On August 13, 1824, the rural guard of a canton in Seine-et-Oise apprehended a man near a fountain whom he had previously caught sight of in the woods. He did not yet know that the little girl who had vanished three days earlier had been abducted and slain. The man’s name was Antoine Léger. On August 16, a search party uncovered the mouth of a cave amidst the rocks of La Charbonnière; there, the parents of young Aimée-Constance Debully identified their child. The man arrested as a vagrant was about to become the accused in a crime that had kept several communes in a state of terror.
Aimée-Constance was twelve and a half years old. On August 10, around four o'clock in the afternoon, she left her parents’ house to strip the shoots from a vineyard situated a quarter of a league from the village, near the Sardion woods. When night fell, she had not returned. Her father and brothers hastened to the vineyard, then spent part of the night calling out for her in the adjacent woods. In the vineyard, they found her shoes, her hat, and her pruning hook, arranged with a certain order. Nothing indicated which direction she had taken.
The authorities immediately organized general search parties. The first five days yielded only a blue-and-white striped handkerchief, found some distance from the vineyard, which did not belong to Aimée-Constance. Across the countryside, strangers passing through were viewed with profound suspicion. The disappearance had turned ordinary paths into tracks to be watched: a spring, a tree line, or the outskirts of a wood drew the vigilant eye of those seeking the young girl.
The private gamekeeper caught sight of an unknown man near a spring on August 12. The man’s face and appearance struck him as singular; when he attempted to approach, the figure vanished. The following day, the keeper waited for him for most of the day. The stranger returned in the evening. This time, the keeper arrested him. It was Antoine Léger. He was taken for a mere vagrant, without yet being suspected of the murder of the young Debully girl. At first, he obstinately denied everything. Only during an interrogation in which he was pressed hard did he recount the facts and show the magistrates where to search.
On June 24, Saint John’s Day, Léger had departed from his family’s home. He claimed he intended to seek employment as a domestic servant in Dourdan. According to his account, he carried only fifty francs and the clothes he wore at the moment of his arrest. Instead of reaching Dourdan, he proceeded to Étampes, spent a night at an inn, and then struck out toward the woods overlooking the hamlet of Montmiraux, near La Ferté-Aleps. Seeking shelter from the elements, he roamed the woods before discovering the rocks of La Charbonnière after eight days. He stated that he had wished to distance himself from his kin and live in utter seclusion.
There, he fashioned a bed of dry aftermath hay, which he had gone down into the valley to gather. He recounted having subsisted, during his first days of solitude, on roots, peas, ears of corn, gooseberries, and wild fruit gathered along the forest edge. In August, he went to steal artichokes from the garden of a neighboring spinning mill. He also claimed to have killed a rabbit and eaten it raw. Hunger drove him several times to La Ferté-Aleps, around nine o'clock, to buy bread and Gruyère cheese. He explained that he also felt a craving to eat human flesh and drink blood, like a violent passion tormenting him in his solitude. He followed the same trail and would then return to his retreat.
Champagnac connects this confession to the narrative of August 10. Around four o'clock, Léger stated he caught sight of Aimée-Constance in her vineyard. His own account admitted that he seized her and carried her into the wood. He maintained that she was motionless and already dead when he assaulted her. He related that he was overcome by hunger, thirst, and heat, and then swooned for a time. The chronicle also notes that he later denied before the Assize Court the sexual assault of which he had previously spoken to the examining magistrates. This point, which he publicly contested, remained central to the questions put to the jury.
The cavern was discovered on August 16 during a battue over the rock of La Charbonnière, above Montmiraux. Withered ferns appeared to have been freshly trampled within a crevice. Clearing them away, the searchers found an aperture and descended into a hollow. Vegetable refuse and a bed of hay and moss showed that someone had harbored there. A foul odor prompted them to examine a recess at the back of the cave. There they discovered a body wrapped in clothing. Monsieur and Madame Debully recognized their daughter.
The examining magistrate proceeded to the scene accompanied by a surgeon. The post-mortem examination established that the child had endured extreme violence and that her body had been concealed in the cavern. The authorities then sought to connect this refuge to Léger. Once he had confessed, he led them into the woods, pointed out the spot where he said he had stopped with the girl, and indicated the foot of an oak tree from which he had severed a bough. The branch found over the body corresponded, according to the chronicler, to the stump on the tree. Léger also pointed to a rock where he had hidden the collar and sleeves of his shirt; there they were found.
These indications supplied the judicial inquiry with tangible landmarks: the vineyard, the path through the wood, the cavity in the rock, the tree, and the fragments of cloth. Ever since his confession, writes Champagnac, Léger answered questions with a sangfroid that stunned his interrogators. When reminded of the circumstances of his crime, a simple, emotionless "yes" sufficed. The man who had been apprehended as a common vagrant was now bound to every step of the disappearance by his own disclosures and by the physical evidence recovered.
On November 23, Léger stood trial before the Assize Court of Seine-et-Oise. The proceedings were not held in public because of the nature of the case; nevertheless, a dense crowd thronged the approaches to the courthouse in hopes of catching a glimpse of the accused. His appearance did not match their expectations. Champagnac describes calm, almost gentle features, staring eyes, an immobile demeanor, and a pale complexion. He wore a blue jacket and trousers, the working garments of his trade as a vinedresser.
When the presiding judge asked him his name, Christian names, and age, he answered placidly: Antoine Léger, day laborer, about twenty-nine years of age, born and residing at Saint-Martin-Betencourt. The contrast between this ordinary answer and the monstrous acts under debate dispelled nothing; it merely shifted the focus to what he would admit or retract. Interrogated regarding August 10, he conceded having left his cave around half past three, having seen a little girl sitting at the edge of the wood, and having carried her off. He maintained that she was already dead when he found her lifeless. He then recounted hiding in the lower rocks, spending part of the night there unable to sleep, and crossing the fields the following day. He said he washed his face and his shirt in water from the rocks, before cutting away the collar and the sleeve cuffs where blood remained. According to this version, he took flight upon noticing the guard, and then halted when summoned.
Regarding the sexual assault, his stance differed from that taken during the preliminary inquiry. The presiding judge ordered the reading of the earlier answers which Léger denied ever having given, asserting that the magistrates had written whatever they pleased. In open court, he persisted in denying this charge. The judge also reminded him that he had once claimed to have been condemned to twenty years at hard labor in irons and then escaped; to this inquiry, Léger replied that it was possible that it might be true. Aimée-Constance’s parents were heard among the witnesses. The medical experts declared that the child had died of asphyxiation, either by strangulation or suffocation, and concluded that the assault had begun while she was alive and continued after her death. This was the sole circumstance that Léger continued to dispute.
The court-appointed defense counsel urged the jury to consider the question of insanity. He cited Léger’s habits, his abandonment of his family hearth, and his solitary existence in the woods. The presiding judge framed the questions pertaining to rape, indecent assault, and willful homicide with premeditation and lying in wait; at the request of the defense, he added the question of insanity. After half an hour of deliberation, the jury returned an affirmative verdict on the counts of rape, indecent assault, and murder with premeditation and lying in wait, but answered in the negative regarding insanity. Léger was condemned to death.