The mysterious disappearance of Paris court clerk Gouffé

One of the most spectacular cases in French criminal history was the Gouffé case. Toussaint-Agustin Gouffé was a 49-year-old widowed court clerk who had two daughters and lived in Paris. This respectable man was reported missing to the police on July 26, 1889. A few months later, in the small village of Millery, a suburb of Lyon 480 kilometers from Paris, road maintenance worker Dennis Coffy was asked to dispose of a foul-smelling cloth bag lying in a side street. When he opened the bag on August 13, 1889, he almost fainted, so terrible was the smell and the sight of a decomposing, naked male corpse, already being eaten by maggots. During the autopsy performed by medical examiner Paul Bernard on August 14, he determined that the man had been tied up with seven ropes and his head had been wrapped in black oilcloth. The man must have been strangled 3 to 5 weeks earlier. Two days after the male corpse was found, a large wooden box was discovered not far from the site of the discovery, which smelled just as terrible and in which the corpse had probably been transported. There was a label on it proving that the trunk had traveled by train from Paris to Lyon on July 27, 1889, and that the dead man had been transported in it. But who was the dead man? To determine the identity of the deceased, the body was examined on November 13, 1889, in a week-long procedure conducted by physician Alexandre Lacassagne. A hair sample and an old back injury identified him as the missing court clerk Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé. The experienced police commissioner Marie-François Goron was entrusted with the investigation. Her investigations quickly led to a couple. This couple consisted of the well-known con artist Michel Eyraud, a man in his mid-50s who was considered a violent army deserter and adventurer in America, and 21-year-old Gabrielle Bompard, whom her father had had committed to an institution because she was considered extremely defiant and did not fit into the Belle Époque image of women, but did fit into her father’s. For at the time of the Belle Époque, the new type of woman, the femme fatale, the man-eating vamp or Madonna with an angelic face, was becoming popular. Gabrielle Bompard belonged to the latter category. This unlikely couple had left Paris in a hurry on July 27, shortly after the court clerk Gouffé had been reported missing. Investigations revealed that the couple had purchased a wooden box from a London carpenter, who clearly recognized the box in which Gouffé had been transported as the one sold to the couple. It turned out that Eyraud was in financial difficulties. They needed to find a man they could rob. The bailiff seemed the ideal victim, as he was wealthy and had immediately fallen for the charms of the young Gabrielle Bompard. The couple lured Gouffé to their apartment on Tronson-du-Coudray Street in the 8th arrondissement. Once Gouffé was in the apartment, Gabrielle Bompard asked the bailiff to make himself comfortable on the sofa. Once he was comfortably seated, she wrapped the cord from her dressing gown around his neck. Her accomplice, Eyraud, had hidden behind a curtain behind the sofa. He had previously built a gallows out of a ceiling beam, a hook, and a rope. Eyraud was supposed to attach the cord to the hook to hang Gouffé. But Gouffé noticed the diabolical plan and fought back so fiercely that Eyraud had to come out of hiding and strangle him with his bare hands. When they searched Gouffé, he had no money on him, so the murder had been in vain. Eyraud then used Gouffé’s key to search for money in his office, but could not find any. Nevertheless, the body had to disappear. They bought the box and put Gouffé’s body in a cloth bag, which they placed in the box. Then they sent the suitcase from Paris to Lyon, where they picked it up at the train station and rented a convertible to transport it. As the smell of decay became worse and worse, they disposed of the cloth bag containing the body on a riverbank and then hid the box in a tree trunk. They then fled to America, but due to financial difficulties, they had to return to France in January 1890, where they discovered that they were wanted as criminals worldwide. Shortly afterwards, on January 22, 1890, Gabrielle Bompard was arrested and confessed everything during questioning. Eyraud was not arrested until June 1890 in Havana. He had tried to sell a stolen Turkish robe to a seamstress who had read about the theft in the newspaper and alerted the police. The months-long escape had aroused media interest in the Gouffé case. In December 1890, the trial took place in Paris. The focus was primarily on Gabrielle Bompard, who was defended by star lawyer Félix Decori. He claimed that his client had been forced into complicity by Michel Eyraud through hypnosis. This was, of course, a sensation and raised the question of whether this was even possible. This question sparked even more media hype around Gabrielle, who was just under 1.50 meters tall and had a doll-like face. Because she recounted the murder with unparalleled ease, she was nicknamed “petit démon,” or little demon, in public. Based on her confession, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison, which she spent in the women’s prison in Nanterre and in the dungeon of Clermont in Oise. In 1900, she was released early from prison for good behavior. Michel Eyraud was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out in January 1891. This marked the end of one of France’s most spectacular criminal cases, which still provides material for films and books.