CANNIBALS (True Crime) by Ray Black Read Free Book Online Page B

brought before the Bordeaux parliament.
    Jean Grenier was brought to court on June 2, 1603, where he freely confessed of the most hideous and abominable werewolf crimes. It turned out that Jean was the son of a poor labourer from the village of S. Antoine de Pizon, and not the son of a priest as he had so often claimed. Three months before he was arrested he had left home and had been employed by several masters doing odd jobs, or just wandering around the countryside begging. On a couple of occasions he had been hired to look after flocks belonging to farmers, but had been discharged for neglect of his duties.
    When he was questioned about the missing children, he openly admitted that he had both killed and eaten as a wolf. He told of the time when he had been overcome by hunger and had entered a cottage where he had found a baby asleep in its cradle. He dragged the baby out of its cradle, carried it into the garden, leaped over the hedge, and devoured it until he had satisfied his hunger. The remainder of the body he fed to a wolf.
    When he was asked to explain his actions, he told the court that when he wore the wolf-skin, as commanded by the Lord of the Forest, he would go out hunting for children. Before his transformation, Jean said that he smeared himself with the special salve which he preserved in a small pot, and then hid his normal clothes in the thicket. He said that most of his hunting was carried out during the day when the moon was at its wane, but sometimes his expeditions were at the dead of night by the light of the full moon.
    Jean also accused his father of helping him and possessing a wolf-skin. He said that he had accompanied him on more than one occasion, and been present when he had attacked and eaten a young girl in the village of Grilland. He told the Court that his stepmother had left his father, and he believed the reason to be because she had witnessed him regurgitating the paws of a dog and the fingers of a child. He also added that the Lord of the Forest had strictly forbidden him from biting the thumb-nail on his left hand, and warned him never to lose sight of it as long as he was in the disguise of a werewolf.
    As a result of his startling proclamations Jean Grenier was deemed by the judges to be mentally ill, and was said to be suffering from lycanthropy which was brought on by the possession of demons. He was incapable of socialization and therefore could not be executed for the crimes he had committed. He was sent off to live in a Franciscan monastery when he stayed for the remainder of his days. However, reports say that as soon as he was admitted to the monastery, he started to run about frantically on all fours and on finding a heap of raw and bloody offal, fell upon it hungrily and devoured it in an incredibly short space of time.
    After seven years spent in the monastery, Jean was found to be of considerably small stature, extremely shy, and unwilling to give anyone eye contact. His eyes were deep set and darted about from side to side. His teeth were long and protruding, while his nails were black and worn away in certain places. It seemed his mind was incapable of understanding even the smallest of instructions, and by the age of 20 he was dead.
     
    P IERRE  B URGOT AND  M ICHEL  V ERDUM
     
    The trial of two French peasants in 1521 received widespread notoriety. The two men convicted of being werewolves were Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdum. Nineteen years before his arrest, when Burgot was desperately trying to gather his frightened sheep together following a violent storm, he came across three mysterious horsemen completely dressed in black. One of the horsemen assured Burgot of the future protection of his flock, and at the same time offered the bewildered shepherd some money. In return the stranger wanted Burgot to obey him as the Lord.
    Although a little unsure of the stranger, Burgot agreed to his proposal and arranged to meet him again. In this second meeting his