On the morning of 15 November 1871, a barber from Landouzy found the door of the Quatre-Vents inn barred. He knocked several times. When Auguste Demeiller at last came to open it, he was attempting to wash himself, drenched in blood, utterly unable to explain what had befallen him. His wife lay dead in their bedchamber. Demeiller himself, struck about the head, would survive a mere eight days. In the indictment, the traveller sought by the authorities was initially described as an unknown passer-by. Later, Brigadier Soyeux reported that Auguste Demeiller had told him he had lodged this same man at the inn a year earlier; yet this detail provided no definitive name, and the manhunt was to drag on for several months.
The Demeiller couple kept their inn upon the highway between Vervins and Brunehamel. The preliminary judicial examination established that an attack had occurred during the night of 14 to 15 November. The woman was discovered with her skull crushed; her husband bore seven wounds to the head. Still retaining the power of speech, he recounted that a traveller had taken supper with them, then retired to bed around eleven o'clock. Upon waking, Demeiller found himself weltering in his own blood, the money was gone, and the stranger had vanished. This primary witness could furnish neither a certain name nor any explanation for the violence.
Inside the dwelling, the gendarmerie recovered a bloodstained hatchet, traces upon the curtains, dishes, and the remnants of a meal. The testimony gathered later from the young child Marie Rousselle attributed the fatal blow to Ferrari and described a different weapon—a sledgehammer. The divergence between this declaration and the physical evidence must be maintained: the trial record notes both, yet provides no expert forensic opinion capable of resolving the contradiction. The child claimed to have watched the scene from a window, her mother having helped her clamber up by means of stones gathered from the wayside.
The trail remained uncertain for a long time. In February 1872, while the Rousselle children were detained in Vervins in connection with a smuggling affair, Marie spoke of the crime to Desson, a transport driver conveying them. She named Ferrari and stated that she and her mother had kept watch behind the house. Other persons subsequently heard similar accounts, occasionally with variations in detail: who had struck the blows, who had waited outside, who had carried off the money. In the month of May, the examining magistrate conducted the child to the inn. She identified the premises and delivered a circumstantial description of what she maintained she had witnessed.
The prosecution attributed to Ferrari the blows struck against the innkeepers, assigned to Pierrot, known as Lecoq, a role in moving the bodies, and charged the Rousselle woman with acting as lookout and partaking in the robbery following the assault. It contended that Marlois, known as the Drainer, had passed the night in the inn under the guise of an ordinary traveller, thereby facilitating the admittance of his accomplices. The degree of guilt attributed to Valpoël, alias the Flea, rested upon Marie’s statements and her formal identification. All these roles were advanced by the prosecution; the trial alone was to determine what the jury would accept.
The identity of "the Flea" had already sown confusion throughout the proceedings. The indicting chamber had committed to the assizes one Jules Dubois, nicknamed the Flea, a native of Aubenton, mistaking him for the individual targeted by the depositions. Shortly before the trial, Dubois was arrested. The earliest verifications revealed that he was not the man who had cohabited with the Rousselle woman and participated in the crime. He was granted provisional release by decision of the Court of Appeal of Amiens; but as the indicting chamber could not recall its committal order, he was nonetheless obliged to stand before the assize court, where the jury would be required to rule on his case.
The Rousselle woman then disclosed that the nickname in fact belonged to Jules Valpoël. Marie was confronted with him and picked him out. She had also made mention of a small red dog that accompanied the man she called the Flea; Valpoël had owned a dog of that colour for several years, and the child recognized the animal during the preliminary investigation. This corroboration was presented by the prosecution as a mark of identity, not as independent proof of his complicity in the murder. Valpoël offered an alibi: he claimed to have been at Fourmies attending his mistress and her sister, who were stricken with smallpox. However, witnesses placed their illness in the month of December, rather than on the night of the crime in November.
The proceedings opened on 13 May before the Aisne Assize Court, presided over by Councillor Breuil. Six defendants were called to the bar: Ferrari, Pierrot known as Lecoq, Marlois known as the Drainer, Valpoël known as the Flea, Adolphine Rousselle, and Jules Dubois. The chronicle records that a floor plan of the crime scene was submitted to the jurors. Lecoq at first denied ever having been at the inn, having moved the body, or having shared in the division of the spoils. The presiding judge then read aloud an earlier interrogation in which the accused had confessed to a share in the acts, while claiming he had sought to shield Madame Demeiller. In open court, Lecoq recanted, asserting that his confessions were untrue.
Ferrari denounced a conspiracy hatched by the Rousselle woman, who, he contended, sought vengeance against him. He admitted to having known her and having fathered a child with her, but denied having set foot in Landouzy. He acknowledged having beaten the children; nevertheless, he maintained that Marie was lying, or had been influenced by her mother and father. The Rousselle woman denied her presence at the scene, while conceding that she had washed Ferrari’s linen on 15 November. She stated she had seen him arrive covered in blood, and reported that he claimed to have been injured by a tree branch. This declaration, like several particulars aired at trial, stemmed from her deposition alone; it did not constitute a judicial confession on Ferrari's part.
Marie, recorded as seven years of age in the proceedings, was questioned with great sobriety by the presiding judge, who exhorted her to speak the truth. She repeated that she had gone to Landouzy with her mother and Ferrari, that she had remained outside, and had witnessed the scene through a window. The indictment had already recorded her story, the shifts in her vantage point, and the means by which she claimed to have seen within. Her sister Louise, nine and a half years old, confirmed only a few particulars: their mother had gone out with Marie and Ferrari; she herself, left at home with the younger children, had heard of the crime from her sister. She replied frequently in monosyllables. The words of these children weighed heavily in a capital trial, yet their true import had to be weighed against the remaining testimonies and the denials of the accused.
The adult witnesses offered contrasting observations. Brigadier Soyeux recounted the final words of Auguste Demeiller and described the discovery of the hatchet and the remains of the supper. Two local residents recognized Marlois as the stranger seen at the inn on 14 November. Marlois’s companion portrayed him as a violent man and described his features; another witness, however, contradicted her timing regarding when he had shaved off his beard. The defence could lean upon these discrepancies, while the prosecution linked the presence of the stranger, the recovered cotton nightcap, and the identifications made at the bar.
The trial was set against a background of cross-border contraband and tangled relations among the defendants. Several had prior convictions; the Rousselle woman cohabited with certain among them, and her children depended upon that demimonde. These matters were raised before the court, yet they were insufficient to prove murder. A confusion over a nickname had already nearly caused the wrong man to be condemned. The presiding judge was thus obliged to recall the jurors strictly to the specific acts imputed to each individual, while the prisoners contested the confessions, the identifications, and the credibility of the witnesses.
On 16 May, the Procureur de la République delivered his closing address for the State. The press record does not reproduce the full arguments of counsel, though it lists the advocates who defended the six prisoners. On the 17th, the presiding judge summed up the lengthy deliberations. After approximately one hour of retirement, the jury returned an affirmative verdict without extenuating circumstances for Ferrari; affirmative with extenuating circumstances for Lecoq, Marlois, and Valpoël; and negative for the Rousselle woman and Jules Dubois. The doubt that had rendered the identification of Dubois so hazardous thus yielded a concrete consequence: he was acquitted, as was Adolphine Rousselle.
The court sentenced Ferrari to death. Pierrot, known as Lecoq, and Marlois, known as the Drainer, were condemned to hard labour for life; Valpoël received fifteen years of hard labour. The Gazette indicated that Ferrari’s execution was to take place at Laon, though the truncated record preserved does not supply the date. In this cause, six indictments did not culminate in six convictions: though the child and the witnesses had linked several names to the outrage, the jury distinguished the degrees of guilt, and the court handed down differing punishments.
At the Quatre-Vents inn, the sole survivor had been unable to name the traveller who vanished into the night. Months later, nicknames, identifications, and recanted confessions had crowded the dossier. The verdict condemned four men and acquitted two prisoners; it did not elevate every witness account to an equal plane of certainty. The confusion between Dubois and Valpoël serves as a stark reminder, at the very heart of a capital sentence, of how a name wrongly affixed to a man can deflect the entire course of justice.
Archival Note: The narrative follows the published chronicle of the May 1873 proceedings and preserves the distinctions between the indictment, pre-trial statements, witness testimony, courtroom debates, and final verdict. The recorded ages of the two children are inconsistent across the OCR source material; they are consequently not referenced beyond what was formally taken down during their examination. The execution announced for Ferrari is left undated in the surviving record.