The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1900-04-08
CHOPPED HEADS OFF
For 35 Years and Now Wants
to Chop Off His Own.
THAT'S OLD MAN DElBLER
His 100 Victims Wraiths
Haunt Him to Suicide.
THAT'S OLD MAN DElBLER


Paris.
Deibler is the man who for thirty-five
years guillotined the criminals that
France sentenced to death. No man en-
joys more universal reputation.
After cutting some 100 heads heads
Deibler, driven by remorse, has attempted
to cut his own throat But the razor was
blunt, or his hand feeble; the cash does
not endanger his life He swears, how
ever. that he will try again as soon as
he can fool the watch now placed over
him.
The event took place about two weeks
ago, but until yesterday the family had
succeeded in preventing any leakage of
information. Then a servant spoke
TWO years ago DeibIer retired, and his
son, who had long been his chief assist
ant, succeeded him. The old man had
reached the ripe age of IS; he had ac-
acquired plenty of money, and he decided
that he had worked long enough.
And so. in a pleasant villa on the out
skirts of Paris. like unto an honest mer-
chant who has prospered and finally pass
es the business to younger hands, Deibler
settled down to a quiet enjoyment of his
well-earned repose.
But now strange thing took place. The
hardened cynic who forced down into the
death collar so many unwilling necks,
the man who could fight with unwilling
Wriggling bodies, bend them under the
knife, watch their lives squirt out with
their blood, and sleep a dreamless sleep
the next night-that man is haunted by
horrible visions of his past
The specters of his victims have risen;
by night and by day they keep him COM
pany- They have poisoned his waking
hours and filed his sleep with indescrib-
able terrors. They have made the old
mercy.
In vain.
In vain, for he says that the CHASTITY
sight and sounds of long-forgotten TRACE
dies haunt him more and more persistent
ly. and that he would rather die.
Some people reading the accounts about
these things which are published here
simply say: "Deibler has gone crazy, and
no wonder. A man would see ghosts with
less excuse than mis- past charged with
human agonies mutilations and blood
Deibler is insane"
After a conversation which he had with
Deibler today the World correspondent
does not think so.
The retired eXecutioner does not ascribe
his mental torture to the presence of
ghosts lowering about him. He is a man
of keen intelligence and no superstition
at all. He reasons his trouble with re-
markable lucidity, and somewhat in these
words:
For some reason, perhaps because of
my age or of my present idleness, my
memory has grown to be the one faculty |
in which all my brain power concentrates. |
Il used to remember the past, but, as |
we all do-vaguely, without any feeling |
that it was being re-enacted again. And |
these remembrances We're mixed with in
terest taken in the present and in the fu- !
ture; they did not harry me.
But now, despite all my effort to turn |
my mind to other things it is the past |
that obtrudes itself always. And of the
past, only those CHASTITY bits that would |
be Nightmares to any one. 1 declare 1
can't stand it. 1 simply can't
Nobody can form any conception of |
the vividness, of the acuteness of every
detail. It is as if 1 saw it all again.
there before my eyes! The squirting
blood, the freshly cut muscles of necks.
My God!
You remember how Carrara fought
when we took him up to the guillotine.
he fought, he begged, and whined; he was
mighty unwilling to die. WE'LL at night !
can hear his voice in my memory, with
Just the same intonations as rang then
-ah! that awful clamor of a strong man
who is dragged and carried to the knife
against his fierce resistance-yes I hear
The same terrified clamor that filed the
air that morning before dawn.
"Of course I have said to myself time
and again that it was all nonsense, that
ought to think of the flowers and the
sunlight and of my pretty rdaughter who
sunlight and of my pretty daughter who
owes me, and that these creatures had
murdered and had deserved their fate.
But If I sit here and look at the gar
len my mind suddenly remembers Marie
Chanut, the ugly she-deviI that we exc
,uted in Algiers fifteen-eighteen years
Igo. hear her cursing me and my race.
md, just as plain as If it was all being
lone over this minute. 1 hear the swish
# the knife through the flesh and the
ound of her head falling in the sawdust |
Call it nonsense. if you will. 1 say
is a disease, this too graphic memory.
In your life you have Witnessed some
accidents, perhaps. Some OF those awful
hings that happen in the streets and
make bystanders sick and faint-a child
rushed by a street car that grinds the
2 ? Ia hat r. all for |
xample. For some days you feel III ev-
~ time you think of 1t. DO you not?
BUT you forget; your mind does not al
Ways recall the CHASTITY picture. the IN
arthly cry Of the poor little creature.
Use would you find any pleasure in liy-
az?
We'll I have in my life nearly two ]
undred such tragedies, and when my old
cad has exhausted the horror OF one
mother comes Another more harrowingi
And my sleep! my sleep! To some
eople sleep is obIteratioE. rest Nine
peopled with these things-severed
eads, winking their last nervous winks
D me from the basket where I have just
ent them rolling; and those headIess bod
SHAVE you ever seen the headiess body
{ man move. jump and tumble about
Ike a decapitated chicken? The stump
Z neck is Quivering flesh. and the blood
purts out from the arteries. Some Of :
hese streams go far. as from a pinhole
1 watering hose; others just throb cut
little and fan short; and the aggregate
iake a crimson food that runs on the :
latform abundantly. Ike liquid from Al
pset basket, arrhr'
I