Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [60]
Despite massive newspaper coverage and the fact that photos of the pair were sent to police throughout Europe and North America, they managed to keep one step ahead of the law. They reached San Francisco, where Bompard met another man who fell for her charms. She ran off with the American after telling him that Eyraud planned to kill her. Jealous, Eyraud pursued the pair, tracking them from city to city.
It was not until January 1890 that Goron firmly connected with the culprits — not through detective skills, but by sheer luck. A resentful Eyraud sent him a letter, protesting his innocence and putting all the blame on “that serpent Gabrielle,” whom he accused of the murder. “The great trouble with her,” he wrote, “is that she is such a liar and also has a dozen lovers after her.” 40
Even more astonishingly, a few days later, Gabrielle Bompard herself appeared in Goron’s office. Small, delicate, and well-dressed, she was accompanied by her new lover, who believed that she had been victimized by Eyraud. She told a racy story of greed, sex, and murder. Gouffé had been killed during an assignation at a room on the rue Tronson du Coudray south of the boulevard Haussmann. Bompard admitted that she had lured him there, but claimed that she had not been directly involved in the murder and did not know that Eyraud planned to kill the bailiff. Nevertheless, she was placed under arrest.
After Bertillon took her facial and body measurements for identification purposes, Bompard was subjected to “Monsieur Goron’s cookshop” treatment — being kept hungry and questioned day and night. Female police spies were placed in her cell to win her confidence. Eventually, she was taken to the crime scene, where the concierge immediately recognized her, causing Bompard to confess.
Bompard explained that she had brought Gouffé to her room on July 26, 1889. While she was getting him ready for a lovemaking session, she playfully tied the cord of her dressing gown around his neck. Eyraud, hiding behind a curtain, sprang into action. Using a series of pulleys he had set up earlier, he yanked the hapless victim into the air, but when the cord broke, Eyraud finished him off, strangling Gouffé with his hands.
Eyraud searched the victim’s pockets for the key to his office and stuffed the dead body into the trunk. He then coolly returned home to his wife, leaving Bompard to spend the night with the corpse. Goron, curious, asked her what the experience had been like. Her response was chilling. “You’d never guess what a funny idea came into my head! You see it was not very pleasant for me being thus tête-à-tête with a corpse, I couldn’t sleep. So I thought what fun it would be to go into the street and pick up some respectable gentleman from the provinces. I’d bring him up to the room, and just as he was beginning to enjoy himself say, ‘Would you like to see a bailiff?’ open the trunk suddenly and, before he could recover from his horror, run out into the street and fetch the police. Just think what a fool the respectable gentleman would have looked when the officers came!” 41
The next morning, Eyraud had gone off to the bailiff’s office, which he searched frantically. Even though the police had no trouble finding the money later, Eyraud was unsuccessful. When he heard the footsteps of a guard in the hall, he fled through a window. He returned to Bompard’s room, where the two made passionate love on the floor next to the trunk that held the corpse. In confessing to this, Bompard insisted that Eyraud had forced her to do it.
The next day the pair rented a carriage and set off for Millery, where they dumped the body in the woods and left the trunk on the banks of the Rhône River. From there they fled to Marseilles and then to England, where they took a ship to New York.
Bompard’s spectacular confession set off a feeding frenzy in the Paris press. Parisians rushed to the rue Tronson du Coudray, where the landlady charged