On Sunday, 10 January 1875, Joseph Joyau entered the dwelling of his uncle, Pierre Collé, at Grand-Deau, in the commune of Dolus. The house stood apart. The old man, a husbandman of sixty years, lay lifeless upon the earthen floor. The Gazette records that he had been struck about the head and face, and that his blood had flowed in great abundance. The physicians and the post-mortem examination placed the murder during the preceding evening, Saturday, 9 January, shortly after his evening repast.
The published report reconstructs a succession of blows from the nature of the wounds: first to the face, dealt with an instrument comparable to a blunt-pointed hammer, then upon the crown of the skull, and lastly to the back of the head once Collé had fallen. The newspaper further suggests a probable hour by collating the undigested food found within the stomach with Collé’s known custom of retiring early. His bed had not been turned down. These constitute the conclusions reported by the Gazette, and not an independently preserved medical report.
Suspicion fell upon Charles Normandin, Collé’s brother-in-law. Aged fifty-two, he farmed at Les Chasseries and was married to the victim’s sister. The examining magistrate ordered his arrest on 20 January. The journal portrays him as industrious and in relatively easy circumstances, yet heavily indebted on account of several parcels of land he had purchased; he was said, according to the report, to owe some twelve thousand francs. He was alleged to have solicited Collé’s assistance on several previous occasions.
A few days prior to the death, Normandin asked him for one thousand francs. Collé refused. The Gazette relates that an altercation ensued, accompanied by wounding words. Collé is said to have subsequently confided to his niece, the Joyau girl, that he would never again set foot in his brother-in-law’s house. The newspaper imputes a deep resentment to Normandin, and then puts forward another possible motive: a rumour was abroad that Collé was contemplating marriage. The old man had already divided his estate between his two sisters; had he married, he might have resumed the usufruct thereof. The narrative records no confession from Normandin on this head. It merely juxtaposes debt, quarrel, and village rumour to account for the suspicion.
On the Saturday of the murder, Normandin spent the day at a building site he was directing not far from Collé’s house. The workmen left the yard at about half past five. The journal notes that the sun had set at twenty-one minutes past four, and observes that Normandin did not depart in their company. According to the account, he did not return to his own hearth until a late hour.
A first witness, a Madame Henry, was said to have seen Normandin’s horse tethered in a lucerne field near the building works long after the labourers had gone. Between six and half past six o’clock, Pierre Chailloleau encountered him on foot, without his mount. He was carrying upon his arm a wooden tub or basket, white on the inside, from which the haft of a tool was seen to protrude. He was making towards Dolus—and therefore towards the dwelling of his brother-in-law.
Normandin maintained that he had departed almost alongside the workmen and had made straight for home. He at first denied having encountered Chailloleau; presently, he answered that if such a meeting had taken place, he had no recollection of it, and that he had perhaps been carrying utensils to the Pigeat household. The Pigeats affirmed that they had not seen him. Chailloleau, for his part, declared he remembered the very words exchanged. The Gazette presents these depositions as flat contradictions, without reproducing the examinations in their entirety.
The tub drew the inquiry back to the building yard. A vessel that had contained lime, bearing white wood shavings at the bottom, had been seized at the scene of the crime. The young Joyau identified it as belonging to his uncle; a labourer had seen a similar tub in an outbuilding on the site. The newspaper conjectures that Normandin might have taken it from Collé’s premises, with or without his leave, and was carrying it back when Chailloleau caught sight of him. It then posits a fresh quarrel and a murderous fit of rage. Yet neither Madame Henry nor Chailloleau is reported to have seen Normandin cross Collé’s threshold; the account records no eye-witness to the scene. This reconstruction remains the prosecutorial theory advanced by the Gazette.
The question of premeditation remains, even within the columns of the article, far less certain. The haft glimpsed within the vessel might, according to the journal, suggest that Normandin had armed himself with a weapon; yet the judicial inquiry, it adds, had gathered no precise evidence on this point. It noted that the prisoner was entitled to the benefit of the doubt. The tool is not identified as the fatal weapon in the surviving text.
The disappearance of certain garments formed another part of the case. Normandin was said to possess three smocks: one nearly new, reserved for Sundays; one worn at the elbows, which he wore to work; and a third, threadbare, for stable chores. Only two were produced before the magistrates. The Gazette asserts that the smock he wore every day—the one he would therefore have worn on the day of the crime—was missing, as were the trousers of the preceding days. The newspaper turns this absence into an argument of guilt, presuming that the garments might have borne incriminating marks. It does not report, however, that any chemical analysis ever discovered blood upon the missing articles.
On the day following Collé’s death, several witnesses observed a faint stain upon the collar of Normandin’s white shirt, behind the neck. He was returning from Le Château, whither he had gone to be shaved; his linen appeared fresh. The Gazette states that the spot did not resemble a splash of blood, but rather the rub of some bloodstained object. This description does not allow it to be confounded with a trace whose origin had been scientifically determined.
Witnesses also heard him attribute Collé’s death to an “apoplexy,” brought on by the fatigue of breaking stones the day before. Later, when the men charged with carrying the body spoke of blows dealt to the head, Normandin is said to have remarked that “he could have none elsewhere.” The article emphasizes that he uttered these words before any medical examination had taken place. It does not present the sentence as a confession, but rather details the manner in which the press ranked it among the presumptions of guilt.
The published chronicle then passes from the investigation to the trial without recounting each witness’s testimony. The bill of indictment charged Normandin with having willfully caused the death of Collé on 9 January at Dolus. The first day was devoted to its reading and to the prisoner’s examination. On Friday, the witnesses were heard; the pleadings took place on Saturday. M. Denis appeared for the prosecution, and Me Laverny presented the defence. The text condenses these three days into a few lines: it summarizes neither the depositions of the Friday, nor the arguments of counsel, nor the grounds adopted by the jury.
After long deliberation, the jury found Normandin guilty, granting him the benefit of extenuating circumstances. The Court sentenced him to fifteen years of hard labour; the report does not state the nature of the extenuating circumstances admitted. The verdict settled the criminal issue; it did not, however, transform each circumstantial link suggested by the journal—the tub, the missing clothes, the soiled collar, the debt, or the rumoured marriage—into an independently established fact. These elements lend the report its dramatic progression, from the discovery of Collé down to the judgment, but their respective probative weight remains unexamined in the surviving extract.