Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
A fascinating and at the same time disturbing crime story tells of Antoine “Victor” Ardisson, a perverted corpse desecrator and necrophiliac. On September 21, 1901, Honore Ardisson went up to the attic of his house to find the source of a disgusting smell that his neighbors had complained about. There he found the decomposing body of a young girl. He immediately alerted the gendarmerie, who shortly thereafter arrested his stepson Victor and accused him of stealing the body. The subsequent investigation revealed that Victor was a grave robber who had desecrated the graves of hundreds of women and had sex with their corpses for years. He became known as the “Vampire of Muy” and was imprisoned after confessing to his monstrous crimes. Antoine “Victor” Ardisson was born on September 5, 1872, in Le Muy in Provence in southeastern France, the son of Elisabeth Apollonie Porre. Elisabeth did not know who Victor’s father was, and she was generally known as a woman of dubious reputation. While she was still pregnant, she married Honoré Ardisson, and they lived at 15 Grande Rue in the village of Le Muy. After Victor was born, Honoré adopted the boy. His mother showed violent tendencies toward young Victor and often hit him on the head, leading his stepfather to believe that this contributed to his emotional and mental imbalance. Victor’s mother left Honoré a few years after the wedding, and he raised the boy as his own son. It was said that he often mistreated his wife and that this was the reason she left the house. His stepfather then took in female vagrants and beggars and made them his temporary companions. They lived in squalor and filth in the house, with several people living and sleeping together in straw beds, including Victor. As a teenager, Victor often masturbated and drank his own semen, saying, “It’s a shame to waste it.” He was known in the village as a perverted oddball and often pursued the girls of Muy, asking them to marry him, which they laughed off. He spied on these girls and licked up their urine while masturbating after they had urinated in a certain spot. He made no effort to hide himself and did not mind if the girl saw him doing so. To earn extra money, Victor performed oral sex on men on Sundays, who were called Mignon, or scatterbrain, by his classmates at school. This was because Victor was mentally retarded and therefore extremely simple-minded. In 1882, Victor’s father took over the job of the town’s deceased gravedigger, with 10-year-old Victor helping him. With only four or five funerals a month, it was not a rewarding or well-paid job, but Honoré Ardisson took it anyway. A few years later, Honoré Ardisson fell into a pit and injured his foot, which frightened him so much that he quit the job and Victor took over alone. At that time, he began to desecrate the graves of women and young girls. He later confessed to digging up about ten graves and sexually assaulting the corpses. In 1893, he was drafted into the army and Honoré was once again appointed the town’s gravedigger. Victor was assigned to work as a guard at a military prison. Soon after, however, he deserted to work as a bricklayer in Cannes, where he earned 2 francs 30 per day. But after one week, he left the job and returned to Le Muy, where he was arrested by the gendarmerie for desertion. He was 20 years old when he was sent to Marseille, where he was held in military prison. After 100 days in prison, he was finally released and deemed insane but reformed, and immediately returned to Le Muy to his father. There, he resumed his nocturnal activities, using his father’s key to gain access to the cemetery gate. He dug up the graves with a shovel and his bare hands, lifted the coffin lid, placed the corpse in an upright position, and then began to suck on the breasts and lick the vagina while talking to the corpse. According to his confession, he spoke to the corpses regularly and was really disappointed when they did not respond. He later told doctors at Draguignan prison that he had a fascination with breasts and enjoyed licking the breasts and clitoris of the corpse. Sometimes he raped the corpse, sometimes he just abused it, then he put everything back the way it was and left. Age did not matter to him, and he dug up the graves of recently deceased women and young girls. Victor therefore regularly attended funerals, where he asked who the person was and what they had died of. When his father gave up his job as a gravedigger, he no longer had access to the key to the gate, so he simply climbed over the low cemetery wall. In 1900, he dug up a young girl named Berthe because she had such beautiful breasts. Ardisson later told doctors that he had never felt such joy as he did with her corpse, and he visited her grave regularly over several evenings, something he had never done before. On February 22, 1901, he dug up the grave of a 14-year-old girl named Leonie who had died two days earlier. The gendarmerie filed a report on the incident and noted that the body appeared to have been untouched. Once, he dug up two sisters but was unable to carry them home. Thirteen-year-old Gabrielle died on April 28 and was buried in the cemetery of Le Muy. She was considered very pretty, which is why Ardisson wanted her. After digging up her body, he found that it was too heavy to carry, so he severed the head from the body with a pocket knife, carried it uncovered under his arm, and kept it in his stepfather’s house, where he often kissed it affectionately. When decomposition set in and complaints about the smell began to mount, he simply disposed of the remains and dug up a fresher corpse. In May, he dug up the body of a 17-year-old girl named Honorine, who had died on May 15. Victor was not strong enough to carry the body home, so he looked for another corpse to take home. In September 1901, a three-and-a-half-year-old girl named Louise died. She was described as a pretty little girl, and Victor decided to dig up her grave. He put her body in a bag and took her to his house, where he laid her on straw in the attic. He would go there whenever his father was not at home. For over a week, he satisfied his cravings on the corpse until decomposition set in, and after eight days, he could no longer touch her. He tried to sever the head but was unable to do so. The neighbors began to complain about the disgusting smell coming from the Ardissons’ house. To stop these complaints, Victor’s father went up to the attic to remove the trash and found Louise’s body there. At first, he couldn’t recognize what the figure was, but as he got closer, he armed himself with a shovel and struck the corpse, assuming it was an animal. When he fully understood what it was, he reported the discovery of the body to the gendarmerie. After questioning Honoré, the gendarmerie searched for Victor and arrested him. He was charged with multiple counts of exhumation and desecration of corpses and taken to Draguignan prison. There he was examined by prison doctor Boze and Dr. Belletrud from the mental hospital in Pierrefeu-du-Var. These men conducted a forensic examination of Ardisson and questioned him about his sexual dysfunction and aberrant behavior. They noted that he rarely got angry about things and never cried, and that he felt no attachment or affection for anyone except the dead. They discovered that he could tolerate the foul smell of decay from the corpses he had sex with because he had no sense of smell or taste. When he spoke, his words were often accompanied by a strange hiccuping laugh, and he confessed to the doctors that he liked prison, especially the cigarettes, the bed, and the meals he was given. He told the doctors that he wanted to steal another corpse to replace Louise, but had been caught before he could do so. Victor claimed to have had sex with over 100 corpses and often referred to the girls as his fiancée and bride. He showed no remorse or regret for his crimes, merely promising to give up his passion for the dead. Several experts examined Victor Ardisson in prison at the time and commented on his unusual inclination toward the dead. Dr. Alexis Epaulard described him as a “degenerate impulsive sadist and necrophiliac,” while Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing called him a “moron without any sense of morality.” Because of his crimes, he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric institution in Pierrefeu-du-Var, from which he made several unsuccessful escape attempts. Victor Ardisson died on March 9, 1944, in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur at the age of 71, having gone down in criminal history as the Vampire of Muy.
