Stuff You Should Know - The Criminal Father of Criminology

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

Eugene 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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you really want to know what's going on in this country heading into the 2024 election, you have to get away from the extremes and listen to the middle. Hi, Jan here in Kansas City, Missouri. On the podcast, the middle with Jeremy Hobson, I'll take calls live every week, elevating the voices of Americans who are so important when it comes to whos in power and what gets done. My name is Venkat, I'm calling you from Atlanta, Georgia. Listen to the middle with Jeremy Hobson on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mo Raka, and I'm excited to announce season four of my podcast, Mo Bituaries. I've got a whole new bunch of stories to share with you about the most fascinating people and things who are no longer with us, from famous figures who died on the very same day, to the things I wish would die, like buffets.

Listen to MoPituaries with MoRaka on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. 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. Yeah boy, this guy could, you could do a tin parter on his life. Easily. I mean, it's not so. We're talking about a man named

Eugene Fancywa Viroc. He is known as the father of criminology. Yeah. Pretty much on the nose. It's a really good title for him. 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 incredibly 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 a time where the army was very busy, I guess, is the best way to say it. And 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 they don't stepped up in a big way. And like I said, I had to stop researching because I was like, we can't do a 12 hour podcast on this guy. Right. No, but you can definitely go down a rabbit hole with them. And one of the reasons why is because depending on the source you you consult, he was either a total scumbag scoundrel or genuinely unjustly slandered.

I lean 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. Smearing his name so well that it still is around today. Here's what I think is that he was, as you'll see, started off as a scoundrel in 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 scoundrel lived within him, but he also had people that had it out for him. I think it's a complex guy. I don't think he did a 180 and was like, and now I am pure. 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 Vidak is famous, if you have heard of him, is because not only was 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 a 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 with his early life, right? Because he was unquestionably a troublemaker, a hothead, 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 him as a juvenile delinquent today. But it wasn't because he was some, I mean, you would classify him 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 it? Aras. I think so, yeah.

ARAS. And it seemed rather middle class, but like you said, he stole from his parents. He was a scoundrel. He picked 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 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 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 15 year old, he said some kind of a trist with the wife of the guy who was running the thing. Yes, so that- 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 to desire. That's a very nice way to say it. So he moved back home

He went back to Arras or us and his I don't know if we said his dad was a baker and his parents were just Totally normal fine parents, but again, they basically, when he was caught stealing from them, when he was 13, they said, okay, you're going to jail. When you move back home after the circus and the Punch and Judy show, he wasn't even 16 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, while he was 15. That's how bad a kid he was. Yeah, I think he was drinking, getting fights and womanizing. And you know, he's just one of those kids. They probably just say today that he was, I don't know, what would you call it? A hot head? Yeah, teenage hot head. Yeah. 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 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 adventures. 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. He 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. 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 them and he smacked the sergeant around. That is not something you do in any army at any period of time. He took off and was now a deserty from the army and this is when his actual Like criminal life really began everything else was petty Intemperate 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 So 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 Armee Roulant. Okay, the Armee Roulant, which was everything I saw about this was that it was a side army. I think it was a couple of thousand men and 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 it all just a thing to like wonder 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 work fake uniforms and he made up a rank for himself and took a alias. He was Lieutenant Russo and eventually even made himself captain. I don't know why I didn't start off at Skepton as long as he's making things up. Yeah. He kind of sold himself short there I don't know why I didn't start off at captain as long as he's making things up.

Yeah, he kind of sold himself short, there didn't he? He became captain eventually. So he ended up in Paris eventually after he left the Arme Roulant. And this is around 1795. The French Revolution had had been successful. But there's something to understand about it. Like, one of the reasons Paris was so over and 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. It was a mess It was a mess first Napoleon comes along and 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 protagonist dies. But like throughout all this time, like 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, particularly in Paris, because a lot of people were also coming to Paris looking for opportunity and that kind of thing. And so, just put that in your pipe and hold it in your hat for later, because 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's sort of through his 20s and into his 30s He was in and out of prison kind of off and on because of various schemes. It was never like, I'm not gonna 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 seem to be kind of like on the more intelligent side. He was definitely intelligent. 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 the bread guy was? Yes, 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 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 were starving. He's the bread guy, by the way. The bread guy, right? The 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 he signed as the head of,

I think the prisoner of the police, saying like this man is to be released, his sentence has been commuted, and the guy made it, 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 the B.A.G.N.O. The bag no. The bag no. Like, if you've ever seen the movie, I looked into these, the movie Pappy on 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 he as you will see later. he was in fact a master of disguise. It 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 on to the land. They were ships, giant ships with tons of ores sticking out of them. And you would be sentenced to hard labor rowing those ores 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 law enforcement as well. So his star is starting to rise. And I think as we reach this point, Chuck, it's time for message break. What do you think? As we reach this point Chuck, it's time for message break. What do you think? As we reach this point, I agree.

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or just interested in it. In each episode, we give our hot takes on hot topics and always answer what's on your mind's too. Just look for the brand new podcast on the iHeart Podcast Network, or wherever you listen. It's a brand new conversation that you won't want to miss. Alright, so where we left off, VDoc has escaped prison a couple of times. He was a juvenile delinquent. He was a delinquent into his 20s and into his 30s through his 20s and into his 30s.

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 threatened to turn him in because he was a fug in a bad spot because if he said no, he would get blackmail by these low lives and threaten to turn him in because he was a fugitive at this point still. Right.

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 1809, he said, I'm going to go to the cops and I'm going to 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 going to 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. That still is. He was an inform, sure, he was an informant, a volunteer informant for the police, and 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. He had made a lot of bad decisions. He knew that and that had made him run afoul of the law. But he wasn't a criminal.

That's not how he wanted to support himself. He didn't have the heart'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 wanna be a criminal anymore. I don't wanna be associated with these people. I wanted to change sides and this is how I'm gonna try to do it. Or another way to look at it is that 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 for not. Those were his choices. That's how deep the holy duck was. And the thing is Chuck, no matter how you interpret it, 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, but I don't know that I'd 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 voices 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 that wasn't his 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 criminal. Somebody who would slit your throat for like your wallet or something like that. Like 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 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 undercover narc agent for Nixon. Oh, totally. 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 Vidoc. 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. I totally agree. I totally believe that. Like, there's nothing but innocent people in prison if you ask them. You know, sure. That was, what's it called? Chashing. Oh, is that who that was? Yeah, I remember that great scene when they were lunch or whatever, when they were all saying 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 he 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 Josephine's 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 on to that, 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 Henry, 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 with Vidoc. He was all in for this guy. So he said, okay, we're going to 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 a an undercover Version of that and that's new brand new. They did not have undercover police at the time So Vedoka is basically carved out a totally unique peculiar place for himself in the Paris police and it's largely because John Henry believes in him. And it sees also the value in him going back into the underworld and informing on them, not just from jail, but from actual outside crime world. And John Henry also said, stay away from my wife. Yeah, exactly. I better not find you embracing her.

So as a CI is 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 and 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 plan it, helped execute the robbery, and then when the cops 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 think that he was yeah so and by the way that that that burglar the robber or saint germane was a really wanted man he was also a murderer 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 he 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 way that wasn't tenable. 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 V.com's 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 1812, they made Vitochif of

the Security Brigade in French. It is the what? Regarde la Suerte. Suerte. Fantastic, and they said, go hire some men. And he said, all right, I'm gonna go hire eight former criminals, ex-cons that I used to know. These are the best of the worst. And it's sort of like the dirty dozen.

He's like, except it was the dirty eight. It was the dirty Ocho. And they said, come with me, and we're all gonna be this undercover agent, security brigade, and we're gonna clean to be this undercover agent security brigade. We're going to clean up Paris. Yeah, and I think that definitely undermines the idea that he had no loyalty whatsoever to the people he'd met as a criminal in Paris.

He just didn't have loyalty to the actual real criminals. He distinguished the difference between people who commit crimes and actual criminals. And so he- Will 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 unorthodox. And I think if Paris hadn't been overrun with crime, he'd 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 2023. I can't imagine what it sounded like back in 1812. 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 that just because somebody had done time and been convicted of a crime doesn't mean they could never be trustworthy again.

I think you mispoke. I think you meant snipped off the case, right? That's right. I mean, how could I miss that one? 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 1812, like you said, it turned out to be a really big success. The Polian just a year later signed a decree that said the security brigade is a state police force now and you can have it up to 28 men is what they grew to. And I think through four

or five years into it, they, and of course some of this stuff is, we should say, VDuck would write a lot about his and his memoirs and stuff. He was not shy about tuning his own horn, we should say, VDuck would write a lot about his memoirs and stuff. He was not shy about tooting his own horn, let's say. He's one of those guys where if you read his memoir, 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. No one is doubting that. But he touted 15 murders in just one year. 15 murders, 341 thieves, 38 receivers of stolen goods,

14 escaped convicts, 43 parole violations, 46 foragers, swindlers, con men, 229 vagabonds, and suspicious types. So they're kicking butt and taking names in Paris. Yeah, and make a note of this for later and put it in your pipe and 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 was reading all about this stuff. And they were getting famous for it.

Very much so. And they were pulling in like the big whales while the police were chasing down, you know, pick pockets and stuff like that. Yeah, Oliver Twist. So there was a definite rivalry. Sure, yeah, he was a pickpocket, right? No, I don't think so.

How are you thinking of Annie? Annie was a pickpocket right? No, I don't think so. I think any any was a pick now I've already been spoken on Oliver twist and Annie before so I'm not gonna do it again. Forget everything I said everybody don't write in so yeah, yeah, for sure we know how to make the division symbol on a keyboard exactly now We do so he yeah, what was I saying in Chuck? know we do. So, um, he, yeah, what was I saying in 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. Uh, all right. So, uh, a few things, you know know they found some great anecdotes from the security brigade uh... we already know that he knew a lot about the crime world in these criminals

and he was uh... apparently those is one story where like he would know their methods like specific people in their methods and there was one story about uh... this robbery that they found where a thief had cut around a lock and he was like i I know who did that. Like I know that work. That is Fosard.

And in the movie version, they said, that can't be Fosard. Fosard is in prison. And someone steps up and said, Fosard escaped from prison one week ago. And Vidok says, then it is him. That's awesome. I think I've seen.

I feel like the guy who stepped up to inform everybody that he escaped from prison was Agador Sparta kiss from the birdcage. I never saw that movie. Really? I'm excited for you, Chuck. You're my 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. You can just watch it so many times. And I also don't email about N-scene. We've already been over that before. It's just a joke. I'm at N-scene. What else? It was an envelope, a scrap of envelope with a half of an address. Supposedly, Vidak was able to make out the

full address because he knew about all the criminal hangouts, like this is where it must be. That was a that kind of thing. I mean, that's just like, who else is going to be able to do that? Nobody. Vidak. 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 rooting tootin 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. Our first call is Mary in Lexington, Kentucky. Mary, welcome to the middle. Hello, and thanks for having me. If you really want to know what's going on in this country heading into the 2024 election, you have to get away from the extremes and listen to the middle. Hi, my name is Venkat. I'm calling you from Atlanta, Georgia.

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I'm prepared to guide you, or listeners, through some of life's funniest, awkward, or difficult moments. Listen to Oldish on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I think Deppardu played him in a movie called VDoc, 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 Sherlock Holmes movies. I think I'd just like to see a movie about him like his real life. Yeah, like, yeah, I mean, it writes itself.

It does. Even if you strip away, like the legend stuff, it writes itself. He's just that fascinating. So we call them 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 like he was a sharp dude and it also shows how zeroed in and focused he was on fighting crime. This is what he thought about. I don't think it was low hanging fruit. 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 1822, the body of Comtesa Isabel Darcy 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 the murder weapon. And he was like, it wasn't me. She had an Italian lover and I guarantee it was that guy. And VDoc 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 caught low-heeing 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 contribution, you know, you would be like, yeah, that's neat or whatever, but I wouldn't call it remarkable. It's the fact that he came up with so many different things. Yeah, yeah.

And the only reason I caught low hanging fruit is not to put him down, but because I think that over time, somebody would have had the same thought. I agree. But they'd know and 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-crabber. He was grabbing that falling fruit. I got another one. Let's hear it. Footprint analysis? Is a good one. Yeah.

Like we would have no idea that big foot exists if Vidot 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, a plaster of Paris appropriately. Yeah, he's fill the footprint in with plaster, a plaster of Paris appropriately. Yeah, he's like, can I get plaster in there? And they're like, this is Paris, what are you getting?

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 made a cast of the footprint compared it to the boot treads of other suspects and found one that matched in the guy was like yes it was me vidoc you found me out amazing uh he

also early on in this one to me is really remarkable he he was like all right that footprint thing worked and he was like fingerprints that's gotta be a thing like look at these look at this look at your thumb everybody 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. 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 Forgeproof paper, he came up with, well, he ran a paper mill during one of his down periods between fighting crime. Yeah, I think that was later in life. Wouldn'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 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 the people and the faces of the people of the underworld and their names and he was like first thing you 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 and prison and exercise yard and

remember their faces remember their names and maybe we should start writing this stuff down and keeping track of criminals actually, and they went, oh, 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, criminal database. Yeah, profiling.

Sure. the criminal database. Yeah, criminal database. Yeah, 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 30,000 crooks information, but it covered millions of pages essentially. That's awesome. 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 Leveluurs psychology de l'oub murs a de l'oub murs a'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h'h' 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 up. So they guessed it up. And that he wasn't super happy about that when he found the final product when he read the book. So he's in fact a humble man. I don't know about that, but I don't think 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 and 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 if you look at it, some of the old gangsters, 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 there's certain ways of

dress to sort of be in the world where crimes are happening. They're always has been. You wear track suits. Yeah. Oh no. I'm wearing a track suit right now. Friminal.

I would turn you in the fiber of a duck. But they had their own style, so they would obviously, we're very good at mimicking that style. And in the memoirs, know, could have been a ghost writer because it is very flourishing. Apparently he had a habit, very cinematically of pulling off his mask or his costume at the last moment and saying, it is I, VDoc, as the shackles are being put on the criminal. Yes. Or like Tom Cruise in any mission possible movie. That's right. So Chuck, I said everybody should remember that he had lots of enemies in the real police regular police and

They've very 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 that their, but has. 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 solidous 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 a Vidak 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 sort of paper mill. He was brought back and he was the head for another year or 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 20 years before the Pinkerton's even started. Yeah, I think part of the,

I think it was twofold is for the cops. Like they definitely didn't like that he was outshining them. And I think they were always suspicious that he never leftshining them and i think they were always suspicious that he never left his criminal past behind because he lived beyond his means of his salary uh... i saw so i can't remember how much he made as a salary i think it was like five thousand

from franks franks at the time uh... 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. I 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 to the army, he would say, 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 to 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. Yeah. And I think stuff like that sort of made the cops that just added to their eye, I think, because he was making more money than they were. So did that definitely happen? 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. You know, it wasn't like some internet article. It was from an actual book. It was not on YouTube.

Now it was it was in 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, coloring, white collar criminals for large, you know, corporate clients, people who swindled them made off with money and bezeleled that kind of stuff. And there was one case in particular, and this was after years, years of this successful detective agency continuing to show up the security brigade, the his successors brother ran a bank and when the bank got knocked over, the brother came to the dock, not 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 2200 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 the 45% they promised him for finding, right? That happened. And a week later, the cops show up and arrest him for false imprisonment and 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 setup.

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, Kampai, 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, he gets his case in front of the appellate court who took, like less than a day to throw the case out because he 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 here's another example. So you hear that he got 10 months. He spent 10 months in jail for that crime, right? Impersonating a police officer and all that. He didn't.

He spent 10 months in between the time he was incused and the time he was finally brought to trial. And then after that, he was acquitted within weeks of being convicted. Does that make sense? That kind of detail matters hundreds of years on. It does. So the cherry on top of this story is that VDoc left behind a really interesting literary legacy. And not only just the books he wrote, he wrote memoirs, like we said.

He wrote 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, Les Miserables, or go see that Broadway show, if you see that also movie and you cry every time and half the way sings like I do, it's amazing. Because it's, she's good or bad at it. Have you never seen it? No, I saw the stage play. It's great.

Her music. Great. They did something different in that musical where they, they didn't lip sync. Oh, it's stage play. It's great. For the music. She's great. They did something different in that musical where 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 poof boy. It's good. I loved it.

So Lay Miz, though, is the story about a man who gets put in jail for stealing bread. So that might sound familiar from the Docks real life. But apparently Hugo actually used both of the characters Jean-Valle Jean and who's the other guy? I respect you, Javier. Javier, as inspiration, he was the inspiration for both because he was both criminal and cop later on not only that but mentioned ballzac he cited v doc specifically as inspiration for valtrein 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 and the Rue Morg by Edgar Allan Poe. And there's a amateur French detective named DuPin. And Poe said that he definitely based DuPin 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, Mishur Le Coque and Emil Geboreo, who wrote the books that Le Coque was the protagonist of, definitely modeled Le Coque on Vidoc. So Le Coque was based on VDoc and Shag Shurlach Holmes was based on LCoc. So I think by transit of property? Oh nice. Is that it? I hope so, man. Masked. So that's it. What a guy. Yeah, he definitely deserves a a at least a decent movie if not. Yeah, that's a franchise. You know what I mean? Yeah, I can't you find someone besides Gerard Deppardieu. 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 to.

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 the last thing I heard of 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 VeeDoc Society.

Pretty cool. And they all come in and disguise and then rip off their masks. It is I. At lunch. That's right. Every day. Whew, well that's VeeDoc 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 listen or 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, a high-regencies 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. Wow. 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 height disaster in their classes, and there are still lessons to be learned from what happened even decades later. And that is from Dr. Paul M. Jost of Kansas City. Thanks a lot, Dr. Joost. That was an amazing email, like, geez. Put some background right there.

Yeah, and hey, we'll wait to get on listener mail, like as a new listener, this, well done. Yeah, just pat yourself on the back. Take 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. It's alright.

Well, if you want to be like Dr. Joest and send us some really arcane info about an episode that we did, we'd love to hear that stuff you can send it to us via email. It's Stuff Podcast that I Heart Radio Doc Tom. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. If you really want to know what's going on in this country heading into the 2024 election, you have to get away from the extremes and listen to the middle.

Hi, Jan here in Kansas City, Missouri. On the podcast, the middle with Jeremy Hobson, I'll take calls live every week, elevating the voices of Americans who are so important when it comes to who's in power and what gets done. My name is Venkat, I'm calling you for Atlanta Georgia. Listen to the middle with Jeremy Hobson on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up?

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