Stuff You Should KnowEugene Francois Vidocq is without a doubt one of the most interesting figures in modern history. He’s a former criminal turned undercover informant who went on to found the French national police force and the world’s first private detective agency.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you should Know, a little overlooked historical figure edition.
Yes, yeah, boy, god, this guy. Could you could do a ten parter on his life easily.
I mean, it's it's nuts. So we're talking about a man named Eugene Francois Vidocq. He is known as the father of criminology. Yeah, pretty much on the nose. That's a really good title for him. Yeah, he's also an inspiration for plenty of detective first early detective stories. He was at one time as famous as Napoleon in France and in Europe in general. He was in famous, incredibly wealthy, and it was because he dedicated himself as a public servant to the city of Paris to basically wipe out crime as best he could at a time when Paris was more overrun with crime than maybe it ever has been in its history.
Yeah, it was. It was a time where the army was very busy, I guess it is the best way to say it, and like the army took up a lot of the men who might normally be cops, and they were preoccupied more with warring than with just taking care of regular police work. And Vidok stepped up in a big way, and like I said, like I had to stop researching because I was like, we can't do a twelve hour podcast on this guy.
Rightly, no, but you can definitely go down a rabbit hole with him. And one of the reasons why is because depending on the source you consult, he was either a total scumbag, scoundrel or genuinely unjustly slandered. I leaned toward the second one, or closer to the second one. Obviously, no one's perfect, but I do think that the stuff that is really questionable or makes him into a questionable person or character, I think is remnants of his political rivals smearing his name so well that it still is around today.
Here's what I think is that he was, and as you'll see, started off as a scoundrel and a criminal, later changed his tune because I think it was beneficial for him to not be in prison all the time, and I think he tried to do the right thing, but also like a little bit of that that scoundrel lived within him, but he also had people that had it out for him. I think he's a complex guy. I don't think he did a one to eighty and was like and now I am pure. I think he I think he, you know, did what was best for him usually, but also wanted to put criminals behind bars and make a few bucks while he did it.
So I have a counterpoint to that, but I'll bring it up when we get to that part. But we should tell everybody. One of the reasons Vidock is famous if you have heard of him, is because not only was he the father of criminology, he started out as a genuine bona fide criminal who was serving time in prison, would escape prison, and then one day he basically switched sides from an outsider's standpoint and became like the top cop in all of France while he was.
Serving Yeah, a good way to stay out of jail.
For sure. Well let's start. Let's start with his early life, right, because he was unquestionably a troublemaker, a hot head, and just a handful. You could definitely say his parents actually let him get arrested when they stole from him once.
Yeah, I mean you would classify as a juvenile delinquent today, But it wasn't because he was some you know, poor kid from the poor streets who had to steal to survive. His parents did pretty well, they had a successful bakery and how do you pronounce that rs? I think so yeah, A R R A S. And it seemed rather middle class. But like you said, he he stole from his parents. He was. He was a scoundrel. He pick pocketed. He was from very early on seemed like he was a bit of a ladies man and he would you know, this was sort of his early life until he ran away literally to join the circus, right like people actually did that. And he did that for a few months until he didn't like the work. Then he would eventually work for a Punch and Judy street show, which is if you guys are don't know who Punch and Judy were, they were They were puppets.
Right, yes they were. Punch was a wife battering puppet and Judy was the abused wife. They got into hysterical right yeah, really violent fights all the time, but it was puppets and kids thought it was hilarious. And he worked for that show and he had to. I guess he got fired in a way.
I think so. I think as a fifteen year old he said some kind of a tryst with the wife of the guy who was running the thing. Yes, so that's not very specific. It says that they were embracing, so who knows what that means.
Yeah, but it definitely goes to underscore a lot of things about him. He was very much into the ladies. He didn't mind if it was someone else's lady, if you were someone else's lady. And he was willing to put himself in great danger and at great personal risk to satisfy his own wants, needs, desires.
That's a very nice way to say it.
So he moved back home, he went back to ras or Us and his I don't know if we said his dad was a baker and his parents were totally normal, fine parents. But again they basically when he was caught stealing from them when he was thirteen, they said, okay, you're going to jail. When you moved back home after the circus and the Punch and Judy show, he wasn't even sixteen yet, and they said, all right, you're going to join the army whether you like it or not. They shipped him off to the army. Well he was fifteen, that's how bad a kid he was.
Yeah, I think he's drinking, getting fights and womanizing, and you know, he's just one of those kids. They'd probably just say today that he was I don't know, what would you call it hot head? Yeah, teenage hothead. Yeah, he'd like to steal things sometimes.
Right, and embrace other people's wives exactly. So he did serve in the army. Apparently he was in battle a few times because this was a post post French Revolution, and I think he may have been in the army when Napoleon first took power. At the very least, France was on all sorts of advance. Like you said, it had drained them their population of potential police people policemen, and so he fought in a few battles. He definitely saw some action and it was fine. But I think probably the biggest takeaway was that he learned how to fence. He became a very great fencer, and that served him well because he was also known to get into duels with people. And he actually had to desert the army because he was coming up on charges because he challenged a sergeant to a duel. The sergeant refused him, and he smacked the sergeant around, and that is not something you do in any army at any period of time. And so he took off and was now a desert ye from the army. And this is when his actual criminal life really began. Everything else was petty, in temperate, that kind of thing. This is like, Okay, I'm a deserter from the army. I need to support myself somehow. I guess I have to turn to a life of crime.
Yeah, he actually deserted a few times. I don't think he was super popular among his peers there. Sure he had a habit for just sort of not being there all of a sudden when they called roll call. But eventually, when he finally left for good, he joined up with what was called the Rolling Army. You want to do the French there, you're a French guy.
It was the Army Rulan.
Okay, the Army Rulant, which was everything I saw about this was that it was a side army. I think it was a couple of thousand men, and that they they sort of just did what they wanted. They were fake uniforms. They plundered the countryside they gave themselves fake orders, and I'm not exactly sure what real army work they did. I'm sure they did, right.
I don't think so, I think or was it all just.
A thing to like? I think they're under in pillage.
Yes, that's what that's my take. I don't think they were officially sanctioned at all.
Well, no, they weren't officially sanctioned, but I just I figured they were. I thought that the real army might have used them at times.
I don't know, I don't know enough about it. It's possible. I mean, you got a couple thousand people with guns ready to fight. Why not?
Yeah? Well, I know they worked fake uniforms. And he made up a rank for himself and took a alias. He was Lieutenant Rousseau, and eventually even made himself captain. I don't know why I didn't start off as captain as long as he's making things up.
Yeah, he kind of sold himself short there, didn't he.
Well, he became captain eventually, so he ended up.
In Paris eventually after he left the army. Roulant and this is around seventeen ninety five. The French Revolution had been successful. But there's something to understand about it. Like, one of the reasons Paris was so over him with crime was not just that there was a lack of potential candidates for the police. There was also like the threat of revolution and regime change was constant during these decades. It wasn't like the French Revolution happened and it was over.
Yeah, it was a mess.
It was a mess. First Napoleon comes along is like, hey, I'll take over from here. I'm now emperor. He he ran France for a really long time, for a decade or something like that. Then he was deposed and a new king was installed, a new king was installed. After that, that king was just deposed and a new citizen king was put into place. And then around that time finally our our protagonist dies. But like throughout all this time, like there there's a lot of tension and conflict in the country, and because everybody was preoccupied with that stuff, crime was allowed to flourish. It was a really dangerous lawless time. It particularly in Paris, because a lot of people were also coming to Paris looking for opportunity and that kind of thing, and so it was a just to put that in your in your pipe and hold it in your hat for later, because that's that's that's this is the backdrop that he shows up in Paris against.
That's right. So he ends up in Paris during this very tumultuous time. Great time to be a criminal in Paris. Sure, you know very I don't know about easy to get away with stuff, but you know, you could be a pretty successful criminal at the time. And that's what he did. It sort of threw his twenties and into his thirties. He was in and out of prison, kind of off and on because of various schemes. It was never like, I'm not going to say it was victimless, but it was never like violent crimes. It seems like he was like a really good, really good forging documents and things like that, and all of his schemes seemed to be kind of like on the more intelligent side.
Yeah, he was definitely intelligent, yes.
Yeah, So it's not like he was walking up and bonking someone on the head and stealing their purse. He graduated to more elaborate kind of you know, forgeries and things like that.
Yeah, and he also he was a criminal with a heart. He landed in this one prison. Oh what is it called Bagno, I believe.
Oh was that where he the the bread.
Guy was, Yes, So so this is a really good example of that. He Yeah, he was finally caught and sentenced for I think just three months in prison, just three months. But while there he was so moved by a guy who had been given six years for stealing grain to feed his family, who, by the way, the bread guy, right, people are confused. So he was so moved by that and thought that it was so unjust that he'd been given six years. He forged documents that that that he signed as like the head of I think the prison or the police as saying like this man is to be released, his his sentence has been commuted, and the guy made it made made off like he was released. And I think it took a few months for the whole thing to finally be found out. But I think the doc was in jail at the time when they did find out, and they gave him eight years for that for forging papers that released a man who had been given six years for stealing grain.
Yeah, so this time he went to a hard labor prison. Like you said, it was called a I don't know how it's pronounced. I think they started in Italy under a different name, but B A G n O the bag no, the bagno, like if you've ever seen the movie I looked into these, the movie Papion. The island prison they were on that was one, and I think it was just like a very tough It was like the toughest of the tough prisons, hard labor, usually in shackles, very hard to escape from. Yet he did manage to escape even from here, and I think he escaped as a sailor and was caught and put back and then escaped again posing as a nun. So as you will see later, he was, in fact a master of disguise, was very good at it, and if he was able to pass himself off as a nun, clearly pretty good at it.
Yeah, And it's really something that he escaped not just once but twice from a galley prison. Because they were originally before they moved them onto land, they were ships, giant ships with tons of oars sticking out of them, and you would be sentenced to hard labor rowing those oars day in and day out. It was a really rough place to spend eight years, and it would also be a really difficult place to escape from, but he did twice. So he started to get a reputation as someone who no prison could hold in addition to being a master of disguise. And when you start kind of doing stuff like that, your name gets around and you start to become a bit of a legend among not just the criminals, but also like law enforcement as well. So his star is starting to rise. And I think, as we reached this point, Chuck, it's time for message break.
What do you think as we reached this point? I agree?
All right, So where we left off, Vidoc has escaped prison a couple of times. He was a juvenile delinquent. He was a delinquent into his twenties and into his thirties, through his twenties and into his thirties, and then finally ends up back in Paris. He was trying to get pulled into the criminal underworld again because he was well known, and he was kind of in a bad spot because if he said no, he would get blackmailed by these low lifes and threaten to turn him in because he was a fugitive at this point still. So finally he was like, all right, what am I doing with my life, all this on the run stuff, on the lamb in disguise as a nun. This is for the birds. In eighteen oh nine, he said, I'm going to go to the cops and I'm gonna say I would like to turn myself in and make myself well, sort of turn myself in. What he really wanted to do was turn into a police informant and get out of jail. And they said, hey, great idea, but you're gonna do that for at least a little while in jail.
Right, that is, I mean that sounds like, oh that's cool. That was an incredibly dangerous position to put himself in for two straight years.
This still is.
He was an sure he was an informant, a volunteer informant for the police, and he would he would inform on anybody. And so I was saying earlier that I would bring up a counterpoint to the idea that it was just completely self serving from what I saw. Another explanation is that he never actually thought of himself as a criminal. He thought of himself as an outlaw by circumstance, like he had made a lot of bad decisions. He knew that and that had made him run a foul of the law. But he wasn't a criminal, Like, that's not how he wanted to support himself. He didn't have the heart of a criminal, and so this was a way to basically say, I don't want to be a criminal anymore. I don't want to be associated with these people. I want to change sides, and this is how I'm going to try to do it. Or another way to look at it is that he was he was he finally grew up essentially and realized like, okay, this is this is not okay. I need to I need to change things, and I've worked myself into such a deep hole. This is the alternative to just going like, okay, I'm going to become a criminal from now. Those were his choices. That's how deep the Holy Doug was. And the thing is, Chuck, no matter how you interpret whether it was a selfish act, whether it was you know, you know, his destiny, whatever, that shows a remarkable amount of initiative to do that. Like he said, I'm not going to be a criminal. I'm not going to turn a life crime. I'm going to basically put myself in the hands of cops who hate me and see if they will have me as one of their own.
Yeah, I think he probably grew up. I don't know that. I buy that. If he had come from nothing, I could buy that. But he came from a pretty good He wasn't forced into committing crimes to survive.
No, But I think that's why he didn't see himself as a criminal, because he had made choices or whatever. He wasn't a criminal. He just didn't see himself like that from what I saw.
So he made choices to commit crimes, but didn't see himself as a criminal.
Yes, okay, yes, he made choices that were that were criminal, but he wasn't making choices like to do crime. That wasn't as his aim was for crime. He was just making bad decisions that were criminal, and that made him a criminal in the eyes of society. I'm not saying like it was. It didn't make him a criminal. He just didn't think of himself as a criminal. To him, there was a differentiation between people who commit crimes and criminals. He did not think very highly of criminals, like career criminals, somebody who would slit your throat for your wallet or something like that.
That Elvis was a drug addict, but Elvis was on pills, and he looked down on real drug addicts that were taking hard drugs like heroin.
It's funny you bring that up, because I think of this same him turning over himself to the police to say, hey, I want to inform for you as very similar to Elvis showing up at the White House and volunteering to be an undercovered narc agent for Nixon.
Oh, totally yeah. And I think they're both pretty hypocritical.
For sure. So for sure, Yeah, that's the thing. I don't want to give the impression that I'm just like an apologist for Vidalk. I just think that there is an alternative explanation, and one of them is that he didn't see himself as a criminal even though he was a criminal. Oh, I totally agree.
I totally believe that, like there are nothing but innocent people in prison. If he asked them, okay, you know, sure that was what's it called chawshank?
Oh? Is that who that was? Yeah?
I remember that great scene when they were at lunch or whatever, when they were all saying like like, hey, none of us did it, Like, no one in here did any of the crimes that we're in here. For it's pretty funny anyway. So he for two years worked in that prison, like you said, just what he would do was pass on information to his girlfriend, who would get it to the police chief of Paris, and it was going really well, apparently so well that at some point he helped Napoleon's Empress Josephines catch the person who stole her emerald necklace, and so he was on Napoleon's radar at least for a moment. I'm not sure how much Napoleon hung onto that, but it was a sort of a feather in his cap as an informant for sure.
For sure. And that police chief was named Jean Henry or Henri not with an eye but a why so I'm not sure how it's pronounced exactly, but he was. He was finally smitten. After two years with Vidoc, he was all in for this guy. So he said, Okay, we're gonna let you out, but this is an unofficial release, like you're actually not going to get pardoned or released on paper, because we need you as a police informant. What they used to call thief takers. They were kind of like the predecessors to bounty hunters, where anybody could go catch thieves and bring them in for money. He was an undercover version of that, and that's new, brand new. They did not have undercover police at the time. So Vidoc has basically carved out a totally unique, peculiar place for himself in the Paris Police. And it's largely because Jean Henry believes in him and sees also the value in him going back into the underworld and informing on them, not just from jail, but like from the actual outside crime world.
And John Henry also said stay away from my.
Wife exactly, I better not find you in bracing here.
So as a cis what you would call it today, I guess he was doing his thing. He knew the people very well, he knew his old haunts. He was not unwilling to just hand over his friends and former sort of cohorts in the thievery world in the underworld. He would do that at a moment's notice. Dave Ruse helped us out with this. He found one case where he was actually in on a robbery, helped planet, helped execute the robbery, and then when the cops come, he pretended like he had been shot, so he could you know, get out of the whole thing.
Well, no, so that the the the robbers who were there wouldn't know that he was a police informant. They would mean it was yeah. So and by the way, that that that burglar, the robber Saint Germain, was a really wanted man. He was also a murderer and it was actually a pretty interesting, I guess project that he undertook and got the guy. But and we didn't say. Also, the reason he was able to go back into the underworld again was because the police staged an escape, like they allowed him to escape to make it look like he'd broken out of prison, not that they'd released him, so that he would seem like it was Vidalk who'd broken out of prison again and now he was back in the Paris underworld.
That's right. So this underworld at the time was it was a Paris where they policed in a in a way that wasn't an They were confined to districts, and if you were in a district, you couldn't go to another district to investigate. You had to stick to your district. The criminals at the time knew this. They were savvy and so they would commit crimes not near where they lived, which made it a lot easier to get away with stuff. And so Vedock comes in and says, hey, I was one of these guys. You guys are dumb and how you're doing things, because all you have to do is go on the other side of Paris to commit a crime and you're probably going to get away with it unless you're caught red handed. And so what you guys should do is continue to allow me to work undercover and know it's not something you've ever done, because you like to wear these ridiculous uniforms that identify you from a mile away, and get rid of these districts and allow cops to investigate wherever they need in order to solve a crime. And they said okay. In eighteen twelve they made Vedock chief of the security brigade in French it is the what.
Were god de la surtee fantastic?
And they said go hire some men, and he said, all right, I'm going to go hire eight former criminals x cons that I used to know. These are the best of the worst. And it's sort of like the dirty doesn't he's like, except that it was the dirty eight. This is the dirty Ocho and they said, come with me, and we're all going to be this undercover agent security brigade, or we're going to clean up Paris.
Yeah, and I think that definitely undermines the idea that he had no loyalty whatsoever to people he'd met as a criminal in Paris. He just didn't have loyalty the actual real criminals. He distinguished the difference between people who commit crimes and actual criminals.
And so he accused of disloyalty.
Yeah. I mean we said earlier that he had no loyalty whatsoever to the Paris criminal community.
Oh, I don't think so. I think he turned in people he thought should be turned in, right, was loyal to his friends.
So these are the people that he picked. And yes, it's very, very unorthodox. And I think if Paris hadn't been overrun with crime, he never would have been able to put together a Paris wide undercover police force made up of ex convicts. It even sounds nuts today in twenty twenty three, I can't imagine what it sounded like back in eighteen twelve. But his whole premise was, if you send somebody who's a cop, give me a great cop who could do undercover work. He'll get sniffed out immediately and they will murder him. He will die. You can't have people who don't come from this do this kind of work like That's it was very dangerous undercover work. And so that's the main reason why he chose these ex counts. But I also get the impression too, is that part of it was to just kind of demonstrate his point that just because somebody had done time and been convicted of a crime doesn't mean they could never be trustworthy.
Again, I think he misspoke. I think snipped off the case, right.
That's right, I mean, and how could I missed that one? Uh?
Do we break now or do we go for a little bit longer?
I think we should talk a little bit more about the Security Brigade.
Okay, so started in eighteen twelve, Like you said, it turned out to be a really big success. Napoleon just a year later signed a decree that said the Security Brigade is a state police force now and you can have his up to twenty eight men is what they grew to. And I think through four or five years into it, they uh. And of course some of this stuff is we should say v duck would write a lot about his h and his memoirs and stuff. He was not shy about tooting his own horn, let's say. And he's one of those guys where like if you read his memoir there, you know, some of it could be boasting, some of it could be stretching the truth a little, but we do know that they were super successful. Like, no one is doubting that. But he touted fifteen murderers in just one year. Fifteen murders, three hundred and forty one thieves, thirty eight receivers of stolen goods, fourteen escaped convicts, forty three parole violations, forty six forgers, swindlers, con men, two hundred and twenty nine vagabonds and suspicious types. So they're they're kicking butt and taking names in Paris.
Yeah, and make a note of this for later and put in your pipe in your hat that this this is a group of criminals who are showing up the regular police. Yeah, and the regular police are not really fans of being shown up in the public. Like the public was reading all about this stuff, and.
Yeah, they're retting famous for it very much so.
And they were pulling in like the big whales while the police were chasing down you know, pickpockets and stuff like that.
Yeah, Oliver twists.
So there was a definite rivalry. Yeah he was a pickpocket, right, No, I don't think so. Are you thinking of Annie? Annie was a pick No.
I've already misspoken on Oliver Twist and Annie before, so I'm not gonna do it again. Forget everything I said, everybody right in.
So yeah, yeah, for sure we.
Know how to make the division symbol and a keyboard.
Exactly, No, you do so he yuh? What was I saying, chuck?
Uh?
You were saying that he was landing the whales.
Yes, So there was a lot of rivalry and disdain for the security brigade from the regular police. Just remember that they didn't like him.
They did not, all right, So a few things, you know, they found some great anecdotes from the security brigade. We already know that he knew a lot about the crime world and these criminals, and he was apparently there was this one story where like he would know their methods, like specific people in their methods. And there was one story about this robbery that they found where a thief had cut around a lock and he was like, I know who did that, Like, I know that work. That is Foucard. And in the movie version, they said that can't be a facade falsades in prison and someone steps up and said facade escape from prison one week ago, and Beatog says, then it is him. That's awesome I scene.
I feel like the guy who stepped up to inform everybody that he escaped from prison was agad or Spartacus from the Bird Cage.
I never saw that movie.
Really, I'm excited for you.
Chuck, you big hole.
You need to fill that hole, and you'll do it over and over again. You'll keep filling that hole over and over again because it's such a great movie and you can just watch it so many times. Uh.
And I also don't email about end scene. We've already been over that before. It was just a joke.
I meant and scene and scene.
Uh what else? It was an envelope, a scrap of envelope with a half of address, and supposedly Vidoc was able to make out the full address because he knew about all the criminal hangouts, like this is where it must be.
M h.
That was that kind of hang.
I mean, that's just like who else is going to be able to do that, nobuddy Vidoc. He also he was not shy about, you know, going out guns blazing. They got a tip that a stage coach was going to get knocked over in the forest outside of Paris, so they got on the stage coach undercover, and when the bandits inevitably showed up and stopped the stage coach, they got out and started just shooting, and it got root and tooting really fast.
Now should we take a break.
Yeah, I think we've established that the security brigade was pretty successful.
They were very successful. They're doing great work, and we'll be right back to talk about his pioneering work in criminology.
Right for this, Chuck, I feel like in the movie version, that would have been a montage that we just discussed.
I think dep Pardue it definitely was a montage. I think depard who played him in a movie called v Doc. But it wasn't like his life story. It was like a lot of mistakes I think movies make. They're just like, hey, let's just talk about this one central crime and plot, and Vdoc is the guy on the case.
Okay, that makes sense. It sounds like they were trying to grow a franchise unsuccessfully.
Yeah, I guess he did that with the Charlotte Holmes movies. I think I'd just like to see a movie about him, like his life.
Yeah, like, yeah, I mean, it rights itself.
It does.
Even if you strip away like the legend stuff, it rights itself. He's just that fascinating. So yeah, we called him the father of modern criminology, and not just us guys. Everybody calls him that. And the reason why is because he was pioneering all sorts of techniques of criminology. They're still used today.
It's amazing it is.
On the one hand, you can be like this is all low hanging fruit, like he's the first guy doing it, but when you put it all together, it's it's like he was a sharp dude. And it also shows how zeroed in and focused he was on fighting crime that this is what he thought.
I think it was. I don't think it was low hanging fruit. If like, no one else is doing this stuff, right, I think that's a retrospective look like, I don't know. I think if it was low hanging people would have been doing it.
Okay, you don't. Let's take ballistics for example, He's credited with doing the first ballistics comparison in the history of law enforcement.
Yeah. So, eighteen twenty two, the body of Comtessa Isabelle Darci was found shot to death. They arrest the husband. Even back then, it's likely that the husband did it, and they took his dueling pistol and it's like, this is, you know, the murder weapon. And he was like, it wasn't me. She had an Italian lover, and I guarantee it was that guy. And Vidoc very simply was like, hey, let's remove that bullet from the skull. They got the bullet out and they were like, you can't put a bullet like that in a dueling pistol, and they tracked down the Italian lover. He confessed. And I see why he called low hanging fruit, because it seems like it makes so much sense just to say, well, hey, let's look at the bullet. But I don't know if no one else is suggesting it.
No, no, for sure. And even if that had been his only, you know, contribution, you know, you would be like, yeah, that's need or whatever. But I wouldn't call it remarkable. It's the fact that he came up with so many, many different things.
Yeah.
Yeah, And the only reason I call it low hanging fruit is not to put him down, but because I think that over time somebody would have had the same thought. Right, No, one just had. But he was basically standing under the tree, spinning, grabbing all the fruit. That was one of the things that makes him remarkable. He was a fruit cramper.
He was grabbing that falling fruit.
I got another one.
Let's hear it.
Footprint analysis. Yeah, like, we would have no idea that bigfoot exists if vid doc hadn't come along and figured out that you can actually make a reverse a negative of a footprint if you fill the footprint in with plaster plaster of Paris appropriately.
Yeah, He's like, can I get plaster? And they're like, this is Paris? What are kidding?
It's everywhere. So he actually this was a lead heist. Someone had stolen a bunch of lead and it turned out to be a former police agent. But he he made a cast of the footprint compared to to the boot treads of other suspects and found one that matched. And the guy was like, yes, that was me, the DUC you found me out.
Amazing. He also early on and this one, to me is really remarkable. He was like, all right, that footprint thing worked, and he was like, fingerprints, that's got to be a thing, Like look at these, look at this, Look at your thumb everybody, and everyone looked at their thumb and they all had you know, pastry cream on it, and so they licked it off and then looked at their thumb and they're like, oh wow. And he said, we could probably use this too, but they just couldn't find like a way to do it. They didn't have the technology yet. They couldn't find an ink that would work and record the fingerprints properly. So that didn't happen. But he had the idea.
Yeah. He also so that ink in the forge proof paper he came up with while he ran a paper mill during one of his down periods between fighting crime.
Yeah, I think that was later in life. Wasn't that like a retirement job or Am I wrong about that?
It was in between his reign as head of the Security Brigade and his next neck act.
We'll just leave it at that, Okay, I got you.
So what else?
The other thing he did was he was really good. He had a great memory apparently, and was really good at remembering like the people and the faces of the people of the underworld and their names. And he was like, first thing he did was said, all of you cops should get good at that too, because that really helps if you like go to the prisons and observe the guys in the prison and the exercise yard and like remember their faces, remember their names. And maybe we should start writing this stuff down and keeping track of criminals. Actually, and they went to oil do we have never done such a thing, and he said, we'll start doing it. And that was the beginning of I mean, it was like a card catalog at the time, but that was the beginning of what do you call it?
The criminal database? Yeah, mental database, y profiling, sure, but I mean it was everything like if you were a forger, they would have a sample of your handwriting. Like it was really detailed. I saw that it had I think thirty thousand crooks information but it covered millions of pages. Essentially. Yeah, they were really like into it. And then another thing he helped establish was essentially the criminal profiling from a psychological standpoint. He wrote a treatise called lesva LUs Psychology de lu.
Mouse a psychology Physiology.
Okay, let me try that again. Lesv LUs Cologne physiology delu mour a de lu langau longa longog. I think that's how you say language, but anyway, it means thieves. And I added the colon. And he actually used a comma an anatomy of their mores and their language. And it was a study of like the mind of a thief, and it was evidence based, like it was a scientific paper that he wrote about the criminal mind. And I think that actually undermines the idea that his memoirs were like him just being over the top. I saw that he had written a manuscript for his memoirs, handed it in. Then after he handed it in, the publisher hired a ghostwriter to punch it, and that he wasn't super happy about that when he found the final product when he read the book.
So oh, he's in fact a humble man.
I don't know about that, but I don't he was as boastful as he has a reputation for based on his memoirs.
Okay, Like we mentioned, he was a master of disguise, as were his men in his police force. And they could do it all. They were like Monty Python. They would dress up as, like we said, nuns and women and old people, young people, thieves obviously, and it was a time and it sounds a little nonsensical that thieves would dress and speak in a certain way and wear their hair in a certain way, but there's been times in history when that was the case, like a if you look at it, some of the old gangster British gangsters of a time sort of did the same thing. You carry yourself and I think today even and you would call it profiling, but you know, there's there's certain ways of dress to sort of be in the world where crimes are happening. There always has been.
You wear track suits, yeah.
Oh no, I'm wearing a tracksuit right now.
Criminal, I would turn you the fire of a dock.
But they had their own style, so they would obviously were very good at mimicking that style. And in the memoirs and this you know, could have been a ghostwriter because it is very flourishy. Apparently he had a habit, very cinematically of pulling off his mask or's costume at the at the last moment and saying it is I viduc as the shackles are being put on the criminal, yes, or like Tom Cruise, any mission I possible movie.
It's right, so Chuck, I said. Everybody should remember that he had lots of enemies in the real police, regular police, and they they routinely accused him of illegal activity like planning evidence, accepting bribes, and trapping people, kidnapping young women to take them off to convents to become nuns at their parents' behest. Yeah, I saw that all of the stuff. These are accusations. None of these things were ever proven. He was never even taken a court for most of them. There were two cases that solid his reputation that gave the police the chance to really drag him through the mud. One was that one of his agents was accused of helping a group of robbers that he actually busted. That he had taken some money from them for bringing a key so they could break into a place easier. He got two years. It's not clear that that actually did happen, but the guy got two years anyway. And Vidoc had so laid his reputation on the line that not only he could be trusted, but his agents could be trusted too, that he resigned. He was like, that's fine, I'll resign. I'm clearly not meant for this any longer, Like my reputation has been tarnished, and I'm just going to go off and start a paper mill. He was brought back and he was the head for another year something like that, and then he said, you know what, forget this, I'm going to go out and start my own detective agency, the world's first detective agency, I think, almost twenty years before the Pinkertons even started.
Yeah, I think part of the I think it was twofold a is for the cops, like they definitely didn't like that he was out shining them, and I think they were always suspicious that he never left his criminal pass behind because he lived beyond his means of his salary. I saw, so I can't remember how much he made as a salary. I think it was like five thousand francs at the time, and he lived as a man who had much more money than that. So he had all kinds of side hustles. He was in real estate. Think he helped run a tavern, and so he made extra money doing other things. And I think they were always suspicious that he was still dabbling in criminality. One thing he did that was I thought fairly interesting, and I'm not sure how illegal it was. There was a thing at the time where you could pay somebody to take your place in the army. Basically, if you didn't want to go to the army, you could offer up a substitute. You could pay that substitute, and they were glad to take the money to do that. And what he would do was he would catch a criminal and say, hey, you want to go to prison or you want to go to the army. And if they said I'd rather go the army, he would say, here's your substitute, Now give me my money. So whether or not that's actually illegal, who knows. It's borderline. And I think stuff like that sort of made the cops added to their ire I think because he was making more money than they were.
So did that. That definitely happened. That was proven that he did that. That wasn't just an accusation that like turned into fact over time.
I'm not sure I read it in a book. Uh you know, it wasn't like some internet articles show it was from an actual book.
It was not on YouTube, No, it was.
It wasn't a book.
Okay, So regardless of this, he has he's founded this new this detective agency again the first detective agency in the world. And he started out basically collaring white collar criminals for large you know, corporate clients, people who swindled them, made off with money and bezzled that kind of stuff. And there was one case in particular, uh, And this was after years years of this successful detective agency continuing to show up the security brigade that his successor's brother ran a bank and when the bank got knocked over, the brother came to the doc the head of the security brigade who he was related to. So there was a case where a guy he had caught a guy who had absconded with money. He brought him into the office for questioning and got the guy, convinced the guy to give up like twenty two hundred francs to just begin repayment, put it in his account as he normally did, to then hand over to the people who'd hired him less than forty five percent they promised him for finding right that happened, and a week later the cops show up and arrests him for false imprisonment, impersonating a police officer, and taking bribes essentially. And this is where his reputation really got tarnished.
Yeah, it was a by most accounts, it was a setup, like a complete set right.
Like he they looked all over to find people who would say in court that he was a crook. They couldn't find anybody, even other criminals. They couldn't find anybody except for this one guy, COMPI, who was the one person who accused him. So he regardless is convicted given I think like five or six years, and within apparently weeks find he gets his case in front of the appellate court, who took like less than a day to throw the case out because he'd clearly been railroaded and exonerated him. But his reputation had been so solid even at the time, his star really fell and he looked around for somebody to sell the detective detective agency to. Apparently there were plenty of buyers, but they were like fraudsters, just looking to take advantage of people. So he just closed the thing down instead. Amazing, And there's here's another example. So you hear that he got ten months. He spent ten months in jail for that crime, right impersonating a police officer and all that he didn't he spent ten months in between the time he was incused, in the time he was finally brought to trial, and then after that he was acquitted within weeks of being convicted. Does that make sense, Like that kind of detail like matters hundreds of years on it does.
So the cherry on top of this story is that Vidoc left behind a really interesting literary legacy, and not only just the books he wrote. He wrote memoirs, like we said, he wrote that that crime book, the science book that was so great. But Victor Hugo, he had friends like this, Victor Hugo and Balzac one of my favorite names. They use him as inspiration. If you read the book le Meserab or go see that Broadway show. If you see that awesome movie and you cry every time Anne Hathaway sings like I do.
It's amazing because she's good or bad at it?
Have you never seen it?
No? I saw. Though it's stage play.
It's great for the music, Jesus great. They did something different in that musical where they they didn't lip sync. They actually recorded them singing in the moment on stage, on the scene, and they had never done that before. And so it's like palpable and real and boy it's good. I loved it. So ley Miz though is the story about a man who gets put in jail for stealing bread. So that might sound familiar from Vdock's real life, but apparently Hugo actually used both of the characters Jean Valjean and who's the other guy? Javert as inspirations. You know, he was the inspiration for both because he was both criminal and cought. Later on, not only that, but mentioned Baalzac. He cited Vdoc specifically as inspiration for Valtrind his character. Then, of course, once you see who the character is, it makes a lot of sense. Escape convict and criminal mastermind who repents and becomes a police officer, a minister police in Italy. Yeah, not bad.
So what's widely believed to be the first modern detective novel was The Murders in the Room Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, and there's an amateur French detective named Dupin and Poe said that he definitely based Dupinn on Vidoc. One that's a little less clear, a little less direct, is Sherlock Holmes. There's some traits between Sherlock Holmes and Vidoc, like Masters of Disguise and like dealing with the criminal underworld for information and all that stuff. But Sherlock Holmes was based on a French detective that came before Monsieur Lecoq, and Emil Gaborio, who wrote the books that Lecoq was the protagonist of definitely modeled Lecoq on Vidoc. Lecoq was based on Vidoc, and Sake. Sherlock Holmes was based on Lacock.
So I think by transitive property. Oh nice, is that it?
I hope?
So man mass.
So that's it.
What a guy?
Yeah, he definitely deserves a at least a decent movie. If not, that's a franchise, you know what I mean.
Yeah, in can't you find someone besides George de Pardieu? I mean surely, I feel like he was just the guy for so long. He's old now, and I think he didn't get me too.
I don't know. I know that France kind of was like, you stink because he moved so we wouldn't have to pay high taxes. Maybe that's that's the last thing I heard of. Oh there's one other thing. There's a group called the Vidoc Society in Philadelphia, that's made up of like criminologists and people in law enforcement who take cold cases on pro bono during their monthly lunches and try to inject new life into the cases.
You know, they love that name for sure. The v DOC Society cool and they all come in in disguise and then rip off their masks. I at lunch, it's right every day.
Well, that's VIDOC for you. If you want to know more about them. There's a lot of interesting contradictory stuff out there to read. And since I said contradictory, that means, of course it's time for listener mail.
I'm going to call this my Way or the Skyway. That has nothing to do with it. It's just about the Skyway disaster. We heard from a doctor. This is a really good email. Hey, guys, just recently started listening to the show. Found the episode of high regency Skywalk disaster very interesting. I'm a physician and was in residency at a hospital in Kansas City, not far from the Crown Center at that time, and I was on call that Friday night and was watching TV with a number of other residents when I heard the news and we knew that we were in for a busy night. I'm writing in basically to mention two things I thought you might find interesting. Ironically, the Kansas City metro area had planned for a mass disaster drill the next day. Of course, the drill was canceled and instead the response to the actual disaster was analyzed, resulting in significant changes for future plans for a response to a mass disaster. Now that's incredible. And this one. Both of my sons graduated from college with engineering degrees a few years ago. They were taught about the high disaster in their classes and there's still lessons to be learned from what happened even decades later. And that is from doctor Paul M. Jost of Kansas City.
Thanks a lot, doctor Jost. That was an amazing email. Like, geez, it's some background right there.
Yeah, and hey, way to get on listener mail as a new listener. That's well done.
Yeah, just pat yourself on the back. Tick off your lab coat so you have a little extra stretching room and pat yourself on the back.
That's right. And also, doc, I got this shoulder thing going on.
Sorry.
Well, if you want to be like doctor Jos and send us some really r kane info about an episode that we did. We love to hear that stuff. You can send it to us, feed email, It's stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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