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The Criminal Father of Criminology · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:14
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
0:16
Speaker 2: should Know, a little overlooked historical figure edition.
0:23
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, boy, god, this guy. Could you could do
0:27
Speaker 3: a ten parter on his life easily.
0:31
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's nuts. So we're talking about a
0:33
Speaker 2: man named Eugene Francois Vidocq. He is known as the
0:39
Speaker 2: father of criminology. Yeah, pretty much on the nose. That's
0:44
Speaker 2: a really good title for him. Yeah, he's also an
0:48
Speaker 2: inspiration for plenty of detective first early detective stories. He
0:54
Speaker 2: was at one time as famous as Napoleon in France
0:57
Speaker 2: and in Europe in general. He was in famous, incredibly wealthy,
1:02
Speaker 2: and it was because he dedicated himself as a public
1:05
Speaker 2: servant to the city of Paris to basically wipe out
1:09
Speaker 2: crime as best he could at a time when Paris
1:13
Speaker 2: was more overrun with crime than maybe it ever has
1:16
Speaker 2: been in its history.
1:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was a time where the army
1:22
Speaker 3: was very busy, I guess it is the best way
1:25
Speaker 3: to say it, and like the army took up a
1:28
Speaker 3: lot of the men who might normally be cops, and
1:32
Speaker 3: they were preoccupied more with warring than with just taking
1:35
Speaker 3: care of regular police work. And Vidok stepped up in
1:39
Speaker 3: a big way, and like I said, like I had
1:42
Speaker 3: to stop researching because I was like, we can't do
1:44
Speaker 3: a twelve hour podcast on this guy.
1:46
Speaker 2: Rightly, no, but you can definitely go down a rabbit
1:49
Speaker 2: hole with him. And one of the reasons why is
1:51
Speaker 2: because depending on the source you consult, he was either
1:55
Speaker 2: a total scumbag, scoundrel or genuinely unjustly slandered. I leaned
2:03
Speaker 2: toward the second one, or closer to the second one. Obviously,
2:05
Speaker 2: no one's perfect, but I do think that the stuff
2:10
Speaker 2: that is really questionable or makes him into a questionable
2:14
Speaker 2: person or character, I think is remnants of his political
2:18
Speaker 2: rivals smearing his name so well that it still is
2:22
Speaker 2: around today.
2:24
Speaker 3: Here's what I think is that he was, and as
2:28
Speaker 3: you'll see, started off as a scoundrel and a criminal,
2:33
Speaker 3: later changed his tune because I think it was beneficial
2:37
Speaker 3: for him to not be in prison all the time,
2:41
Speaker 3: and I think he tried to do the right thing,
2:44
Speaker 3: but also like a little bit of that that scoundrel
2:49
Speaker 3: lived within him, but he also had people that had
2:52
Speaker 3: it out for him. I think he's a complex guy.
2:55
Speaker 3: I don't think he did a one to eighty and
2:56
Speaker 3: was like and now I am pure. I think he
3:00
Speaker 3: I think he, you know, did what was best for
3:03
Speaker 3: him usually, but also wanted to put criminals behind bars
3:06
Speaker 3: and make a few bucks while he did it.
3:08
Speaker 2: So I have a counterpoint to that, but I'll bring
3:13
Speaker 2: it up when we get to that part. But we
3:14
Speaker 2: should tell everybody. One of the reasons Vidock is famous
3:17
Speaker 2: if you have heard of him, is because not only
3:20
Speaker 2: was he the father of criminology, he started out as
3:22
Speaker 2: a genuine bona fide criminal who was serving time in prison,
3:26
Speaker 2: would escape prison, and then one day he basically switched
3:30
Speaker 2: sides from an outsider's standpoint and became like the top
3:36
Speaker 2: cop in all of France while he was.
3:40
Speaker 3: Serving Yeah, a good way to stay out of jail.
3:43
Speaker 2: For sure. Well let's start. Let's start with his early life, right,
3:46
Speaker 2: because he was unquestionably a troublemaker, a hot head, and
3:52
Speaker 2: just a handful. You could definitely say his parents actually
3:55
Speaker 2: let him get arrested when they stole from him once.
3:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you would classify as a juvenile delinquent today,
4:02
Speaker 3: But it wasn't because he was some you know, poor
4:07
Speaker 3: kid from the poor streets who had to steal to survive.
4:11
Speaker 3: His parents did pretty well, they had a successful bakery
4:14
Speaker 3: and how do you pronounce that rs? I think so yeah,
4:18
Speaker 3: A R R A S. And it seemed rather middle class.
4:22
Speaker 3: But like you said, he he stole from his parents.
4:25
Speaker 3: He was. He was a scoundrel. He pick pocketed. He
4:29
Speaker 3: was from very early on seemed like he was a
4:32
Speaker 3: bit of a ladies man and he would you know,
4:36
Speaker 3: this was sort of his early life until he ran
4:38
Speaker 3: away literally to join the circus, right like people actually
4:42
Speaker 3: did that. And he did that for a few months
4:45
Speaker 3: until he didn't like the work. Then he would eventually
4:48
Speaker 3: work for a Punch and Judy street show, which is
4:51
Speaker 3: if you guys are don't know who Punch and Judy were,
4:54
Speaker 3: they were They were puppets.
4:55
Speaker 2: Right, yes they were. Punch was a wife battering puppet
5:00
Speaker 2: and Judy was the abused wife. They got into hysterical
5:03
Speaker 2: right yeah, really violent fights all the time, but it
5:06
Speaker 2: was puppets and kids thought it was hilarious. And he
5:08
Speaker 2: worked for that show and he had to. I guess
5:12
Speaker 2: he got fired in a way.
5:14
Speaker 3: I think so. I think as a fifteen year old
5:16
Speaker 3: he said some kind of a tryst with the wife
5:19
Speaker 3: of the guy who was running the thing. Yes, so
5:24
Speaker 3: that's not very specific. It says that they were embracing,
5:27
Speaker 3: so who knows what that means.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but it definitely goes to underscore a lot of
5:31
Speaker 2: things about him. He was very much into the ladies.
5:33
Speaker 2: He didn't mind if it was someone else's lady, if
5:36
Speaker 2: you were someone else's lady. And he was willing to
5:41
Speaker 2: put himself in great danger and at great personal risk
5:45
Speaker 2: to satisfy his own wants, needs, desires.
5:49
Speaker 3: That's a very nice way to say it.
5:51
Speaker 2: So he moved back home, he went back to ras
5:53
Speaker 2: or Us and his I don't know if we said
5:56
Speaker 2: his dad was a baker and his parents were totally normal,
6:01
Speaker 2: fine parents. But again they basically when he was caught
6:04
Speaker 2: stealing from them when he was thirteen, they said, okay,
6:06
Speaker 2: you're going to jail. When you moved back home after
6:09
Speaker 2: the circus and the Punch and Judy show, he wasn't
6:12
Speaker 2: even sixteen yet, and they said, all right, you're going
6:16
Speaker 2: to join the army whether you like it or not.
6:18
Speaker 2: They shipped him off to the army. Well he was fifteen,
6:21
Speaker 2: that's how bad a kid he was.
6:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he's drinking, getting fights and womanizing, and
6:27
Speaker 3: you know, he's just one of those kids. They'd probably
6:29
Speaker 3: just say today that he was I don't know, what
6:31
Speaker 3: would you call it hot head? Yeah, teenage hothead. Yeah,
6:36
Speaker 3: he'd like to steal things sometimes.
6:39
Speaker 2: Right, and embrace other people's wives exactly. So he did
6:44
Speaker 2: serve in the army. Apparently he was in battle a
6:46
Speaker 2: few times because this was a post post French Revolution,
6:53
Speaker 2: and I think he may have been in the army
6:55
Speaker 2: when Napoleon first took power. At the very least, France
6:58
Speaker 2: was on all sorts of advance. Like you said, it
7:00
Speaker 2: had drained them their population of potential police people policemen,
7:07
Speaker 2: and so he fought in a few battles. He definitely
7:09
Speaker 2: saw some action and it was fine. But I think
7:11
Speaker 2: probably the biggest takeaway was that he learned how to fence.
7:16
Speaker 2: He became a very great fencer, and that served him
7:19
Speaker 2: well because he was also known to get into duels
7:22
Speaker 2: with people. And he actually had to desert the army
7:26
Speaker 2: because he was coming up on charges because he challenged
7:29
Speaker 2: a sergeant to a duel. The sergeant refused him, and
7:32
Speaker 2: he smacked the sergeant around, and that is not something
7:36
Speaker 2: you do in any army at any period of time.
7:39
Speaker 2: And so he took off and was now a desert
7:42
Speaker 2: ye from the army. And this is when his actual
7:46
Speaker 2: criminal life really began. Everything else was petty, in temperate,
7:51
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. This is like, Okay, I'm a
7:53
Speaker 2: deserter from the army. I need to support myself somehow.
7:55
Speaker 2: I guess I have to turn to a life of crime.
7:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, he actually deserted a few times. I don't think
8:00
Speaker 3: he was super popular among his peers there. Sure he
8:03
Speaker 3: had a habit for just sort of not being there
8:05
Speaker 3: all of a sudden when they called roll call. But eventually,
8:08
Speaker 3: when he finally left for good, he joined up with
8:11
Speaker 3: what was called the Rolling Army. You want to do
8:14
Speaker 3: the French there, you're a French guy.
8:17
Speaker 2: It was the Army Rulan.
8:19
Speaker 3: Okay, the Army Rulant, which was everything I saw about
8:24
Speaker 3: this was that it was a side army. I think
8:26
Speaker 3: it was a couple of thousand men, and that they
8:31
Speaker 3: they sort of just did what they wanted. They were
8:33
Speaker 3: fake uniforms. They plundered the countryside they gave themselves fake orders,
8:40
Speaker 3: and I'm not exactly sure what real army work they did.
8:44
Speaker 3: I'm sure they did, right.
8:46
Speaker 2: I don't think so, I think or was it all just.
8:48
Speaker 3: A thing to like? I think they're under in pillage.
8:51
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what that's my take. I don't think they
8:53
Speaker 2: were officially sanctioned at all.
8:56
Speaker 3: Well, no, they weren't officially sanctioned, but I just I
8:58
Speaker 3: figured they were. I thought that the real army might
9:02
Speaker 3: have used them at times.
9:04
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know enough about it. It's possible.
9:06
Speaker 2: I mean, you got a couple thousand people with guns
9:08
Speaker 2: ready to fight. Why not?
9:10
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, I know they worked fake uniforms. And he
9:12
Speaker 3: made up a rank for himself and took a alias.
9:16
Speaker 3: He was Lieutenant Rousseau, and eventually even made himself captain.
9:20
Speaker 3: I don't know why I didn't start off as captain
9:21
Speaker 3: as long as he's making things up.
9:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, he kind of sold himself short there, didn't he.
9:27
Speaker 3: Well, he became captain eventually, so he ended up.
9:30
Speaker 2: In Paris eventually after he left the army. Roulant and
9:35
Speaker 2: this is around seventeen ninety five. The French Revolution had
9:40
Speaker 2: been successful. But there's something to understand about it. Like,
9:45
Speaker 2: one of the reasons Paris was so over him with
9:47
Speaker 2: crime was not just that there was a lack of
9:49
Speaker 2: potential candidates for the police. There was also like the
9:55
Speaker 2: threat of revolution and regime change was constant during these decades.
10:01
Speaker 2: It wasn't like the French Revolution happened and it was over.
10:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a mess.
10:05
Speaker 2: It was a mess. First Napoleon comes along is like, hey,
10:08
Speaker 2: I'll take over from here. I'm now emperor. He he
10:11
Speaker 2: ran France for a really long time, for a decade
10:14
Speaker 2: or something like that. Then he was deposed and a
10:16
Speaker 2: new king was installed, a new king was installed. After that,
10:19
Speaker 2: that king was just deposed and a new citizen king
10:23
Speaker 2: was put into place. And then around that time finally
10:26
Speaker 2: our our protagonist dies. But like throughout all this time,
10:30
Speaker 2: like there there's a lot of tension and conflict in
10:34
Speaker 2: the country, and because everybody was preoccupied with that stuff,
10:39
Speaker 2: crime was allowed to flourish. It was a really dangerous
10:44
Speaker 2: lawless time. It particularly in Paris, because a lot of
10:47
Speaker 2: people were also coming to Paris looking for opportunity and
10:50
Speaker 2: that kind of thing, and so it was a just
10:54
Speaker 2: to put that in your in your pipe and hold
10:56
Speaker 2: it in your hat for later, because that's that's that's
11:00
Speaker 2: this is the backdrop that he shows up in Paris against.
11:04
Speaker 3: That's right. So he ends up in Paris during this
11:07
Speaker 3: very tumultuous time. Great time to be a criminal in Paris. Sure,
11:12
Speaker 3: you know very I don't know about easy to get
11:14
Speaker 3: away with stuff, but you know, you could be a
11:16
Speaker 3: pretty successful criminal at the time. And that's what he did.
11:19
Speaker 3: It sort of threw his twenties and into his thirties.
11:23
Speaker 3: He was in and out of prison, kind of off
11:25
Speaker 3: and on because of various schemes. It was never like,
11:30
Speaker 3: I'm not going to say it was victimless, but it
11:31
Speaker 3: was never like violent crimes. It seems like he was
11:35
Speaker 3: like a really good, really good forging documents and things
11:39
Speaker 3: like that, and all of his schemes seemed to be
11:43
Speaker 3: kind of like on the more intelligent side.
11:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was definitely intelligent, yes.
11:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's not like he was walking up and
11:50
Speaker 3: bonking someone on the head and stealing their purse. He
11:53
Speaker 3: graduated to more elaborate kind of you know, forgeries and
11:57
Speaker 3: things like that.
11:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he also he was a criminal with a heart.
12:04
Speaker 2: He landed in this one prison. Oh what is it
12:07
Speaker 2: called Bagno, I believe.
12:10
Speaker 3: Oh was that where he the the bread.
12:14
Speaker 2: Guy was, Yes, So so this is a really good
12:17
Speaker 2: example of that. He Yeah, he was finally caught and
12:21
Speaker 2: sentenced for I think just three months in prison, just
12:24
Speaker 2: three months. But while there he was so moved by
12:26
Speaker 2: a guy who had been given six years for stealing
12:30
Speaker 2: grain to feed his family, who, by the way, the
12:33
Speaker 2: bread guy, right, people are confused. So he was so
12:36
Speaker 2: moved by that and thought that it was so unjust
12:39
Speaker 2: that he'd been given six years. He forged documents that
12:42
Speaker 2: that that he signed as like the head of I
12:46
Speaker 2: think the prison or the police as saying like this
12:49
Speaker 2: man is to be released, his his sentence has been commuted,
12:52
Speaker 2: and the guy made it made made off like he
12:55
Speaker 2: was released. And I think it took a few months
12:59
Speaker 2: for the whole thing to finally be found out. But
13:01
Speaker 2: I think the doc was in jail at the time
13:05
Speaker 2: when they did find out, and they gave him eight
13:07
Speaker 2: years for that for forging papers that released a man
13:11
Speaker 2: who had been given six years for stealing grain.
13:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this time he went to a hard labor prison.
13:18
Speaker 3: Like you said, it was called a I don't know
13:20
Speaker 3: how it's pronounced. I think they started in Italy under
13:23
Speaker 3: a different name, but B A G n O the
13:27
Speaker 3: bag no, the bagno, like if you've ever seen the
13:30
Speaker 3: movie I looked into these, the movie Papion. The island
13:35
Speaker 3: prison they were on that was one, and I think
13:38
Speaker 3: it was just like a very tough It was like
13:40
Speaker 3: the toughest of the tough prisons, hard labor, usually in shackles,
13:46
Speaker 3: very hard to escape from. Yet he did manage to
13:49
Speaker 3: escape even from here, and I think he escaped as
13:54
Speaker 3: a sailor and was caught and put back and then
13:56
Speaker 3: escaped again posing as a nun. So as you will
14:02
Speaker 3: see later, he was, in fact a master of disguise,
14:05
Speaker 3: was very good at it, and if he was able
14:07
Speaker 3: to pass himself off as a nun, clearly pretty good
14:10
Speaker 3: at it.
14:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's really something that he escaped not just
14:13
Speaker 2: once but twice from a galley prison. Because they were
14:17
Speaker 2: originally before they moved them onto land, they were ships,
14:21
Speaker 2: giant ships with tons of oars sticking out of them,
14:24
Speaker 2: and you would be sentenced to hard labor rowing those
14:27
Speaker 2: oars day in and day out. It was a really
14:30
Speaker 2: rough place to spend eight years, and it would also
14:34
Speaker 2: be a really difficult place to escape from, but he
14:36
Speaker 2: did twice. So he started to get a reputation as
14:39
Speaker 2: someone who no prison could hold in addition to being
14:42
Speaker 2: a master of disguise. And when you start kind of
14:45
Speaker 2: doing stuff like that, your name gets around and you
14:48
Speaker 2: start to become a bit of a legend among not
14:51
Speaker 2: just the criminals, but also like law enforcement as well.
14:56
Speaker 2: So his star is starting to rise. And I think,
15:00
Speaker 2: as we reached this point, Chuck, it's time for message break.
15:03
Speaker 1: What do you think as we reached this point? I agree?
15:35
Speaker 3: All right, So where we left off, Vidoc has escaped
15:39
Speaker 3: prison a couple of times. He was a juvenile delinquent.
15:43
Speaker 3: He was a delinquent into his twenties and into his thirties,
15:46
Speaker 3: through his twenties and into his thirties, and then finally
15:50
Speaker 3: ends up back in Paris. He was trying to get
15:54
Speaker 3: pulled into the criminal underworld again because he was well known,
15:58
Speaker 3: and he was kind of in a bad spot because
16:00
Speaker 3: if he said no, he would get blackmailed by these
16:03
Speaker 3: low lifes and threaten to turn him in because he
16:06
Speaker 3: was a fugitive at this point still. So finally he
16:09
Speaker 3: was like, all right, what am I doing with my life,
16:13
Speaker 3: all this on the run stuff, on the lamb in
16:16
Speaker 3: disguise as a nun. This is for the birds. In
16:21
Speaker 3: eighteen oh nine, he said, I'm going to go to
16:24
Speaker 3: the cops and I'm gonna say I would like to
16:27
Speaker 3: turn myself in and make myself well, sort of turn
16:30
Speaker 3: myself in. What he really wanted to do was turn
16:32
Speaker 3: into a police informant and get out of jail. And
16:36
Speaker 3: they said, hey, great idea, but you're gonna do that
16:39
Speaker 3: for at least a little while in jail.
16:41
Speaker 2: Right, that is, I mean that sounds like, oh that's cool.
16:44
Speaker 2: That was an incredibly dangerous position to put himself in
16:47
Speaker 2: for two straight years.
16:49
Speaker 3: This still is.
16:50
Speaker 2: He was an sure he was an informant, a volunteer
16:53
Speaker 2: informant for the police, and he would he would inform
16:56
Speaker 2: on anybody. And so I was saying earlier that I
16:58
Speaker 2: would bring up a counterpoint to the idea that it
17:00
Speaker 2: was just completely self serving from what I saw. Another
17:04
Speaker 2: explanation is that he never actually thought of himself as
17:07
Speaker 2: a criminal. He thought of himself as an outlaw by circumstance,
17:13
Speaker 2: like he had made a lot of bad decisions. He
17:15
Speaker 2: knew that and that had made him run a foul
17:17
Speaker 2: of the law. But he wasn't a criminal, Like, that's
17:20
Speaker 2: not how he wanted to support himself. He didn't have
17:22
Speaker 2: the heart of a criminal, and so this was a
17:26
Speaker 2: way to basically say, I don't want to be a
17:29
Speaker 2: criminal anymore. I don't want to be associated with these people.
17:31
Speaker 2: I want to change sides, and this is how I'm
17:33
Speaker 2: going to try to do it. Or another way to
17:35
Speaker 2: look at it is that he was he was he
17:40
Speaker 2: finally grew up essentially and realized like, okay, this is
17:44
Speaker 2: this is not okay. I need to I need to
17:46
Speaker 2: change things, and I've worked myself into such a deep hole.
17:50
Speaker 2: This is the alternative to just going like, okay, I'm
17:53
Speaker 2: going to become a criminal from now. Those were his choices.
17:56
Speaker 2: That's how deep the Holy Doug was. And the thing is, Chuck,
17:58
Speaker 2: no matter how you interpret whether it was a selfish act,
18:02
Speaker 2: whether it was you know, you know, his destiny, whatever,
18:06
Speaker 2: that shows a remarkable amount of initiative to do that.
18:10
Speaker 2: Like he said, I'm not going to be a criminal.
18:12
Speaker 2: I'm not going to turn a life crime. I'm going
18:13
Speaker 2: to basically put myself in the hands of cops who
18:17
Speaker 2: hate me and see if they will have me as
18:20
Speaker 2: one of their own.
18:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he probably grew up. I don't know that.
18:25
Speaker 3: I buy that. If he had come from nothing, I
18:29
Speaker 3: could buy that. But he came from a pretty good
18:31
Speaker 3: He wasn't forced into committing crimes to survive.
18:34
Speaker 2: No, But I think that's why he didn't see himself
18:36
Speaker 2: as a criminal, because he had made choices or whatever.
18:39
Speaker 2: He wasn't a criminal. He just didn't see himself like
18:42
Speaker 2: that from what I saw.
18:44
Speaker 3: So he made choices to commit crimes, but didn't see
18:46
Speaker 3: himself as a criminal.
18:48
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, yes, he made choices that were that were criminal,
18:55
Speaker 2: but he wasn't making choices like to do crime. That
18:57
Speaker 2: wasn't as his aim was for crime. He was just
19:01
Speaker 2: making bad decisions that were criminal, and that made him
19:04
Speaker 2: a criminal in the eyes of society. I'm not saying
19:07
Speaker 2: like it was. It didn't make him a criminal. He
19:09
Speaker 2: just didn't think of himself as a criminal. To him,
19:12
Speaker 2: there was a differentiation between people who commit crimes and criminals.
19:18
Speaker 2: He did not think very highly of criminals, like career criminals,
19:21
Speaker 2: somebody who would slit your throat for your wallet or
19:24
Speaker 2: something like that.
19:26
Speaker 3: That Elvis was a drug addict, but Elvis was on pills,
19:29
Speaker 3: and he looked down on real drug addicts that were
19:32
Speaker 3: taking hard drugs like heroin.
19:34
Speaker 2: It's funny you bring that up, because I think of
19:35
Speaker 2: this same him turning over himself to the police to say, hey,
19:40
Speaker 2: I want to inform for you as very similar to
19:43
Speaker 2: Elvis showing up at the White House and volunteering to
19:45
Speaker 2: be an undercovered narc agent for Nixon.
19:49
Speaker 3: Oh, totally yeah. And I think they're both pretty hypocritical.
19:53
Speaker 2: For sure. So for sure, Yeah, that's the thing. I
19:55
Speaker 2: don't want to give the impression that I'm just like
19:57
Speaker 2: an apologist for Vidalk. I just think that there is
20:00
Speaker 2: an alternative explanation, and one of them is that he
20:04
Speaker 2: didn't see himself as a criminal even though he was
20:06
Speaker 2: a criminal. Oh, I totally agree.
20:08
Speaker 3: I totally believe that, like there are nothing but innocent
20:11
Speaker 3: people in prison. If he asked them, okay, you know,
20:15
Speaker 3: sure that was what's it called chawshank?
20:19
Speaker 2: Oh? Is that who that was? Yeah?
20:21
Speaker 3: I remember that great scene when they were at lunch
20:24
Speaker 3: or whatever, when they were all saying like like, hey,
20:26
Speaker 3: none of us did it, Like, no one in here
20:27
Speaker 3: did any of the crimes that we're in here. For
20:30
Speaker 3: it's pretty funny anyway. So he for two years worked
20:35
Speaker 3: in that prison, like you said, just what he would
20:38
Speaker 3: do was pass on information to his girlfriend, who would
20:41
Speaker 3: get it to the police chief of Paris, and it
20:43
Speaker 3: was going really well, apparently so well that at some
20:47
Speaker 3: point he helped Napoleon's Empress Josephines catch the person who
20:53
Speaker 3: stole her emerald necklace, and so he was on Napoleon's
20:57
Speaker 3: radar at least for a moment. I'm not sure how
21:00
Speaker 3: much Napoleon hung onto that, but it was a sort
21:04
Speaker 3: of a feather in his cap as an informant for sure.
21:06
Speaker 2: For sure. And that police chief was named Jean Henry
21:09
Speaker 2: or Henri not with an eye but a why so
21:13
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how it's pronounced exactly, but he was.
21:17
Speaker 2: He was finally smitten. After two years with Vidoc, he
21:23
Speaker 2: was all in for this guy. So he said, Okay,
21:26
Speaker 2: we're gonna let you out, but this is an unofficial release,
21:30
Speaker 2: like you're actually not going to get pardoned or released
21:33
Speaker 2: on paper, because we need you as a police informant.
21:37
Speaker 2: What they used to call thief takers. They were kind
21:39
Speaker 2: of like the predecessors to bounty hunters, where anybody could
21:42
Speaker 2: go catch thieves and bring them in for money. He
21:46
Speaker 2: was an undercover version of that, and that's new, brand new.
21:50
Speaker 2: They did not have undercover police at the time. So
21:53
Speaker 2: Vidoc has basically carved out a totally unique, peculiar place
21:58
Speaker 2: for himself in the Paris Police. And it's largely because
22:02
Speaker 2: Jean Henry believes in him and sees also the value
22:08
Speaker 2: in him going back into the underworld and informing on them,
22:13
Speaker 2: not just from jail, but like from the actual outside
22:16
Speaker 2: crime world.
22:18
Speaker 3: And John Henry also said stay away from my.
22:20
Speaker 2: Wife exactly, I better not find you in bracing here.
22:25
Speaker 3: So as a cis what you would call it today,
22:29
Speaker 3: I guess he was doing his thing. He knew the
22:33
Speaker 3: people very well, he knew his old haunts. He was
22:38
Speaker 3: not unwilling to just hand over his friends and former
22:43
Speaker 3: sort of cohorts in the thievery world in the underworld.
22:48
Speaker 3: He would do that at a moment's notice. Dave Ruse
22:52
Speaker 3: helped us out with this. He found one case where
22:54
Speaker 3: he was actually in on a robbery, helped planet, helped
22:58
Speaker 3: execute the robbery, and then when the cops come, he
23:02
Speaker 3: pretended like he had been shot, so he could you know,
23:05
Speaker 3: get out of the whole thing.
23:07
Speaker 2: Well, no, so that the the the robbers who were
23:10
Speaker 2: there wouldn't know that he was a police informant. They
23:12
Speaker 2: would mean it was yeah. So and by the way,
23:15
Speaker 2: that that that burglar, the robber Saint Germain, was a
23:19
Speaker 2: really wanted man. He was also a murderer and it
23:23
Speaker 2: was actually a pretty interesting, I guess project that he
23:28
Speaker 2: undertook and got the guy. But and we didn't say. Also,
23:32
Speaker 2: the reason he was able to go back into the
23:35
Speaker 2: underworld again was because the police staged an escape, like
23:39
Speaker 2: they allowed him to escape to make it look like
23:42
Speaker 2: he'd broken out of prison, not that they'd released him,
23:44
Speaker 2: so that he would seem like it was Vidalk who'd
23:47
Speaker 2: broken out of prison again and now he was back
23:49
Speaker 2: in the Paris underworld.
23:51
Speaker 3: That's right. So this underworld at the time was it
23:55
Speaker 3: was a Paris where they policed in a in a
23:58
Speaker 3: way that wasn't an They were confined to districts, and
24:02
Speaker 3: if you were in a district, you couldn't go to
24:05
Speaker 3: another district to investigate. You had to stick to your district.
24:09
Speaker 3: The criminals at the time knew this. They were savvy
24:12
Speaker 3: and so they would commit crimes not near where they lived,
24:15
Speaker 3: which made it a lot easier to get away with stuff.
24:18
Speaker 3: And so Vedock comes in and says, hey, I was
24:21
Speaker 3: one of these guys. You guys are dumb and how
24:24
Speaker 3: you're doing things, because all you have to do is
24:27
Speaker 3: go on the other side of Paris to commit a
24:29
Speaker 3: crime and you're probably going to get away with it
24:31
Speaker 3: unless you're caught red handed. And so what you guys
24:33
Speaker 3: should do is continue to allow me to work undercover
24:37
Speaker 3: and know it's not something you've ever done, because you
24:39
Speaker 3: like to wear these ridiculous uniforms that identify you from
24:43
Speaker 3: a mile away, and get rid of these districts and
24:47
Speaker 3: allow cops to investigate wherever they need in order to
24:50
Speaker 3: solve a crime. And they said okay. In eighteen twelve
24:55
Speaker 3: they made Vedock chief of the security brigade in French
24:59
Speaker 3: it is the what.
25:00
Speaker 2: Were god de la surtee fantastic?
25:04
Speaker 3: And they said go hire some men, and he said,
25:07
Speaker 3: all right, I'm going to go hire eight former criminals
25:11
Speaker 3: x cons that I used to know. These are the
25:12
Speaker 3: best of the worst. And it's sort of like the
25:15
Speaker 3: dirty doesn't he's like, except that it was the dirty eight.
25:17
Speaker 3: This is the dirty Ocho and they said, come with me,
25:20
Speaker 3: and we're all going to be this undercover agent security brigade,
25:23
Speaker 3: or we're going to clean up Paris.
25:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that definitely undermines the idea that
25:28
Speaker 2: he had no loyalty whatsoever to people he'd met as
25:31
Speaker 2: a criminal in Paris. He just didn't have loyalty the
25:35
Speaker 2: actual real criminals. He distinguished the difference between people who
25:40
Speaker 2: commit crimes and actual criminals.
25:41
Speaker 3: And so he accused of disloyalty.
25:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean we said earlier that he had no
25:47
Speaker 2: loyalty whatsoever to the Paris criminal community.
25:51
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think so. I think he turned in
25:53
Speaker 3: people he thought should be turned in, right, was loyal
25:56
Speaker 3: to his friends.
25:56
Speaker 2: So these are the people that he picked. And yes,
25:59
Speaker 2: it's very, very unorthodox. And I think if Paris hadn't
26:05
Speaker 2: been overrun with crime, he never would have been able
26:07
Speaker 2: to put together a Paris wide undercover police force made
26:11
Speaker 2: up of ex convicts. It even sounds nuts today in
26:14
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, I can't imagine what it sounded like
26:17
Speaker 2: back in eighteen twelve. But his whole premise was, if
26:22
Speaker 2: you send somebody who's a cop, give me a great
26:26
Speaker 2: cop who could do undercover work. He'll get sniffed out
26:29
Speaker 2: immediately and they will murder him. He will die. You
26:33
Speaker 2: can't have people who don't come from this do this
26:38
Speaker 2: kind of work like That's it was very dangerous undercover work.
26:42
Speaker 2: And so that's the main reason why he chose these
26:45
Speaker 2: ex counts. But I also get the impression too, is
26:47
Speaker 2: that part of it was to just kind of demonstrate
26:50
Speaker 2: his point that just because somebody had done time and
26:54
Speaker 2: been convicted of a crime doesn't mean they could never
26:56
Speaker 2: be trustworthy.
26:57
Speaker 3: Again, I think he misspoke. I think snipped off the case, right.
27:01
Speaker 2: That's right, I mean, and how could I missed that one? Uh?
27:06
Speaker 3: Do we break now or do we go for a
27:07
Speaker 3: little bit longer?
27:08
Speaker 2: I think we should talk a little bit more about
27:10
Speaker 2: the Security Brigade.
27:13
Speaker 3: Okay, so started in eighteen twelve, Like you said, it
27:17
Speaker 3: turned out to be a really big success. Napoleon just
27:20
Speaker 3: a year later signed a decree that said the Security
27:23
Speaker 3: Brigade is a state police force now and you can
27:28
Speaker 3: have his up to twenty eight men is what they
27:30
Speaker 3: grew to. And I think through four or five years
27:35
Speaker 3: into it, they uh. And of course some of this
27:38
Speaker 3: stuff is we should say v duck would write a
27:41
Speaker 3: lot about his h and his memoirs and stuff. He
27:45
Speaker 3: was not shy about tooting his own horn, let's say.
27:48
Speaker 3: And he's one of those guys where like if you
27:50
Speaker 3: read his memoir there, you know, some of it could
27:53
Speaker 3: be boasting, some of it could be stretching the truth
27:55
Speaker 3: a little, but we do know that they were super successful. Like,
27:58
Speaker 3: no one is doubting that. But he touted fifteen murderers
28:03
Speaker 3: in just one year. Fifteen murders, three hundred and forty
28:06
Speaker 3: one thieves, thirty eight receivers of stolen goods, fourteen escaped convicts,
28:12
Speaker 3: forty three parole violations, forty six forgers, swindlers, con men,
28:16
Speaker 3: two hundred and twenty nine vagabonds and suspicious types. So
28:21
Speaker 3: they're they're kicking butt and taking names in Paris.
28:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, and make a note of this for later and
28:28
Speaker 2: put in your pipe in your hat that this this
28:33
Speaker 2: is a group of criminals who are showing up the
28:35
Speaker 2: regular police. Yeah, and the regular police are not really
28:39
Speaker 2: fans of being shown up in the public. Like the
28:41
Speaker 2: public was reading all about this stuff, and.
28:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're retting famous for it very much so.
28:46
Speaker 2: And they were pulling in like the big whales while
28:50
Speaker 2: the police were chasing down you know, pickpockets and stuff
28:55
Speaker 2: like that.
28:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oliver twists.
28:56
Speaker 2: So there was a definite rivalry. Yeah he was a pickpocket, right, No,
29:02
Speaker 2: I don't think so. Are you thinking of Annie? Annie
29:04
Speaker 2: was a pick No.
29:07
Speaker 3: I've already misspoken on Oliver Twist and Annie before, so
29:09
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna do it again. Forget everything I said,
29:11
Speaker 3: everybody right in.
29:13
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, for sure we.
29:15
Speaker 3: Know how to make the division symbol and a keyboard.
29:17
Speaker 2: Exactly, No, you do so he yuh? What was I saying, chuck?
29:23
Speaker 1: Uh?
29:24
Speaker 3: You were saying that he was landing the whales.
29:26
Speaker 2: Yes, So there was a lot of rivalry and disdain
29:30
Speaker 2: for the security brigade from the regular police. Just remember
29:34
Speaker 2: that they didn't like him.
29:36
Speaker 3: They did not, all right, So a few things, you know,
29:42
Speaker 3: they found some great anecdotes from the security brigade. We
29:45
Speaker 3: already know that he knew a lot about the crime
29:48
Speaker 3: world and these criminals, and he was apparently there was
29:53
Speaker 3: this one story where like he would know their methods,
29:55
Speaker 3: like specific people in their methods. And there was one
29:57
Speaker 3: story about this robbery that they found where a thief
30:01
Speaker 3: had cut around a lock and he was like, I
30:03
Speaker 3: know who did that, Like, I know that work. That
30:06
Speaker 3: is Foucard. And in the movie version, they said that
30:09
Speaker 3: can't be a facade falsades in prison and someone steps
30:13
Speaker 3: up and said facade escape from prison one week ago,
30:17
Speaker 3: and Beatog says, then it is him. That's awesome I scene.
30:21
Speaker 2: I feel like the guy who stepped up to inform
30:25
Speaker 2: everybody that he escaped from prison was agad or Spartacus
30:29
Speaker 2: from the Bird Cage.
30:31
Speaker 3: I never saw that movie.
30:34
Speaker 2: Really, I'm excited for you.
30:36
Speaker 3: Chuck, you big hole.
30:37
Speaker 2: You need to fill that hole, and you'll do it
30:40
Speaker 2: over and over again. You'll keep filling that hole over
30:42
Speaker 2: and over again because it's such a great movie and
30:45
Speaker 2: you can just watch it so many times. Uh.
30:48
Speaker 3: And I also don't email about end scene. We've already
30:51
Speaker 3: been over that before. It was just a joke.
30:52
Speaker 2: I meant and scene and scene.
30:56
Speaker 3: Uh what else? It was an envelope, a scrap of
30:58
Speaker 3: envelope with a half of address, and supposedly Vidoc was
31:02
Speaker 3: able to make out the full address because he knew
31:07
Speaker 3: about all the criminal hangouts, like this is where it
31:09
Speaker 3: must be.
31:09
Speaker 2: M h.
31:10
Speaker 3: That was that kind of hang.
31:11
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just like who else is going to
31:14
Speaker 2: be able to do that, nobuddy Vidoc. He also he
31:18
Speaker 2: was not shy about, you know, going out guns blazing.
31:21
Speaker 2: They got a tip that a stage coach was going
31:23
Speaker 2: to get knocked over in the forest outside of Paris,
31:26
Speaker 2: so they got on the stage coach undercover, and when
31:29
Speaker 2: the bandits inevitably showed up and stopped the stage coach,
31:32
Speaker 2: they got out and started just shooting, and it got
31:35
Speaker 2: root and tooting really fast.
31:40
Speaker 3: Now should we take a break.
31:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we've established that the security brigade was
31:44
Speaker 2: pretty successful.
31:45
Speaker 3: They were very successful. They're doing great work, and we'll
31:48
Speaker 3: be right back to talk about his pioneering work in criminology.
31:52
Speaker 2: Right for this, Chuck, I feel like in the movie version,
32:25
Speaker 2: that would have been a montage that we just discussed.
32:29
Speaker 3: I think dep Pardue it definitely was a montage. I
32:33
Speaker 3: think depard who played him in a movie called v Doc.
32:36
Speaker 3: But it wasn't like his life story. It was like
32:39
Speaker 3: a lot of mistakes I think movies make. They're just like, hey,
32:43
Speaker 3: let's just talk about this one central crime and plot,
32:47
Speaker 3: and Vdoc is the guy on the case.
32:50
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense. It sounds like they were trying
32:52
Speaker 2: to grow a franchise unsuccessfully.
32:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess he did that with the Charlotte Holmes movies.
32:57
Speaker 3: I think I'd just like to see a movie about him,
32:59
Speaker 3: like his life.
33:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, yeah, I mean, it rights itself.
33:03
Speaker 3: It does.
33:04
Speaker 2: Even if you strip away like the legend stuff, it
33:07
Speaker 2: rights itself. He's just that fascinating. So yeah, we called
33:11
Speaker 2: him the father of modern criminology, and not just us guys.
33:15
Speaker 2: Everybody calls him that. And the reason why is because
33:19
Speaker 2: he was pioneering all sorts of techniques of criminology. They're
33:24
Speaker 2: still used today.
33:25
Speaker 3: It's amazing it is.
33:26
Speaker 2: On the one hand, you can be like this is
33:28
Speaker 2: all low hanging fruit, like he's the first guy doing it,
33:31
Speaker 2: but when you put it all together, it's it's like
33:35
Speaker 2: he was a sharp dude. And it also shows how
33:39
Speaker 2: zeroed in and focused he was on fighting crime that
33:42
Speaker 2: this is what he thought.
33:43
Speaker 3: I think it was. I don't think it was low
33:44
Speaker 3: hanging fruit. If like, no one else is doing this stuff, right,
33:48
Speaker 3: I think that's a retrospective look like, I don't know.
33:52
Speaker 3: I think if it was low hanging people would have
33:54
Speaker 3: been doing it.
33:54
Speaker 2: Okay, you don't. Let's take ballistics for example, He's credited
33:58
Speaker 2: with doing the first ballistics comparison in the history of
34:03
Speaker 2: law enforcement.
34:04
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, eighteen twenty two, the body of Comtessa Isabelle
34:10
Speaker 3: Darci was found shot to death. They arrest the husband.
34:15
Speaker 3: Even back then, it's likely that the husband did it,
34:18
Speaker 3: and they took his dueling pistol and it's like, this is,
34:20
Speaker 3: you know, the murder weapon. And he was like, it
34:22
Speaker 3: wasn't me. She had an Italian lover, and I guarantee
34:25
Speaker 3: it was that guy. And Vidoc very simply was like, hey,
34:29
Speaker 3: let's remove that bullet from the skull. They got the
34:31
Speaker 3: bullet out and they were like, you can't put a
34:33
Speaker 3: bullet like that in a dueling pistol, and they tracked
34:37
Speaker 3: down the Italian lover. He confessed. And I see why
34:40
Speaker 3: he called low hanging fruit, because it seems like it
34:41
Speaker 3: makes so much sense just to say, well, hey, let's
34:43
Speaker 3: look at the bullet. But I don't know if no
34:46
Speaker 3: one else is suggesting it.
34:47
Speaker 2: No, no, for sure. And even if that had been
34:51
Speaker 2: his only, you know, contribution, you know, you would be like, yeah,
34:56
Speaker 2: that's need or whatever. But I wouldn't call it remarkable.
34:58
Speaker 2: It's the fact that he came up with so many,
35:00
Speaker 2: many different things.
35:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.
35:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the only reason I call it low hanging
35:03
Speaker 2: fruit is not to put him down, but because I
35:05
Speaker 2: think that over time somebody would have had the same thought. Right, No,
35:10
Speaker 2: one just had. But he was basically standing under the tree, spinning,
35:16
Speaker 2: grabbing all the fruit. That was one of the things
35:19
Speaker 2: that makes him remarkable. He was a fruit cramper.
35:22
Speaker 3: He was grabbing that falling fruit.
35:24
Speaker 2: I got another one.
35:26
Speaker 3: Let's hear it.
35:26
Speaker 2: Footprint analysis. Yeah, like, we would have no idea that
35:31
Speaker 2: bigfoot exists if vid doc hadn't come along and figured
35:34
Speaker 2: out that you can actually make a reverse a negative
35:37
Speaker 2: of a footprint if you fill the footprint in with
35:41
Speaker 2: plaster plaster of Paris appropriately.
35:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, He's like, can I get plaster? And they're like,
35:46
Speaker 3: this is Paris? What are kidding?
35:47
Speaker 2: It's everywhere. So he actually this was a lead heist.
35:51
Speaker 2: Someone had stolen a bunch of lead and it turned
35:55
Speaker 2: out to be a former police agent. But he he
35:57
Speaker 2: made a cast of the footprint compared to to the
36:00
Speaker 2: boot treads of other suspects and found one that matched.
36:03
Speaker 2: And the guy was like, yes, that was me, the
36:05
Speaker 2: DUC you found me out.
36:08
Speaker 3: Amazing. He also early on and this one, to me
36:11
Speaker 3: is really remarkable. He was like, all right, that footprint
36:14
Speaker 3: thing worked, and he was like, fingerprints, that's got to
36:17
Speaker 3: be a thing, Like look at these, look at this,
36:19
Speaker 3: Look at your thumb everybody, and everyone looked at their
36:22
Speaker 3: thumb and they all had you know, pastry cream on it,
36:28
Speaker 3: and so they licked it off and then looked at
36:29
Speaker 3: their thumb and they're like, oh wow. And he said,
36:32
Speaker 3: we could probably use this too, but they just couldn't
36:36
Speaker 3: find like a way to do it. They didn't have
36:38
Speaker 3: the technology yet. They couldn't find an ink that would
36:40
Speaker 3: work and record the fingerprints properly. So that didn't happen.
36:44
Speaker 3: But he had the idea.
36:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also so that ink in the forge proof
36:49
Speaker 2: paper he came up with while he ran a paper
36:51
Speaker 2: mill during one of his down periods between fighting crime.
36:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that was later in life. Wasn't that
36:58
Speaker 3: like a retirement job or Am I wrong about that?
37:00
Speaker 2: It was in between his reign as head of the
37:04
Speaker 2: Security Brigade and his next neck act.
37:08
Speaker 3: We'll just leave it at that, Okay, I got you.
37:11
Speaker 2: So what else?
37:12
Speaker 3: The other thing he did was he was really good.
37:15
Speaker 3: He had a great memory apparently, and was really good
37:17
Speaker 3: at remembering like the people and the faces of the
37:20
Speaker 3: people of the underworld and their names. And he was like,
37:25
Speaker 3: first thing he did was said, all of you cops
37:27
Speaker 3: should get good at that too, because that really helps
37:30
Speaker 3: if you like go to the prisons and observe the
37:33
Speaker 3: guys in the prison and the exercise yard and like
37:36
Speaker 3: remember their faces, remember their names. And maybe we should
37:39
Speaker 3: start writing this stuff down and keeping track of criminals. Actually,
37:44
Speaker 3: and they went to oil do we have never done
37:45
Speaker 3: such a thing, and he said, we'll start doing it.
37:48
Speaker 3: And that was the beginning of I mean, it was
37:52
Speaker 3: like a card catalog at the time, but that was
37:54
Speaker 3: the beginning of what do you call it?
37:57
Speaker 2: The criminal database? Yeah, mental database, y profiling, sure, but
38:03
Speaker 2: I mean it was everything like if you were a forger,
38:06
Speaker 2: they would have a sample of your handwriting. Like it
38:09
Speaker 2: was really detailed. I saw that it had I think
38:12
Speaker 2: thirty thousand crooks information but it covered millions of pages. Essentially. Yeah,
38:18
Speaker 2: they were really like into it. And then another thing
38:20
Speaker 2: he helped establish was essentially the criminal profiling from a
38:25
Speaker 2: psychological standpoint. He wrote a treatise called lesva LUs Psychology
38:32
Speaker 2: de lu.
38:33
Speaker 3: Mouse a psychology Physiology.
38:36
Speaker 2: Okay, let me try that again. Lesv LUs Cologne physiology
38:43
Speaker 2: delu mour a de lu langau longa longog. I think
38:50
Speaker 2: that's how you say language, but anyway, it means thieves.
38:52
Speaker 2: And I added the colon. And he actually used a
38:54
Speaker 2: comma an anatomy of their mores and their language. And
38:58
Speaker 2: it was a study of like the mind of a thief,
39:01
Speaker 2: and it was evidence based, like it was a scientific
39:04
Speaker 2: paper that he wrote about the criminal mind. And I
39:09
Speaker 2: think that actually undermines the idea that his memoirs were
39:12
Speaker 2: like him just being over the top. I saw that
39:16
Speaker 2: he had written a manuscript for his memoirs, handed it in.
39:19
Speaker 2: Then after he handed it in, the publisher hired a
39:22
Speaker 2: ghostwriter to punch it, and that he wasn't super happy
39:25
Speaker 2: about that when he found the final product when he
39:28
Speaker 2: read the book.
39:30
Speaker 3: So oh, he's in fact a humble man.
39:32
Speaker 2: I don't know about that, but I don't he was
39:35
Speaker 2: as boastful as he has a reputation for based on
39:37
Speaker 2: his memoirs.
39:38
Speaker 3: Okay, Like we mentioned, he was a master of disguise,
39:43
Speaker 3: as were his men in his police force. And they
39:47
Speaker 3: could do it all. They were like Monty Python. They
39:49
Speaker 3: would dress up as, like we said, nuns and women
39:51
Speaker 3: and old people, young people, thieves obviously, and it was
39:56
Speaker 3: a time and it sounds a little nonsensical that thieves
39:59
Speaker 3: would dress and speak in a certain way and wear
40:02
Speaker 3: their hair in a certain way, but there's been times
40:05
Speaker 3: in history when that was the case, like a if
40:08
Speaker 3: you look at it, some of the old gangster British
40:11
Speaker 3: gangsters of a time sort of did the same thing.
40:14
Speaker 3: You carry yourself and I think today even and you
40:16
Speaker 3: would call it profiling, but you know, there's there's certain
40:20
Speaker 3: ways of dress to sort of be in the world
40:23
Speaker 3: where crimes are happening. There always has been.
40:25
Speaker 2: You wear track suits, yeah.
40:28
Speaker 3: Oh no, I'm wearing a tracksuit right now.
40:30
Speaker 2: Criminal, I would turn you the fire of a dock.
40:34
Speaker 3: But they had their own style, so they would obviously
40:37
Speaker 3: were very good at mimicking that style. And in the
40:40
Speaker 3: memoirs and this you know, could have been a ghostwriter
40:43
Speaker 3: because it is very flourishy. Apparently he had a habit,
40:47
Speaker 3: very cinematically of pulling off his mask or's costume at
40:52
Speaker 3: the at the last moment and saying it is I
40:55
Speaker 3: viduc as the shackles are being put on the criminal, yes,
40:59
Speaker 3: or like Tom Cruise, any mission I possible movie.
41:01
Speaker 2: It's right, so Chuck, I said. Everybody should remember that
41:04
Speaker 2: he had lots of enemies in the real police, regular police,
41:08
Speaker 2: and they they routinely accused him of illegal activity like
41:13
Speaker 2: planning evidence, accepting bribes, and trapping people, kidnapping young women
41:18
Speaker 2: to take them off to convents to become nuns at
41:21
Speaker 2: their parents' behest. Yeah, I saw that all of the stuff.
41:24
Speaker 2: These are accusations. None of these things were ever proven.
41:27
Speaker 2: He was never even taken a court for most of them.
41:30
Speaker 2: There were two cases that solid his reputation that gave
41:34
Speaker 2: the police the chance to really drag him through the mud.
41:38
Speaker 2: One was that one of his agents was accused of
41:42
Speaker 2: helping a group of robbers that he actually busted. That
41:46
Speaker 2: he had taken some money from them for bringing a
41:48
Speaker 2: key so they could break into a place easier. He
41:51
Speaker 2: got two years. It's not clear that that actually did happen,
41:54
Speaker 2: but the guy got two years anyway. And Vidoc had
41:57
Speaker 2: so laid his reputation on the line that not only
42:00
Speaker 2: he could be trusted, but his agents could be trusted too,
42:04
Speaker 2: that he resigned. He was like, that's fine, I'll resign.
42:07
Speaker 2: I'm clearly not meant for this any longer, Like my
42:09
Speaker 2: reputation has been tarnished, and I'm just going to go
42:11
Speaker 2: off and start a paper mill. He was brought back
42:15
Speaker 2: and he was the head for another year something like that,
42:19
Speaker 2: and then he said, you know what, forget this, I'm
42:21
Speaker 2: going to go out and start my own detective agency,
42:24
Speaker 2: the world's first detective agency, I think, almost twenty years
42:29
Speaker 2: before the Pinkertons even started.
42:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think part of the I think it was
42:34
Speaker 3: twofold a is for the cops, like they definitely didn't
42:37
Speaker 3: like that he was out shining them, and I think
42:40
Speaker 3: they were always suspicious that he never left his criminal
42:43
Speaker 3: pass behind because he lived beyond his means of his salary.
42:50
Speaker 3: I saw, so I can't remember how much he made
42:52
Speaker 3: as a salary. I think it was like five thousand
42:56
Speaker 3: francs at the time, and he lived as a man
43:01
Speaker 3: who had much more money than that. So he had
43:03
Speaker 3: all kinds of side hustles. He was in real estate.
43:05
Speaker 3: Think he helped run a tavern, and so he made
43:09
Speaker 3: extra money doing other things. And I think they were
43:11
Speaker 3: always suspicious that he was still dabbling in criminality. One
43:16
Speaker 3: thing he did that was I thought fairly interesting, and
43:21
Speaker 3: I'm not sure how illegal it was. There was a
43:23
Speaker 3: thing at the time where you could pay somebody to
43:27
Speaker 3: take your place in the army. Basically, if you didn't
43:30
Speaker 3: want to go to the army, you could offer up
43:32
Speaker 3: a substitute. You could pay that substitute, and they were
43:34
Speaker 3: glad to take the money to do that. And what
43:36
Speaker 3: he would do was he would catch a criminal and say, hey,
43:40
Speaker 3: you want to go to prison or you want to
43:42
Speaker 3: go to the army. And if they said I'd rather
43:44
Speaker 3: go the army, he would say, here's your substitute, Now
43:46
Speaker 3: give me my money. So whether or not that's actually illegal,
43:50
Speaker 3: who knows. It's borderline. And I think stuff like that
43:56
Speaker 3: sort of made the cops added to their ire I
44:00
Speaker 3: think because he was making more money than they were.
44:02
Speaker 2: So did that. That definitely happened. That was proven that
44:05
Speaker 2: he did that. That wasn't just an accusation that like
44:08
Speaker 2: turned into fact over time.
44:10
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I read it in a book. Uh
44:13
Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't like some internet articles show it
44:16
Speaker 3: was from an actual book.
44:17
Speaker 2: It was not on YouTube, No, it was.
44:19
Speaker 3: It wasn't a book.
44:20
Speaker 2: Okay, So regardless of this, he has he's founded this
44:24
Speaker 2: new this detective agency again the first detective agency in
44:27
Speaker 2: the world. And he started out basically collaring white collar
44:32
Speaker 2: criminals for large you know, corporate clients, people who swindled them,
44:38
Speaker 2: made off with money and bezzled that kind of stuff.
44:41
Speaker 2: And there was one case in particular, uh, And this
44:45
Speaker 2: was after years years of this successful detective agency continuing
44:49
Speaker 2: to show up the security brigade that his successor's brother
44:54
Speaker 2: ran a bank and when the bank got knocked over,
44:57
Speaker 2: the brother came to the doc the head of the
45:01
Speaker 2: security brigade who he was related to. So there was
45:05
Speaker 2: a case where a guy he had caught a guy
45:08
Speaker 2: who had absconded with money. He brought him into the
45:11
Speaker 2: office for questioning and got the guy, convinced the guy
45:14
Speaker 2: to give up like twenty two hundred francs to just
45:17
Speaker 2: begin repayment, put it in his account as he normally did,
45:22
Speaker 2: to then hand over to the people who'd hired him
45:25
Speaker 2: less than forty five percent they promised him for finding
45:27
Speaker 2: right that happened, and a week later the cops show
45:32
Speaker 2: up and arrests him for false imprisonment, impersonating a police officer,
45:37
Speaker 2: and taking bribes essentially. And this is where his reputation
45:42
Speaker 2: really got tarnished.
45:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a by most accounts, it was a setup,
45:47
Speaker 3: like a complete set right.
45:49
Speaker 2: Like he they looked all over to find people who
45:53
Speaker 2: would say in court that he was a crook. They
45:56
Speaker 2: couldn't find anybody, even other criminals. They couldn't find anybody
46:01
Speaker 2: except for this one guy, COMPI, who was the one
46:05
Speaker 2: person who accused him. So he regardless is convicted given
46:12
Speaker 2: I think like five or six years, and within apparently
46:16
Speaker 2: weeks find he gets his case in front of the
46:18
Speaker 2: appellate court, who took like less than a day to
46:22
Speaker 2: throw the case out because he'd clearly been railroaded and
46:25
Speaker 2: exonerated him. But his reputation had been so solid even
46:28
Speaker 2: at the time, his star really fell and he looked
46:32
Speaker 2: around for somebody to sell the detective detective agency to.
46:36
Speaker 2: Apparently there were plenty of buyers, but they were like fraudsters,
46:40
Speaker 2: just looking to take advantage of people. So he just
46:43
Speaker 2: closed the thing down instead. Amazing, And there's here's another example.
46:47
Speaker 2: So you hear that he got ten months. He spent
46:50
Speaker 2: ten months in jail for that crime, right impersonating a
46:54
Speaker 2: police officer and all that he didn't he spent ten
46:58
Speaker 2: months in between the time he was incused, in the
47:00
Speaker 2: time he was finally brought to trial, and then after
47:04
Speaker 2: that he was acquitted within weeks of being convicted. Does
47:09
Speaker 2: that make sense, Like that kind of detail like matters
47:12
Speaker 2: hundreds of years on it does.
47:15
Speaker 3: So the cherry on top of this story is that
47:18
Speaker 3: Vidoc left behind a really interesting literary legacy, and not
47:24
Speaker 3: only just the books he wrote. He wrote memoirs, like
47:27
Speaker 3: we said, he wrote that that crime book, the science
47:32
Speaker 3: book that was so great. But Victor Hugo, he had
47:35
Speaker 3: friends like this, Victor Hugo and Balzac one of my
47:39
Speaker 3: favorite names. They use him as inspiration. If you read
47:43
Speaker 3: the book le Meserab or go see that Broadway show.
47:47
Speaker 3: If you see that awesome movie and you cry every
47:49
Speaker 3: time Anne Hathaway sings like I do.
47:52
Speaker 2: It's amazing because she's good or bad at it?
47:55
Speaker 3: Have you never seen it?
47:56
Speaker 2: No? I saw. Though it's stage play.
47:59
Speaker 3: It's great for the music, Jesus great. They did something
48:02
Speaker 3: different in that musical where they they didn't lip sync.
48:05
Speaker 3: They actually recorded them singing in the moment on stage,
48:09
Speaker 3: on the scene, and they had never done that before.
48:11
Speaker 3: And so it's like palpable and real and boy it's good.
48:16
Speaker 3: I loved it. So ley Miz though is the story
48:20
Speaker 3: about a man who gets put in jail for stealing bread.
48:24
Speaker 3: So that might sound familiar from Vdock's real life, but
48:30
Speaker 3: apparently Hugo actually used both of the characters Jean Valjean
48:35
Speaker 3: and who's the other guy? Javert as inspirations. You know,
48:41
Speaker 3: he was the inspiration for both because he was both
48:44
Speaker 3: criminal and cought. Later on, not only that, but mentioned Baalzac.
48:50
Speaker 3: He cited Vdoc specifically as inspiration for Valtrind his character. Then,
48:57
Speaker 3: of course, once you see who the character is, it
48:59
Speaker 3: makes a lot of sense. Escape convict and criminal mastermind
49:03
Speaker 3: who repents and becomes a police officer, a minister police
49:07
Speaker 3: in Italy. Yeah, not bad.
49:10
Speaker 2: So what's widely believed to be the first modern detective
49:15
Speaker 2: novel was The Murders in the Room Morgue by Edgar
49:18
Speaker 2: Allan Poe, and there's an amateur French detective named Dupin
49:22
Speaker 2: and Poe said that he definitely based Dupinn on Vidoc.
49:29
Speaker 2: One that's a little less clear, a little less direct,
49:32
Speaker 2: is Sherlock Holmes. There's some traits between Sherlock Holmes and Vidoc,
49:37
Speaker 2: like Masters of Disguise and like dealing with the criminal
49:40
Speaker 2: underworld for information and all that stuff. But Sherlock Holmes
49:44
Speaker 2: was based on a French detective that came before Monsieur Lecoq,
49:49
Speaker 2: and Emil Gaborio, who wrote the books that Lecoq was
49:54
Speaker 2: the protagonist of definitely modeled Lecoq on Vidoc. Lecoq was
50:01
Speaker 2: based on Vidoc, and Sake. Sherlock Holmes was based on Lacock.
50:07
Speaker 3: So I think by transitive property. Oh nice, is that it?
50:11
Speaker 2: I hope?
50:12
Speaker 3: So man mass.
50:15
Speaker 2: So that's it.
50:17
Speaker 3: What a guy?
50:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, he definitely deserves a at least a decent movie.
50:24
Speaker 2: If not, that's a franchise, you know what I mean.
50:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, in can't you find someone besides George de Pardieu?
50:30
Speaker 3: I mean surely, I feel like he was just the
50:33
Speaker 3: guy for so long. He's old now, and I think
50:36
Speaker 3: he didn't get me too.
50:37
Speaker 2: I don't know. I know that France kind of was like,
50:41
Speaker 2: you stink because he moved so we wouldn't have to
50:43
Speaker 2: pay high taxes. Maybe that's that's the last thing I
50:46
Speaker 2: heard of. Oh there's one other thing. There's a group
50:49
Speaker 2: called the Vidoc Society in Philadelphia, that's made up of
50:52
Speaker 2: like criminologists and people in law enforcement who take cold
50:56
Speaker 2: cases on pro bono during their monthly lunches and try
50:59
Speaker 2: to inject new life into the cases.
51:02
Speaker 3: You know, they love that name for sure. The v
51:05
Speaker 3: DOC Society cool and they all come in in disguise
51:09
Speaker 3: and then rip off their masks. I at lunch, it's
51:13
Speaker 3: right every day.
51:15
Speaker 2: Well, that's VIDOC for you. If you want to know
51:17
Speaker 2: more about them. There's a lot of interesting contradictory stuff
51:21
Speaker 2: out there to read. And since I said contradictory, that means,
51:24
Speaker 2: of course it's time for listener mail.
51:27
Speaker 3: I'm going to call this my Way or the Skyway.
51:32
Speaker 3: That has nothing to do with it. It's just about
51:33
Speaker 3: the Skyway disaster. We heard from a doctor. This is
51:37
Speaker 3: a really good email. Hey, guys, just recently started listening
51:40
Speaker 3: to the show. Found the episode of high regency Skywalk
51:43
Speaker 3: disaster very interesting. I'm a physician and was in residency
51:47
Speaker 3: at a hospital in Kansas City, not far from the
51:50
Speaker 3: Crown Center at that time, and I was on call
51:53
Speaker 3: that Friday night and was watching TV with a number
51:55
Speaker 3: of other residents when I heard the news and we
51:59
Speaker 3: knew that we were in for a busy night. I'm
52:01
Speaker 3: writing in basically to mention two things I thought you
52:04
Speaker 3: might find interesting. Ironically, the Kansas City metro area had
52:07
Speaker 3: planned for a mass disaster drill the next day. Of course,
52:12
Speaker 3: the drill was canceled and instead the response to the
52:15
Speaker 3: actual disaster was analyzed, resulting in significant changes for future
52:19
Speaker 3: plans for a response to a mass disaster. Now that's incredible.
52:24
Speaker 3: And this one. Both of my sons graduated from college
52:27
Speaker 3: with engineering degrees a few years ago. They were taught
52:30
Speaker 3: about the high disaster in their classes and there's still
52:33
Speaker 3: lessons to be learned from what happened even decades later.
52:36
Speaker 3: And that is from doctor Paul M. Jost of Kansas City.
52:42
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, doctor Jost. That was an amazing email. Like, geez,
52:46
Speaker 2: it's some background right there.
52:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, and hey, way to get on listener mail as
52:50
Speaker 3: a new listener. That's well done.
52:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, just pat yourself on the back. Tick off your
52:55
Speaker 2: lab coat so you have a little extra stretching room
52:57
Speaker 2: and pat yourself on the back.
52:59
Speaker 3: That's right. And also, doc, I got this shoulder thing
53:02
Speaker 3: going on.
53:03
Speaker 1: Sorry.
53:04
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to be like doctor Jos and
53:06
Speaker 2: send us some really r kane info about an episode
53:10
Speaker 2: that we did. We love to hear that stuff. You
53:12
Speaker 2: can send it to us, feed email, It's stuff podcast
53:15
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
53:20
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
53:23
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53:27
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