for that,

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Speaker 2: potentially is that they timed it so that it was

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Speaker 2: on December thirty first New Year's Eve of eighteen thirty four,

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Speaker 2: and it was towards the end of the day, and

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Speaker 2: the idea would be that there would be a lot

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Speaker 2: of transactions happening just before the end of the year,

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Speaker 2: so that they could take advantage of a satchel that

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Speaker 2: would be as full as possible.

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Speaker 1: That's so smart. So what happened when the clerk showed up.

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Speaker 2: It was bizarre from the beginning when the collection clerk

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Speaker 2: walked up the steps to this apartment that was rented

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Speaker 2: by Lasonnaire and his accomplice, because when he got to

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Speaker 2: the front door, the name of the person that the

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Speaker 2: clerk was looking for was squawled in chalk on the door.

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Speaker 2: The name was Moosier, and it just didn't make sense

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Speaker 2: that you would have someone's name squalled chalk on the door.

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Speaker 2: He knocked on the door. Lasonnaire's accomplice, who was a

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Speaker 2: large man, opened the door, and immediately something was wrong.

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Speaker 2: The room was somewhat dark, and it was spare. There

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Speaker 2: was not much furniture. There was a large desk, there

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Speaker 2: was a quill, there was ink, there was paper, and

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Speaker 2: there were two bushels of hay and a wicker basket.

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Speaker 2: And it didn't make much sense to him, but he

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Speaker 2: was beckoned into the room and the door closed behind him,

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Speaker 2: and Lascenaire lunged at the collection clerk with his three

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Speaker 2: sided file and stabbed him at the top of his lung,

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Speaker 2: sort of by his shoulder, so that the blade actually

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Speaker 2: went in and punctured his lung, and his accomplice tried

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Speaker 2: to strangle him from behind, but the clerk was able

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Speaker 2: to wrestle himself free and started screaming, and the neighbors

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Speaker 2: were suddenly hearing that, and everyone panicked, and the collection

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Speaker 2: clerk fled and ran down the steps and he was gone.

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Speaker 2: So it was another failed attempt. So these two crimes,

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Speaker 2: the attempted murder and the double murder, took place about

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Speaker 2: two weeks apart. They're both in December of eighteen thirty four.

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Speaker 1: So do the police connect these cases immediately?

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Speaker 2: Well, so, no one really thought of them as being

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Speaker 2: related until well, eventually one of Lasonniere's accomplices wound up

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Speaker 2: in prison and told the police basically, I can give

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Speaker 2: you information about the murder of Chardona and his widowed

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Speaker 2: mother in exchange for leniency. And when the police got

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Speaker 2: that information, they realized that these two crimes were linked.

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Speaker 2: Now we should say that the murders of Chardon. Chardon's

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Speaker 2: an ex convict, he was homosexual, he was a con man.

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Speaker 2: So the police quite frankly, didn't care very much about

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Speaker 2: his murder and they weren't trying very hard to solve it.

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Speaker 1: What about his mother though.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, widowed mother in her sixties. I shouldn't say they

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Speaker 2: weren't interested in the case at all, But the interest

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Speaker 2: they had really was in the bank robbery schemes, a

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Speaker 2: crime taking place against the bank, and it was one

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Speaker 2: of the major banks at the time. There were just

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Speaker 2: a handful of large family banks that were effectively propping

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Speaker 2: up all the major institutions of France at the time,

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Speaker 2: and the Malet Bank was one of them. So most

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Speaker 2: of the energy that was motivating the police at the

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Speaker 2: time time was about this bank robbery scheme. So it

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Speaker 2: just happens that in the investigation of this bank robbery scheme,

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Speaker 2: someone comes forward to confess who was responsible for the

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Speaker 2: chard owns.

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Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about Paris in the eighteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: lots of crime, not very much crime, political turmoil kind

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Speaker 1: of place us this time in history.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So Paris in the eighteen thirties was a difficult

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Speaker 2: place for many people to live. Poverty was somewhat rampant.

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Speaker 2: It wouldn't be too long before revolutions would sweep through

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Speaker 2: not only Paris and France in general, but across Europe

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Speaker 2: in eighteen forty eight, and these revolutions in eighteen forty

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Speaker 2: eight partly stemmed from the poverty that was rampant throughout Europe.

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Speaker 2: This is just as the industrial era was really getting

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Speaker 2: going and large numbers of people are moving into the

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Speaker 2: cities to work in factories and are working in pretty

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Speaker 2: adverse conditions. Criminology is also getting started at the time,

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Speaker 2: and people are starting to think more scientifically about what

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Speaker 2: made a criminal a criminal, and so people started to

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Speaker 2: speak of criminal classes as if there were a certain

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Speaker 2: quote unquote breed of person. Not only that, there were

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Speaker 2: theories circulating at the time about the physiology of criminals

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Speaker 2: that you could look at the skull of a criminal.

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Speaker 1: Right, this is phrenology, good old phrenology.

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Speaker 2: Right, So you can examine the skull of someone and

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Speaker 2: tell if they are likely to steal, or if they

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Speaker 2: are impetuous or have flashes of anger, or if they

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Speaker 2: are remorseless. And so when Losonnaire's trial came about, one

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Speaker 2: of the things that really captivated people was that he

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Speaker 2: wasn't like what people expected a murderer to be. You

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Speaker 2: were supposed to be uneducated, you were supposed to.

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Speaker 1: Be poor, you were supposed to be desperate.

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Speaker 2: Right, And here was a man who was pretty well educated.

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Speaker 2: He was a poet, he published, he wanted to be

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Speaker 2: a writer. He came from a good family, even if

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Speaker 2: that family went bankrupt. He was very well dressed. He

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Speaker 2: wore a blue frock coat. It wasn't just that Lasonaire

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Speaker 2: was educated, It was also that he was affiliated with

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Speaker 2: what were considered to be revolutionary, radical ways of thinking,

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Speaker 2: anti monarchical ways of thinking. And so while he was

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Speaker 2: waiting for the collection clerk to come to his apartment,

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Speaker 2: neighbors noticed that he was sitting outside of that apartment

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Speaker 2: reading from Rousseau's Social Contract. And at the time in France,

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Speaker 2: Rousseau was associated with the French Revolution. The newspapers when

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Speaker 2: they covered the case and the trial afterwards, all noted

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Speaker 2: and made a big deal out of the fact that

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Speaker 2: he was a fan of Rousseau, and the notion that

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Speaker 2: Lasonnaiere's murder was the coming of a new type of

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Speaker 2: crime was the thing that was disturbing people the most.

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Speaker 2: That here was an example of the next stage in

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Speaker 2: revolutionary violence, right, that it was possible. Everyone accepted that

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Speaker 2: you could potentially kill an unjust king for the benefit

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Speaker 2: of your society. But then the question was, well, if

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Speaker 2: you can kill unjust king, can you kill a banker

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Speaker 2: for an unjust society?

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Speaker 1: Right?

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Speaker 2: And if you can kill a banker, can you kill

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Speaker 2: the banker's clerk? And Lasnaire was positioning himself as someone

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Speaker 2: who was He said, I come to preach the religion

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Speaker 2: of fear to the rich for the religion of love

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Speaker 2: has no power over their hearts.

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Speaker 1: The poor people of France needed to be avenged like

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Speaker 1: kind of like a robin Hood.

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Speaker 2: Right, and that that vengeance would partly come in the

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Speaker 2: form of murder, and that that murderer would teach the

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Speaker 2: powerful that they should not be doing the unjust things

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Speaker 2: that they're doing. And this idea, this notion of an

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Speaker 2: ideological murderer, was the thing that captivated Dostoevsky, and the

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Speaker 2: fact that so many people were taken by that idea

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Speaker 2: was what horrified Dostoievsky.

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Speaker 1: That's what I think was confusing. I think you've got

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Speaker 1: someone who, it sounds like, is very intelligent. I don't

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Speaker 1: know about the complices. Lasionnaire seems very intelligent, but he

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Speaker 1: is also making some dumb mistakes writing the name on

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Speaker 1: the door and chalk. It also seems a little overthought.

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Speaker 1: It seems like there would be easier ways to rob

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Speaker 1: someone and perhaps even just in a dark alley way

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Speaker 1: one night and then toss him into the saint or something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 1: Does he pick up a paper he reads that someone

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Speaker 1: had witnessed him reading the Social Contract, and then it

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Speaker 1: occurs to him that he can leverage this sphere in

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Speaker 1: society to connect it to his case.

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Speaker 2: Lasonnaire was toying with these ideas for a long time,

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Speaker 2: so he was interested in Rousseau, He was interested in

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Speaker 2: eighteenth century French philosophy. He was critical of the king

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Speaker 2: and of monarchy. But it wasn't a motive for his crime.

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Speaker 2: That's not why he decided he was going to kill Chardon.

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Speaker 2: For example, there seems to have been a personal vendetta

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Speaker 2: against Chardon that that's largely lost to history. They knew

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Speaker 2: each other in prison, they didn't like each other for

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Speaker 2: some reason or another. There is a good chance that

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Speaker 2: Chardon was trying to blackmail Lassonnaire. Chardon was homosexual. Lasonnaire,

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Speaker 2: if you read between the lines, is also homosexual, and

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Speaker 2: it was perfectly legal in Paris at the time to

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Speaker 2: be gay. But there were ways to leverage that information

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Speaker 2: in order to blackmail people. So it's possible that Chardon

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Speaker 2: was trying to blackmail him. He talked very casually about

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Speaker 2: his crimes. He said, you know, I kill a man

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Speaker 2: as I drink a glass of wine. It doesn't really matter.

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Speaker 1: Do you think that's bravado or do you think that

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Speaker 1: he really feels like that.

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Speaker 2: I think it's a little bit of both. He really

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Speaker 2: does seem not to have much of a feeling for

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Speaker 2: the people that surround him. One of the things that

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Speaker 2: made this book even possible in the first place is

353
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Speaker 2: that he sat down to start writing his memoirs as

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Speaker 2: quickly as possible, so he didn't get through his entire life,

355
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Speaker 2: but he was able to write about eighty or ninety pages.

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Speaker 2: And his memoirs talk over and over again not only

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Speaker 2: about the injustice of society, but about how people are

358
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Speaker 2: just awful to one another, that to read history is

359
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Speaker 2: to read an unending ledger of abuses, and at one

360
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Speaker 2: moment he starts talking about how everyone should be a

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Speaker 2: vegetarian because animals never did anything wrong to anyone, and

362
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Speaker 2: at humans kill them without compunction, They kill them to

363
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Speaker 2: eat them, and sometimes they don't even finish the meal, right.

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Speaker 2: That this is sort of how he saw human nature

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Speaker 2: as being not really worth keeping around very much. By contrast,

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Speaker 2: animals were innocent, and to kill an animals seemed to him,

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Speaker 2: at least in his memoirs, seemed to him an inexcusable

368
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Speaker 2: thing to do, and that he would never really want

369
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Speaker 2: to kill an animal. There's no real record that he

370
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Speaker 2: was vegetarian, so maybe he was contradicting himself. But the

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Speaker 2: point that he made, I think was something that he

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Speaker 2: really believed in, which is that humans are killing each

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Speaker 2: other over and over again, and they're incredibly violent to

374
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Speaker 2: one another, and you're on one side of the equation

375
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Speaker 2: or the other. And he decided that he was going

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Speaker 2: to be on the side of the headsman as he

377
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Speaker 2: called them, as opposed to the victims.

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Speaker 1: So he wanted to be a predator, not a victim.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 1: So take me back and let's go from when he

381
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Speaker 1: and his accomplice jumped the clerk in the apartment and

382
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Speaker 1: take me through what happens after that. So they stab

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Speaker 1: them and then we hear the screams.

384
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Speaker 2: Yeah, So the criminals flee the scene shortly after the

385
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Speaker 2: collection clerk runs down this Starewell, they were spotted by

386
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Speaker 2: multiple people. The landlord who rented the apartment to Lasonnaire

387
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Speaker 2: and his accomplice can provide a detailed description of them.

388
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Speaker 2: They disappear. Losceonnaire is on the run immediately and starts

389
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Speaker 2: committing some more petti crimes in order to get by

390
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Speaker 2: because he has no money. The way the police ultimately

391
00:20:30,280 --> 00:20:34,800
Speaker 2: put it together is through a combination of applying pressure

392
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Speaker 2: to criminal associates who are already in prison and by

393
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Speaker 2: going through police ledgers that are in lodging houses. So

394
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Speaker 2: if you owned a or ran a lodging house in

395
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Speaker 2: Paris in the eighteen thirties, you're required by law to

396
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Speaker 2: keep what was called a police book, a ledger of

397
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Speaker 2: everyone who enters the hotel, stays there for the night,

398
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Speaker 2: and when they leave. Inspector Candler, who was in charge

399
00:20:56,400 --> 00:20:59,240
Speaker 2: of the case, had a good idea of probably where

400
00:20:59,280 --> 00:21:02,199
Speaker 2: in the city the criminal types like Lasonnaire would be

401
00:21:02,200 --> 00:21:04,480
Speaker 2: hanging out and where there would be staying the night.

402
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:08,399
Speaker 2: And he had a false name, Mojosier, and he had

403
00:21:08,520 --> 00:21:13,359
Speaker 2: a description, and he went through methodically every record book

404
00:21:13,440 --> 00:21:16,479
Speaker 2: he could find looking for the name until he found it.

405
00:21:16,680 --> 00:21:19,880
Speaker 2: He started to connect the description of this person, because

406
00:21:19,920 --> 00:21:22,920
Speaker 2: Lastnaire had a very distinctive look, with what eventually became

407
00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:26,040
Speaker 2: a whole string of pseudonyms. So he went by Moosier,

408
00:21:26,320 --> 00:21:28,600
Speaker 2: he went by Baton, who was a friend of his.

409
00:21:29,119 --> 00:21:31,760
Speaker 2: He went by the name gay Laud. So there were

410
00:21:32,080 --> 00:21:35,880
Speaker 2: more and more pseudonyms that he was attaching to this

411
00:21:36,040 --> 00:21:39,280
Speaker 2: particular description, and he started to be able to piece

412
00:21:39,280 --> 00:21:55,760
Speaker 2: together who he was staying with. As the picture starts

413
00:21:55,800 --> 00:21:57,840
Speaker 2: to come together a little bit more clearly, and as

414
00:21:57,920 --> 00:22:02,320
Speaker 2: time is going on, one of Lascenaire's accomplices, Frescois, who

415
00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:05,119
Speaker 2: was with him at the attempted murder so it's the

416
00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:07,760
Speaker 2: less serious crime, tells the police, I can give you

417
00:22:07,800 --> 00:22:11,160
Speaker 2: the name of who killed Chardon and his widowed mother,

418
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Speaker 2: and the expectation is that he was doing it in

419
00:22:13,840 --> 00:22:16,400
Speaker 2: order to have a more lenient sentence for some other

420
00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:18,240
Speaker 2: crime that he committed that was not at all related

421
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:23,080
Speaker 2: to Lasonniere. And from there he is able to find

422
00:22:23,080 --> 00:22:26,760
Speaker 2: out other accomplices and eventually is able to track down

423
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Speaker 2: Lasonniere's aunt, and it's through Lasonnaire's aunt that he finally

424
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,399
Speaker 2: learns Lasonniere's real name, Lasonnaire, because he's been going by

425
00:22:34,480 --> 00:22:37,119
Speaker 2: all these different names. And as this guard has let

426
00:22:37,160 --> 00:22:39,120
Speaker 2: down a little bit more as the months go by,

427
00:22:39,600 --> 00:22:45,520
Speaker 2: he begins making counterfeit bills to banks. So he'll claim

428
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:49,480
Speaker 2: to be some person who's owed money from a bank

429
00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:53,680
Speaker 2: in Lyon, but then collect payment from another bank in

430
00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:56,880
Speaker 2: Paris or in Nice or somewhere else, and the way

431
00:22:56,920 --> 00:22:59,600
Speaker 2: that the system worked is that you would offer payment

432
00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:01,680
Speaker 2: if it looks like a legitimate bill. But he was

433
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:04,680
Speaker 2: doing this under the same names that he was offering before.

434
00:23:04,800 --> 00:23:07,439
Speaker 2: So the police were able to match the pseudonyms in

435
00:23:07,520 --> 00:23:11,040
Speaker 2: these counterfeit bills with the pseudonyms that were written down

436
00:23:11,119 --> 00:23:14,000
Speaker 2: in these ledgers immediately during and after the crimes. It

437
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:16,920
Speaker 2: took place in Paris, so it's a very low tech

438
00:23:17,000 --> 00:23:20,080
Speaker 2: way of going about it. It's basically getting descriptions, physical

439
00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:24,359
Speaker 2: descriptions of people, matching those physical descriptions to pseudonyms, matching

440
00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:27,840
Speaker 2: the pseudonyms to documents that were forged, and then figuring

441
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:31,159
Speaker 2: out where the person was who had those forged documents

442
00:23:31,320 --> 00:23:34,159
Speaker 2: last and tracking him down to a hotel that was

443
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:37,159
Speaker 2: close to a bank that had just received one of

444
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:38,320
Speaker 2: those forged documents.

445
00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: And the key here was that what caught the police's

446
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: attention was number one, that this was not a sleazy guy,

447
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,719
Speaker 1: ex criminal who was killed right, This was now a

448
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:52,280
Speaker 1: bank clerk who had money. There was an attempted murder

449
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:55,480
Speaker 1: and a criminal who's made the connection between these two

450
00:23:55,600 --> 00:23:58,840
Speaker 1: murders and this clerk, and now they're saying this could

451
00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:01,199
Speaker 1: be someone who's out of control and could continue to

452
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:05,040
Speaker 1: threaten people in the city. What is keeping lasionniere in Paris?

453
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 1: I mean, why not disappear into the French countryside.

454
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:09,879
Speaker 2: Well, so he did end up going into the French

455
00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:13,480
Speaker 2: countryside when he started going on his final free of

456
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 2: country bills. So he decided to leave and was caught

457
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:20,479
Speaker 2: in the countryside in a small town. But it was

458
00:24:20,640 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 2: tricky for him to move around because his name and

459
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:27,439
Speaker 2: description were being circulated on the highways across France. So

460
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:30,520
Speaker 2: he did feel as if the authorities were closing in.

461
00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 2: And it was true that Kandler in Paris was in

462
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:38,000
Speaker 2: contact with police officers and agents throughout the country, and

463
00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:40,280
Speaker 2: when he was captured it was a huge coup for

464
00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:43,159
Speaker 2: the National Police and the trial took place just a

465
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:45,480
Speaker 2: few months after he was arrested. One of the things

466
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:47,960
Speaker 2: that's remarkable for a modern reader is to see how

467
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:50,639
Speaker 2: quickly the justice system acted at the time. He was

468
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:53,000
Speaker 2: found guilty in November of eighteen thirty five and he

469
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 2: was guillotine just two months later.

470
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:56,680
Speaker 1: Go back to the trial and tell me a little

471
00:24:56,720 --> 00:24:58,320
Speaker 1: bit about the evidence. So, of course we have the

472
00:24:58,359 --> 00:25:01,040
Speaker 1: inspector on the stand who's making all of these connections?

473
00:25:01,359 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: Is Lasionniere denying anything? What is his defense here?

474
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 2: So Lasonnaire realized that his accomplices were ratting him out,

475
00:25:09,560 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 2: and he was incensed. Not only did one of his

476
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:16,639
Speaker 2: accomplices tell the police that he had killed the shard Owns,

477
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 2: but his other accomplice, Avril, who was a part of

478
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:24,439
Speaker 2: the double murder, offered to track down Lasonniere if the

479
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 2: police would take him out of prison and just follow

480
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 2: him around Paris, because he knew all the place of

481
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 2: a Losonnire was. And so this is actually a fairly

482
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 2: common tactic at the time where the police would let

483
00:25:34,960 --> 00:25:37,920
Speaker 2: prisoners out so they could follow them from a distance

484
00:25:38,119 --> 00:25:41,879
Speaker 2: in order to capture a more important criminal. So Avriel

485
00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:45,159
Speaker 2: was going to their local haunts, the places where they

486
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:48,880
Speaker 2: always went, the billiard halls and cafes and bars, and

487
00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 2: Lasonnaire was nowhere to be found. But Candler, the inspector,

488
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 2: basically said, look, both of your accomplices rated you out.

489
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,240
Speaker 2: They don't care at all for you. When Losonnaire heard this,

490
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 2: he basedly spent the trial making sure that Avriel and

491
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 2: Fresoas were also found guilty and that they got the

492
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:09,560
Speaker 2: maximum punishment for it.

493
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 1: Okay, so vindictiveness then.

494
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's right. Revenge. I mean, if there's one

495
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:18,439
Speaker 2: higher purpose, one non material purpose, that Lasegnieur had, it

496
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 2: was revenge. He wanted revenge against society for his being poor,

497
00:26:21,880 --> 00:26:25,400
Speaker 2: and he wanted revenge against Lasonnaire and Francois for ratting

498
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:28,520
Speaker 2: him out. And it was Avriel who would go to

499
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 2: the guillotine with him, so he got what he wanted.

500
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 2: The trial took place over just a couple of days.

501
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:38,320
Speaker 2: All three men took the stand. Lasionnaire very openly and

502
00:26:38,359 --> 00:26:41,199
Speaker 2: casually and candidly talked about all the crimes that he

503
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 2: committed and who helped him, and all the details. At

504
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 2: one point, he even pantomimed the stabbing gesture that he

505
00:26:48,119 --> 00:26:51,639
Speaker 2: made when he was killing the widow. He sometimes corrected

506
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 2: small errors that the prosecution made when they were recounting

507
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 2: their version of events. Wow, he was effectively incriminating himself

508
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 2: more and more. He quite frankly didn't seem to care

509
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 2: not only about the deaths of other people, he didn't

510
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 2: seem to care about his own death. He said that

511
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:10,000
Speaker 2: he had dreamed of being guillotined for decades since he

512
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:12,680
Speaker 2: was a boy. His father when he was a child

513
00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:15,720
Speaker 2: pointed to a guillotine on an execution day because the

514
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:18,120
Speaker 2: execution is republic when he was about ten years old

515
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 2: and said, if you don't mend your ways, you're going

516
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 2: to end up in a guillotine like this. And Lasnaire

517
00:27:22,560 --> 00:27:26,320
Speaker 2: said that the awful machine had this power over him

518
00:27:26,560 --> 00:27:28,159
Speaker 2: since that day on that he thought that he was

519
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 2: faded to be guillotined, and he was thrilled by the

520
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 2: possibility that would happen. He even fantasized about being guillotined

521
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:36,640
Speaker 2: right at the very end of the trial, like why

522
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:38,400
Speaker 2: should we wait for a few more months, Why don't

523
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:40,880
Speaker 2: we just do it right now, like in front of everyone. Wow,

524
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 2: his low estimation of human life did sort of extend

525
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 2: to himself. So I guess there's a fairness in that.

526
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:49,240
Speaker 2: But his accomplice has denied it. They tried to get

527
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:51,440
Speaker 2: out of it, but of course that didn't work.

528
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: So they didn't receive immunity. They just had some privileges.

529
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:55,280
Speaker 1: Is that right?

530
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:58,920
Speaker 2: That's right. So Avriell was executed as well, and frescois

531
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:01,520
Speaker 2: because you know, no one died in the bank robbery

532
00:28:01,560 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 2: attempt did not get executed, but he was in jail.

533
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:06,640
Speaker 2: There were other accomplices and people who had heard about

534
00:28:06,640 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 2: their plans who had come forward to confess, and they

535
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 2: probably did get slightly decreased sentencing because of it. But

536
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 2: it was pretty much an open and shutcase because Lasonnaire

537
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 2: wasn't interested in trying to cover anything up.

538
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:23,120
Speaker 1: Accumulating accomplices for Losonnaire. Doesn't that seem self defeating to you?

539
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 1: To me, it doesn't seem like accomplices work out well

540
00:28:26,040 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: for many criminals.

541
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:29,960
Speaker 2: If you really look at Lasonnaire's modus you know what

542
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:32,600
Speaker 2: you said earlier, I think is right that he had

543
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:35,879
Speaker 2: a very convoluted way of trying to rob people. It

544
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 2: would have been a lot easier to just follow someone

545
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:40,760
Speaker 2: home from a casino and try to rob them, which

546
00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 2: he did try to do once actually, but that failed

547
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 2: as well. It's so easy for crimes to go wrong,

548
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 2: and that's one of the things that Lasonnire didn't quite get.

549
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:51,160
Speaker 2: But what you can also get is that he was

550
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 2: a little bit too timid to do it by himself,

551
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:56,640
Speaker 2: that he really wanted another person to be with him,

552
00:28:56,800 --> 00:29:00,840
Speaker 2: because before those first murders, he wasn't himself a murderer

553
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 2: when he met Avriel the young man, and he was

554
00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 2: really young when they first met, he was only seventeen.

555
00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:07,640
Speaker 2: I think he was about nineteen or twenty when they

556
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 2: committed the crimes. Avriel had killed a prison guard, and

557
00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 2: he killed a prison guard with his sharpened file. So

558
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 2: Lasonnaire in a way looked up to him because he

559
00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 2: already had this killer instinct. And Frescois, his other accomplice,

560
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 2: was a former soldier and he was missing three fingers

561
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 2: from active duty, and he was a large man, and

562
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:29,720
Speaker 2: so he also seemed to have this killer instinct. He

563
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:31,880
Speaker 2: was willing to do anything for money and he didn't care.

564
00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 2: So there is a lot of braggadoccio to Larsonnair, and

565
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:38,000
Speaker 2: it partly covers up the fact that part of him

566
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:40,600
Speaker 2: wasn't quite so sure that he could pull it off

567
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 2: by himself. And he wasn't a very large person. He

568
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 2: was elegant, which also meant that he was very slender.

569
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 2: And again his background was as someone who was planning

570
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 2: to be a lawyer, right and he was a poet.

571
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 2: And to the extent that he was a criminal, he

572
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:55,880
Speaker 2: was just a petty criminal. He was someone who would

573
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:57,720
Speaker 2: try to steal when no one was looking, or he

574
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:00,240
Speaker 2: would try to create counterfeits and things like that. Was

575
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:02,719
Speaker 2: not inherently violent, even though he had a very low

576
00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 2: estimation of human life in general.

577
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: What was his reaction approaching execution day? This is fulfilling

578
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:10,400
Speaker 1: a fantasy of his.

579
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 2: A part of me wants to say that he couldn't wait,

580
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:16,640
Speaker 2: but he was anxious about it. But when he strolled

581
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 2: down to the guillotine, there was an excitement to it.

582
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:22,480
Speaker 2: And the way the guillotine works is that you know,

583
00:30:22,520 --> 00:30:24,840
Speaker 2: your face down and as they put your head in

584
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 2: what they call a lunette, and there's a piece of

585
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:29,960
Speaker 2: wood that has a semicircle, and your neck goes in

586
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:33,200
Speaker 2: that semicircle, and then another piece of wood sandwiches on

587
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 2: top of that, so that your neck is in the

588
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:37,080
Speaker 2: middle of that small piece of wood, and the guillotine

589
00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:39,880
Speaker 2: goes down. The blade just comes down very swiftly. The

590
00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:42,440
Speaker 2: beauty of the guillotine is how simple the instrument is

591
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 2: and how quickly it happens. But for las Maire's execution,

592
00:30:46,320 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 2: something bizarre happened.

593
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:49,320
Speaker 1: Oh no, the.

594
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:52,720
Speaker 2: Executioner just has to pull like a little tiny tab.

595
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 2: It's not a large k right, it's not a yank

596
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:58,360
Speaker 2: or anything like that. When he sort of flips that

597
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 2: little switch, the blade starts to go down, but something

598
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:05,680
Speaker 2: it gets jammed halfway down, and it's not clear exactly

599
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 2: why that happened. I've heard theories about the possibility that

600
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 2: there's a narrow groove of wood and there's this sort

601
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:13,240
Speaker 2: of notch of the blade, sort of the blades's frame

602
00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 2: that goes down that groove. If it's been raining or

603
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 2: if it's very moist out, the wood expands a little

604
00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:21,719
Speaker 2: bit and contracts the space, and so it's possible that

605
00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:25,040
Speaker 2: it just got wet and it got jammed, whatever the

606
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 2: case may be. The blade jams halfway down, and Lacenaire

607
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:33,959
Speaker 2: realizes what's happening, and his response is to take his

608
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 2: body and contort it. So if you can turn upwards

609
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:41,440
Speaker 2: and look at the blade is about to fall down

610
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 2: on his neck. So they hoist the blade back up,

611
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 2: and then as they execute him, he's looking at the

612
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 2: blade as it comes for him. So it was this

613
00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 2: for him, a moment of triumph that he would go

614
00:31:53,000 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 2: to the guillotine and he wouldn't be afraid, and he

615
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,000
Speaker 2: would walk boldly to it, and he would actually stare

616
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 2: the blade down before it cuts his head off.

617
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: I mean, if France ever had a boogeyman, it had

618
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:06,760
Speaker 1: to have been Lasionnaire. I can't even imagine a more

619
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 1: ghoulish way. Do you enjoy your own execution? It's amazing.

620
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 2: There was an egoism to it that Dostoevsky saw and

621
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:16,520
Speaker 2: that Dostoievsky was captivated by because he could see that

622
00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 2: egoism in Russian society. You can still see it today right,

623
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 2: that people are interested in posing to such a degree

624
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 2: that everything else in the world just seems to fall

625
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 2: away and become less important.

626
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:30,960
Speaker 1: Give me the cliff Notes version of Crime and Punishment

627
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:33,160
Speaker 1: for those of us who haven't potentially read it for

628
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:35,880
Speaker 1: quite a long time. What I remember is a student

629
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 1: who wants to commit the perfect crime. But I know

630
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: there's much more to that.

631
00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Crime and Punishment is the story of Raskolnikov,

632
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,960
Speaker 2: who is a poor student dropout. Really he can't pay

633
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:52,040
Speaker 2: his student fees, and he's very thoughtful, he's intelligent, he

634
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 2: is sympathetic, he empathizes for poor people, and he hates

635
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 2: his conditions. He hates the fact that he has nowhere

636
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:02,160
Speaker 2: to go. He hates the fact that he had to

637
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:04,760
Speaker 2: drop out of the university, he hates the fact that

638
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 2: he lives in squalid conditions, and he's looking for a

639
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 2: way out, a very sudden and quick way out. Because

640
00:33:10,120 --> 00:33:14,360
Speaker 2: he's a thoughtful young man, he reasons his way towards

641
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:17,720
Speaker 2: a drastic action and basically says to himself, well, you

642
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:20,680
Speaker 2: know who are some of the worst people in Russian

643
00:33:20,720 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 2: society today? And his answer to that was pawnbrokers, Because

644
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:28,600
Speaker 2: what pawnbrokers do is they feast upon the misfortune of

645
00:33:28,600 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 2: other people. You have to pawn your last goods to

646
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 2: a person who will charge you exorbitant interest, and you're

647
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:38,240
Speaker 2: going to accept that because you have nothing else left

648
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 2: to do, because this is your last chance to help

649
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 2: feed yourself or future family. Pawnbroking was exploding as a

650
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 2: means of making money in Russian society at the time

651
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 2: for various reasons, and so it was somewhat topical to

652
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:54,640
Speaker 2: have a story of violence perpetrated against the pawnbroker. So

653
00:33:54,760 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 2: Dostovsky thinks of a novel in which this young man

654
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 2: was Skolnikov decide he wants to kill a pawnbroker, take

655
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:05,960
Speaker 2: her money and use that money for benevolent purposes, and

656
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:10,400
Speaker 2: this was effectively a utilitarian way of justifying an act.

657
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 2: Of course, it's bad to kill someone, but what if

658
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 2: you murder someone who's not doing good for society and

659
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 2: then use the money to do something great for one

660
00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:22,600
Speaker 2: hundred people or a thousand people, that the overall happiness

661
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:25,640
Speaker 2: is increased by your act. Soskolnikov arms himself with an axe.

662
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:29,279
Speaker 2: He hides it in his coat. He goes to the

663
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 2: pawnbroker's building. He does kill her as he's rifling through

664
00:34:33,680 --> 00:34:37,480
Speaker 2: her belongings. The pawnbroker's sister happens to walk in as well,

665
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:39,799
Speaker 2: and he's not expecting that. He goes back out into

666
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 2: the room where the sister is looking at the pawnbroker's

667
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:47,040
Speaker 2: body lying in a pool of blood, and she's appalled,

668
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 2: and Raskolnikov has to take his axe and kill the

669
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 2: sister as well. There is not much money to take.

670
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:57,280
Speaker 2: This is similar to Lasegneur's story, and he ends up escaping.

671
00:34:57,600 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 2: The rest of the novel is affect. This all happens

672
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:01,640
Speaker 2: in part one.

673
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 1: For me, crime in punishment was never a mystery. It

674
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 1: was always like a thriller.

675
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:11,480
Speaker 2: All right, we know who the murderer is from part one.

676
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:15,279
Speaker 2: The drama of the novel is trying to figure out

677
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:18,800
Speaker 2: why Raskolnikov has done this, and the way the drama

678
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:24,160
Speaker 2: unfolds is through this inspector who is tasked with figuring

679
00:35:24,160 --> 00:35:27,880
Speaker 2: out who committed this double murder. Now, the inspector doesn't

680
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 2: have any evidence. That's one of the keys to Crime

681
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:33,720
Speaker 2: and Punishment is that he's looking around for physical evidence

682
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:36,480
Speaker 2: and he doesn't have anything. There's not a single shred

683
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:40,320
Speaker 2: of physical evidence. But he also knows, just deep down

684
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 2: as an instinct, that Raskolnikov did it. So his entire

685
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 2: strategy is to try to compel Raskolnikov to confess because

686
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:52,960
Speaker 2: he knows that what he's done bothers him right, that

687
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 2: there's something that's eating away at him, and he keeps

688
00:35:56,640 --> 00:36:01,200
Speaker 2: visiting Raskolnikov talking to him. If you've ever seen the

689
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 2: show Colombo, Colombo is based on the inspector in Crime Punishment,

690
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 2: where he has this sort of shambling character who asks

691
00:36:10,640 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 2: a bust of questions and seems like he doesn't know

692
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:15,279
Speaker 2: what's going on, but actually really does know what's going on,

693
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 2: and he the devils Wriskolnikov and drives him crazy to

694
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:21,640
Speaker 2: the point where he's not sure whether or not the

695
00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 2: police are about to close in and arrest them at

696
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:26,440
Speaker 2: any moment, or if they're miles away from actually finding

697
00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 2: out the truth.

698
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 1: And he doesn't have any remorse.

699
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 2: Right, he doesn't have any remorse for the women that

700
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:35,240
Speaker 2: he's killed, even after he's confessed it. The novel ends

701
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 2: with Wiskolnikov being sent to Siberia the same way that

702
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 2: Dostoyevsky was sent to Siberia, and still not fully coming

703
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 2: to terms with the thing that he's done. And you know,

704
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,920
Speaker 2: he has a Bible underneath his pillow in prison in Siberia,

705
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:52,080
Speaker 2: and the question is whether or not he's actually going

706
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:53,839
Speaker 2: to open that Bible, whether that will be a part

707
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:56,879
Speaker 2: of his regeneration or not. I suppose the point part

708
00:36:56,880 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 2: of the drama, the question is why is it that

709
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:02,720
Speaker 2: Wraskolnikov has done it? Because if it's that utilitarian motive,

710
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 2: it's a short novel because we already know what the

711
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:08,480
Speaker 2: answer is. The truth is that what happens through these

712
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:11,880
Speaker 2: conversations both with the inspector and with a love interest

713
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:14,319
Speaker 2: that Priskolmikov will end up having as the novel goes on,

714
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:18,240
Speaker 2: is that he keeps offering different motives at different points

715
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:20,840
Speaker 2: in the novel, and it's like he keeps spinning around

716
00:37:21,040 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 2: looking for a good reason for why he did it,

717
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:27,120
Speaker 2: and all of them fall flat. They're all somewhat false,

718
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 2: and Sonya, his love interest, knows it, and finally, towards

719
00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:33,399
Speaker 2: the end of the novel gets him to confess that,

720
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:35,360
Speaker 2: you know, I did it just to do it. I

721
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:38,400
Speaker 2: did it just to take everything by the tail and

722
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:40,799
Speaker 2: whisk it off to the devil, as he says to her. Wow,

723
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 2: there's a perverse thrill in destruction, including self destruction, and

724
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:49,719
Speaker 2: that's very Dostoevski And that's one of the Dosoevsky's very

725
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:54,440
Speaker 2: large themes is that we aren't rational creatures. We aren't

726
00:37:54,680 --> 00:37:58,279
Speaker 2: people who use our reason and are common sense to

727
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 2: work our way towards a happiness, which is the way

728
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 2: people understood human psychology at the time. There's a perverse

729
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 2: desire to wipe everything away, to destroy things, to destroy

730
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:12,000
Speaker 2: the things that you have, to destroy the people around you.

731
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:15,000
Speaker 2: Usually we're very good at trying to cover up these

732
00:38:15,040 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 2: perverse destructive and self destructive impulses. What Dostoevsky knew is

733
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 2: that there was a pleasure not only in creating the paradise,

734
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,480
Speaker 2: but there was a pleasure in wiping everything away. That

735
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:27,879
Speaker 2: there was a joy and destruction just for the sake

736
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:30,360
Speaker 2: of destruction. And he saw it in Lasonniere, and he

737
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:32,279
Speaker 2: recreated it in Wisclonikov.

738
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 1: So in Lasonniere he found the ideological murderer, even though

739
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 1: Lasonniir really this was not his motivation. So this is

740
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: a fabricated connection that he's made, Is that right?

741
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:45,680
Speaker 2: So what he found in Lasonniere is a murderer who

742
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:49,040
Speaker 2: claimed to be murdering for ideological reasons, but actually does

743
00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 2: it for no reason whatsoever. Right, And that people are

744
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 2: falsely taken in by this fake motive. That if you

745
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 2: finished Crime and Punishment thinking that Waskolnikov kills for philosophical purposes,

746
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:06,279
Speaker 2: then Raskolnikov has evaded your capture in the novel, he's

747
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 2: fooled you. He really does it for nothing whatsoever. And

748
00:39:09,719 --> 00:39:14,280
Speaker 2: the same was happening with Lsonnaiere. And he sees how

749
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:18,560
Speaker 2: this idea of a romanticized version of a Criminal is

750
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:21,320
Speaker 2: starting to take hold in Western Europe.

751
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:24,759
Speaker 1: Tell me the impact of Crime and Punishment both in

752
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:27,480
Speaker 1: that time period in Russia in the eighteen sixties when

753
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 1: it came out, and now I read it in high school,

754
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 1: and now we have it. It's obviously disseminated around the world.

755
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 2: So Crime and Punishment was a huge success from the

756
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 2: very first installment. It was actually serialized in a magazine

757
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:43,160
Speaker 2: called The Russian Herald in eighteen sixty six. In the

758
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 2: first installment, the murders take place. So readers were reading

759
00:39:48,160 --> 00:39:52,319
Speaker 2: it at the time and were appalled, partly because the

760
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,319
Speaker 2: description of the murder is somewhat graphic, and it was

761
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:59,359
Speaker 2: not really permissible to describe murder in that way at

762
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:02,880
Speaker 2: that time. And so people were reporting about how readers

763
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 2: were getting sick, they were getting physically ill reading the book,

764
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 2: how it was just nightmarish and awful and appalling. What

765
00:40:10,040 --> 00:40:13,360
Speaker 2: Dostievsky wanted is for us to be in the room

766
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 2: and feeling what Skolankov was feeling as he was about

767
00:40:17,360 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 2: to take his axe out and as he was about

768
00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:23,359
Speaker 2: to swing it at the pawnbroker. He wants us to

769
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:26,719
Speaker 2: see the greasy hair that's in a bun her sort

770
00:40:26,719 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 2: of like twiggy Legs and her skinny neck. And his

771
00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:32,760
Speaker 2: last second fear is just before he swings the axe.

772
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:36,879
Speaker 2: He wants us to feel the pounding heart that he's experiencing.

773
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 2: There's fever dreams in crime and punishment. There are hallucinations

774
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:42,920
Speaker 2: in crime and punishment. We're not always sure what's going on.

775
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:45,799
Speaker 2: There's a lot of confusion. All that confusion has to

776
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 2: be told in the moment. It gave future novelists a

777
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:54,880
Speaker 2: path forward for expanding the scope of subject matter for novelists,

778
00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 2: and for showing us how you can seem to get

779
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 2: inside a head without actually adopting their voice.

780
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:04,759
Speaker 1: I just wondered, would he have ever found the right

781
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 1: vehicle to have this impact that you're talking about. I

782
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 1: just can't imagine there's another case that would have triggered

783
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:13,680
Speaker 1: this sort of visceral reaction in someone like him.

784
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 2: Yeah.

785
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:14,279
Speaker 3: Well.

786
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:18,600
Speaker 2: Dosiaevsky was an avid consumer of true crime before true

787
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 2: crime was called true crime. By the time true crime

788
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 2: was covered in Russian papers in the eighteen fifties and sixties,

789
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:29,240
Speaker 2: he was eagerly reading reports about crimes that were happening

790
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 2: when he was in Siberia. He was sleeping with over

791
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 2: two hundred criminals, many of whom were murderers, and he

792
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:40,400
Speaker 2: was fascinated by their stories and was trying to understand

793
00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:43,880
Speaker 2: what made a murderer do what they did, and he

794
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:45,839
Speaker 2: talked to as many people as you could. But one

795
00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 2: of the things he noticed the commonality of it was

796
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:51,240
Speaker 2: that there was an exhilaration to it, that they felt

797
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:54,360
Speaker 2: a sense of relief. And one of the metaphors he

798
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:56,759
Speaker 2: has for it is just like leaping off of a cliff.

799
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:58,920
Speaker 2: You know that the end is going to be awful,

800
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:02,680
Speaker 2: but there's this moment of exhilaration and a freedom of

801
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:05,719
Speaker 2: falling just as gravity starts to take hold. I think

802
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:07,839
Speaker 2: in order to write about one murder, you have to

803
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:12,880
Speaker 2: understand about fifty or sixty murders. And Dostoeski effectively was

804
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:15,720
Speaker 2: becoming a student of violence over the course of several

805
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:19,040
Speaker 2: years while he was in prison, and he was mentally

806
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:22,319
Speaker 2: collecting all of these types of people and trying to

807
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 2: distill down into it some crystal clear image for him

808
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:29,839
Speaker 2: of what would be an important and compelling murderer for

809
00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:32,879
Speaker 2: Russia at the time. And he was able to take

810
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 2: some of the things that he found in his philloconvicts

811
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:39,280
Speaker 2: in Siberia. Some of those attitudes, some of those voices,

812
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 2: but a large brunt of it was also taken from Laconnire,

813
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:45,319
Speaker 2: and the fact that he was drawing from Lsonniere was

814
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,359
Speaker 2: what allowed him to take this murder story and make

815
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:50,360
Speaker 2: it something about much more than a single murderer. It

816
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:52,839
Speaker 2: was about the direction in which society should be going.

817
00:42:57,600 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 1: On the next episode of Wicked, words, Doctor Neil Bradbury

818
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:03,440
Speaker 1: on the Mysterious Poisoner.

819
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:08,760
Speaker 3: He went into prison when he was fourteen years old.

820
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 3: He was the youngest person ever sentenced to a hospital

821
00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 3: for the criminally insane. He had got annoyed with some

822
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 3: of the other inmates and had extracted cyanide from plants

823
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:23,840
Speaker 3: and trees that were growing on the grounds of the hospital,

824
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:28,239
Speaker 3: and had killed the other patients with cinide whilst he

825
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:31,520
Speaker 3: himself was in prison for killing other people with thallium.

826
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:46,000
Speaker 1: My new book, All That Is Wicked is available now,

827
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 1: including the audiobook. All That Is Wicked is based on

828
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:51,719
Speaker 1: our first season of tenfold War Wicked. You might think

829
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 1: you know the whole story of killer Edward Ruloff's crimes,

830
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: but there's so much more. My book American Sherlock is

831
00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:00,520
Speaker 1: also available. This has been an exact if we write

832
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Speaker 1: tenfold more media production. The producer is Alexismirosi. Our mixer

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00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 1: is Ryo Baum. Curtis Heath is our composer. Nick Toga

834
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Speaker 1: did the artwork. Ilsa Brink designed the website. The executive

835
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:17,400
Speaker 1: producers are Georgia Hartstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow

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837
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838
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Speaker 1: of a historical crime that could use some attention, especially

839
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Speaker 1: if it happened in your family, email us at info

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Speaker 1: at tenfoldmoar wicked dot com. We'll also take your suggestions

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Speaker 1: for true crime authors for Wicked Words